Emanuel J. Comino OAM, is the founder and Chairman of the International Organising Committee – Australia for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles which was formed in Australia in 1981 to work towards securing the repatriation of the famous marbles. Mr Comino has been campaigning for 30 years throughout Australia and the world for the return of the marbles. The following article is adapted from an illustrated presentation given by Mr Comino to the Macquarie Ancient History Association in 2005.
It is now over 200 years since Lord Elgin, British Ambassador to Constantinople at the beginning of the 19th Century, arranged for the removal of many of the magnificent sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens to England, where they remain to this day. These sculptures, otherwise known as the Elgin Marbles, but better known today as the Parthenon Marbles – even by the British Museum and the British Government – belong to a unique building that still stands after wars, earthquake and plunder. Despite a mounting international campaign, the British government has refused to return the marbles to Greece. Their return is one of the most important cultural property disputes in the world today. When we speak of the Parthenon, we are speaking about the birth of civilisation, the birth of democracy and the symbol of Greece.
The Parthenon and its sculptures
The Parthenon, the Temple of Athena was built in 15 years between 447 to 432 BC by Iktinos, the architect and Phidias the sculptor. The man responsible for the project was the great Athenian statesman, Pericles who began a huge program of building works to give Athens the magnificence of a great imperial city. In these few years Greek literature, philosophy, architecture, politics – in fact the whole of the Greek civilisation – suddenly burst into flower.
Those of you who have visited Greece will have your own recollections of that magic moment when you walked up the Acropolis and saw the Parthenon for the first time. It is a Doric temple built entirely of white Attic Pentelic marble with a row of 17 elegant Doric columns on either side, eight at either end and a double row of six in the porches at each end. The internal eastern chamber or cella of the temple once housed a 12 metre-high statue of the goddess Athena wrought in gold and ivory. The Parthenon sculptures featured in the triangular pediments at each end, in the 92 metopes running the length of the temple on either side outside the building, and in the magnificent 160 metre long frieze high up on the interior of the building.
The pediment sculptures were huge statues in the round depicting the story of the quarrel between the goddess Athena and Poseidon over the naming of the city of Athens and the birth of Athena with all of the other gods looking on in amazement. The metopes were sculptures in high relief telling stories from Greek mythology, and the frieze, wrought in low relief, represented the ancient week-long festival of the Panathenaia. It consisted of 400 human and 200 animal figures.
Most of the statues from the pediments are now in the British Museum along with fifteen of the original 92 metopes. Many others were smashed during the removal of the sculptures. Of the original 160 metre long frieze, more than half is now in the British Museum. Huge 10 metre long saws that were used to cut and slice the heavy one-metre deep marble into sections in prepaartion for their transportation to London caused irreparable damage to the building and to the sculptures. One of the most magnificent marbles is of the great sculptor Phidias himself. The details of his eyes, nose, beard, lips, robes and muscles are all rendered to perfection; including the shades on the sculptured marble which in ancient times were coloured with reds, blues and golds.
After the classical period, the Parthenon became a Christian church and in AD 450 it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In 1204 the French occupied Athens and turned the Parthenon into a Catholic church and in 1458 when the Turks arrived, the Parthenon became a mosque. In 1674 (13 years before the explosions which damaged the building), a French artist visiting Athens made drawings of the Parthenon sculptures. These drawings provide important evidence of how well preserved the marbles were at this time and how well the Turks were looking after the Parthenon – despite later claims to the contrary. The first significant damage in 21 centuries occurred on 26 September, 1687 when the Venetian General Francesco Morosini laid siege to Athens. During the siege, a Venetian cannon hit the Parthenon and blew up part of the roof but the majority of the sculptures remained fortunately, intact.
After capturing the Acropolis, Morosini attempted to remove the statue of Poseidon in his chariot which formed part of the west pediment sculptures. However, as they were being lowered to the ground, the ropes holding them broke and the figures were smashed. One hundred and fifty years later, when Elgin was removing the sculptures, he missed seeing the torso of Poseidon’s body and that is why this magnificent piece is now in the Acropolis Museum and not the British Museum.These treasures were taken between 1801 and 1803 while Greece was under Turkish rule. Elgin’s main reason for taking the marbles was to decorate his Scottish mansion, not to save them from the ‘barbaric hands of the Turks’ as was claimed by the British Museum trustees and supporters. After Elgin returned to England in 1806 and after getting into financial difficulties, he eventually sold them to the British government, who in turn placed them in the British Museum where they remain today.
