Trade minister Andrew Robb dropped a sort of reverse bombshell on a business function in Yogyakarta on Tuesday when he revealed that Australia and Indonesia were restarting talks on a trade deal after a long period of benign neglect.
A little earlier the mood had taken a noticeably glum turn at the Indonesia Australia Business Council (IABC) annual conference due to the failure of Indonesian ministers to turn up and some downbeat stories about the country's recent lacklustre approach to trade liberalisation.
Then Robb revealed that a day earlier he had agreed with Indonesia's new trade minister Tom Lembong to have another go at the talks, which have been largely moribund through Indonesia's long process of changing presidents over the past two years. 
This has injected a real sense of momentum into the big business mission, which got under way in Jakarta on Wednesday, on the heels of a new study that argues the two countries have shifted into a new phase of potential joint trade comparative advantage.
The Australia Indonesia Centre (AIC) study written by economists from PwC and ANZ argues both countries need to find new sources of export growth after the end of the resources boom and that could be from joint ventures where they each have strengths.
Despite being neighbours they have relatively weak bilateral trade links with investment even thinner. According to Indonesian figures, Australian investment there is down significantly this year despite an overall rise in foreign investment amid confusion about the economic policy direction under Widodo.
Does this really matter? Some participants in the IABC conference forecast another year of the policy confusion seen this year under the new Widodo administration until there is greater certainty about crucial issues like the $100 billion a year infrastructure construction program. That's despite Widodo assembling a stronger position in the fractious legislature than seemed likely by this time after his election last year.
That may leave Australian companies with memories of losses after the 1998 financial crisis inclined to wait for some results from the negotiations on the Indonesia trade deal and a clearer picture about Widodo.
For example amid talk about policy consistency, a bilateral trade deal and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community (AEC) to be formalised this week in Malaysia, Australian live cattle exporters are still fuming about the way Indonesia unilaterally imposed an import tariff on live cattle about three years ago, which was contrary to the trade deal Australia had just sealed with ASEAN countries.

Biggest offshore market
On the other hand companies like Wellard, an animal protein business, has made Indonesia its biggest offshore market despite these difficulties. Chief executive Mauro Balzarini told the opening function for the business mission that his business now touches the lives of more people in Indonesia than in Australia where the cattle originate. "It's as if the border doesn't exist," he says.
Robb now wants a trade agreement with Indonesia within a year. But the more telling target he has set is to quadruple the number of Australian businesses involved in the country from the existing 250 to 1000.
With world trade growth now in a structural slump and commodities prices down, that will almost certainly require more businesses to take up the message in the AIC study that there is a need for more cross-investment to bring together areas of joint comparative advantage.
That will require Australians to be able to look through the uncertainty surrounding a president who is pragmatic and transparent (both good signs), but still quite mercurial.
At the same time Indonesian businesses and policymakers will need to adjust the nationalist approach from the past year.
But one of the country's sharpest economic policy thinkers of recent years Mahendra Siregar, who is now out of government, gave the Australian visitors a cautious forecast telling them: "I'm a bit worried there are not too many of us looking at the new growth context."
But when five experienced Australian business operators on a panel at the IABC conference were asked if they would be game to take legal action against an arbitrary Indonesian government decision, two raised their hands.
That probably was a vote of confidence in the new Indonesia.