The Hunt for Dame Mary!

The search for the lost Dame Mary Edwell-Burke's portrait of Fiji's Founding Father - Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna - may have reached an exciting point as there is now word on Fiji's "coconut wireless"  of a recent sighting which means we now could have a lead as to where it is today.

Vinaka vaka levu, Joweli!

Naturally I will let you know if this lead pans out.  And I will definitely post image of it in here as soon as I'm able.  However, in the meantime, I'll post this one again:

 

 "Self-portrait with Hibiscus"!

Dame Mary Edwell-Burke.

NOT the missing painting!

Do you know about The Coconut Wireless?  If you don't, it's this amazing and seemingly preternatural phenomena found throughout the Pacific Islands, where certain things - usually the barest skeleton of a fact - turn into a Mexican-wave-like tide of talk which grows as it travels with more and more people adding what they know, until this skeletal fact gains muscle, sinew, flesh and skin and comes back to you fully filled in and richly detailed.

And when it happens there is nothing more useful. It was the New Zealand Maori's coconut wireless that discovered the movements, identities and current whereabouts of The Rainbow Warrior bombers, did you know, and how great is that!  Those dastardly French scumbags didn't know how we in the Pacific work and that was their downfall.  Kinda!

However, when you try to explain the coconut wireless to non-Pacific folk they always say "But that's just what gossip is!" and "Gossip works that way." which is such a misunderstanding. It isn't the same as gossip because gossip is coloured with judgment, slant and malice so invariably skews off away from fact and into sheer nastiness and stupidity, whereas the coconut wireless doesn't add judgment, emotion or slant; it always remains an emotion-free, bias-free tsunami thundering along at an astonishing pace just accumulating fact and evidence.

And that's the major difference: gossip is part of the forces of life-destroying harm and evil while the coconut wireless remains a life-enhancing force of goodness that most usually ends with word reaching exactly the right person who invariably says something like "Oh yes, the Ark of Covenant!  You'll find that at the back of Harry Charman's shed right next to the Holy Grail and the remains of Amelia Earhart!"

Throughout the Pacific, with the creeping loss of our oral culture, growing modernisation and sophistication, people are now noticing that our coconut wireless doesn't work so often anymore and are finally beginning to mourn the impending demise of something so unique and valuable ... but what this Hunt for Dame Mary is now demonstrating is that there's still life in this phenomenon because it's still there and, yes, that it's still working.

So we are most fortunate that the lost portrait has gone-coconut-wireless and thus on a journey that may end with us actually finding it.

So what are we already hearing back on the coconut wireless? Filler-talk mainly! Talk about her other paintings and those lucky folk whose parents were Dame Mary patrons and supporters during her 50 years in Fiji and who, over the years, put together serious collections of Dame Mary's work, and stories about other families who own a single cherished portrait of a family member. There's also word that this self-same Ratu Sukuna portrait is on a cover of a 1980s book about modern Fiji history, which means the image won't be lost even if the portrait is, and we're hearing back talk from folk who have seen other paintings by her in London and in other parts of England where they are kept in places of honour, considered great masterpieces.

There's also talk that the Australian High Commission has already had two Retrospectives of her Fiji work: one after she died in 1988, and a second in 2003 ...

Oh lordy!!! What an idiot I am!  I never thought to ask The Australian High Commission if they know where this Ratu Sukuna painting is.  In 1988, when they had the first Retrospective, it was pre-lost and so would have still, logically, been in the lobby of The Grand Pacific Hotel, (I actually saw it still there in June 1987!)  and so, as a major Dame Mary Fiji piece, it undoubtedly would have been in this exhibit. And so they'd know if it was included in the 2003 retrospective or if, by then, it was already lost!

But what is happening on the solidly-material front? Well, this afternoon Anne and Craig have an appointment with the head of Nasinu Cemetery in Suva, Fiji, on a mission to track down her grave, so by tonight we will know for sure whether or not she has a headstone, and if she doesn't, I will naturally be agitating and trouble-making and generally making appeals here, there and every other place I can think of, that we put this abomination square to rights.

Dame Mary Edwell-Burke in an unmarked grave!!!  OOOOHHHH! just the thought makes me so cross! However, I really should know that for sure before I whack on the warpaint and sharpen my swords and go All-Out-Xena on the world, shouldn't I!

Hey, here's a thought. Maybe, maybe, just maybe we could counter this dastardly Dame-Mary-Forgotten-By-History by somehow putting into play the idea of a major coffee table book of her works.  Oh, what a shame we don't know anyone at, say, Random House ... or that we don't know anyone who knows a great many people at Random House ... who can moot this suggestion in the right places!

"Oh, Robert!!!!"