Lord Elgin (1766-1841)
Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin, was a Scottish aristocrat who had served in the British army as an officer, and as a consul before being appointed British Ambassador to Constantinople in 1799. Before leaving England to take up his post he married Mary Nisbett, the only child of wealthy parents. He took his team with him including Dr Rev. Phillip Hunt, his secretary Sir William Hamilton and others. Before he left England he was renovating his mansion in Scotland. It was his architect, Thomas Harrison who suggested to Elgin that he take advantage of his position of Ambassador to Constantinople to take with him artists and painters to make architectural drawings and plaster casts ‘to improve the arts in Great Britain’..
Lord Elgin took up the idea with the enthusiasm of a crusader but there was no suggestion that the originals (of the buildings and artworks) should be removed. He even asked the government of the day, the Prime Minister Mr Pitt and the foreign secretary, Lord Grenville to provide him with qualified men to make architectural drawings but was advised that any such activity needed to be funded from his own pocket. He left England for Constantinople in August 1789 on the HMAS Phaeton. Just one year before his departure Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson had destroyed the French fleet in Egypt. Elgin stopped in Italy on his way to Constantinople and hired the services of an Italian artist, Giovanni Battista Lusieri, who was initially contracted for the three-year period of Elgin’s Ambassadorship. But the association was to last for twenty years – during which time Lusieri served as Elgin’s chief accomplice in the looting of Greek antiquities which only ceased with the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and Lusieri’s death in the same year.
Elgin was very warmly received on his arrival in Constantinople – thanks to the assistance Britain was giving to Turkey in defeating Napoleon’s forces in Egypt. His party was taken on golden chairs to the palace and lavishly entertained with two weeks of receptions and banquets during which he was served coffee in diamond cups and showered with gifts, including the use of a 200 tonne yacht for his private exploration of the Greek Islands. In August 1800, 12 months after his departure from England, his artists arrived in Athens to ‘improve the arts in Great Britain’. Athens was the 43rd city of European Turkey at this time; it was ruled by two officials, the Turkish Governor and a military governor called the Disdar.
Elgin and the Parthenon Marbles
In 1800 during Elgin’s term as Ambassador to Constantinople, his artist Lusieri and others were at first given permission to make drawings and casts of the Parthenon sculptures. However, they were ordered off the Acropolis by the local Turkish commandant who claimed that the British would be able to spy on the Turkish women in the nearby houses from their vantage on the Acropolis. It took a lot of persuasion (sweetened by bribes), on Lord Elgin’s part, to regain permission for his artists to resume their work which they did in February 1801. However, they were ordered out again in May 1801. Elgin’s agents, Lusieri and Rev. Hunt wrote immediately to Lord Elgin in Constantinople, begging him to obtain a firman, a letter from the Ottoman governor addressed to the local official in Athens, requiring him to grant a favour by allowing the artists to resume their work.
As it turned out, events far away in Egypt conspired to deliver to Elgin exactly what he was seeking. In June 1801, the final victory of the British expedition over the French in Egypt made Elgin one of the most highly favoured men in Turkey. The Ottoman government could not do enough to show their appreciation of the country that had made this victory possible and they showered gifts on Elgin and his officials. The success in Egypt brought Elgin to the pinnacle of his diplomatic career; he now enjoyed a position of influence at Constantinople such as no other ambassador has ever approached. The government in Britain was pleased and they told him so in an official letter.
Lord Elgin could never have removed the Acropolis sculptures without the following three conditions: Firstly, Greece was under Turkish rule. Secondly, it was that era when the big powers, Britain and France took whatever they wanted from the less powerful countries such as Greece and Egypt. And thirdly, Britain was the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean at the time.
Lord Elgin and the firman
Back in Athens, where Elgin’s agents had in May, been ordered out of the Acropolis, Elgin was on the point of giving the whole enterprise away, such was his frustration with the Turkish officials. But who happened to be in Athens at that very time: his very rich in-laws, the Nisbets. When his father-in-law saw the magnificent work that had been done in those 3 months (February-May) by his artists, he wrote to Elgin in Constantinople, urging him to obtain the firman at all costs so the work could continue. Elgin opened negotiations with the local Pasha on the day he received his letter, 14th June 1801. Two days earlier Rev. Hunt had arrived back in Constantinople from Athens and was able to give Lord Elgin an eye-witness account of developments in Athens. It was Rev. Hunt who drew up the memorandum of 1 July 1801 for the firman. The text of the original memorandum is important because it became the text of the firman that was shortly issued. It sought permission for the following activities:
It is interesting to note that no specific permission was sought to remove sculptures from the building. The removal of the sculptures only took place as a series of accidents, all of them involving Dr Rev. Phillip Hunt. Firstly, the firman would not have been drafted in the form it was had not Rev. Hunt been in Athens in May when the trouble started and back in Constantinople in June/July when the good news from Egypt came through. Secondly, the firman would not have been interpreted in the way it was, had not Rev. Hunt himself, delivered it to Athens. When he arrived in Athens on 22 July he immediately asked the Turkish governor for permission to go up on the Acropolis to start the drawings and plaster casts. The authority was given for work on the Acropolis to be carried out from sunrise to sunset within the terms of the firman.
After this triumph, Rev. Hunt acted quickly. All the inscriptions lying about the Acropolis were collected and extensive excavation was begun. A few days later, Rev. Hunt made the decisive move. He asked the Turkish governor for permission to take down the metopes. But the governor hesitated, saying there was nothing in the firman that gave permission for sculptures to be removed from the building. However, with the aid of threats and bribes, Hunt managed to win the day. ‘With no great deal of difficulty, the vital twist to the firman was given on 31 July 1801’.[2] The metope sculptures were removed in just two days – causing in the process, significant damage the building and to the sculptures themselves.
Lord Elgin wrote in a letter to Lusieri and Rev. Hunt, ‘I should wish to have examples in the actual object, of each thing and architectural ornament – of each cornice, each frieze, each capital- of the decorated ceilings, of the fluted columns – specimens of the different architectural orders and of the variant forms of the orders, -of metopes and the like, as much as possible.’ [3] It seems clear that his intention was to decorate his castle in Scotland not save the sculptures ‘from the barbaric hands of the Turks’.
As the work of clearing and excavation was being carried out on the smaller adjacent temple, the Erechtheum, Hunt wrote to Elgin suggesting that the whole building could be removed and relocated in England. ‘If your Lordship would come here in a large Man of War that beautiful little model of ancient art might be transported wholly to England.’[4] Elgin was keen to act on this advice and wrote to Lord Keith in Britain requesting ‘a ship of war .. to stop a couple of days at Athens to get away a most valuable piece of architecture …for the Arts in England. Bonaparte’ he added, ‘has not got such a thing from all his thefts in Italy. Kindly attend to this my Lord.’[5] It was indeed fortunate for the future of the Erechtheum that no such ship was available at the time and so the little temple with its beautiful Caryatid Porch remains in situ although a piece of its cornice, an Ionic column and one of the Caryatid statues were taken. They are now on display in the British Museum. Once an ancient piece of art is removed from its original and historical context, it loses its aesthetic value and becomes a piece of archaeological interest and nothing else.
On the Acropolis, Hunt and Lusieri had engineering problems removing sculptures from the building. The damage caused by their work was remarked upon by a number of British travellers to Athens at this time. One, Edward Dodwell, an artist who spent time sketching on the Acropolis wrote ‘ I had the inexpressible mortification of being present when the Parthenon was despoiled of its finest sculpture, and when some of its architectural members were thrown to the ground…’ [6] Another British traveller commented in October 1801, on the damage to the building. He was Edward Daniel Clark and he noted that as one of the sculptures was being lowered to the ground the ropes holding it broke and the sculpture was smashed into a thousand pieces.
In April 1802, Lord Elgin made his first visit to Greece to see the work. He was so pleased with the progress that he hired more men and architects to complete the removal of the sculptures. Elgin arranged for 22 ships to transport 220 cases of the marbles and other antiquities to England. One of the ships was sunk in a storm and the marbles it was carrying lay in twelve fathoms of salt water for three years before they were recovered and sent on to England.
The Marbles in England
Between their arrival in England in 1804 and their sale to the British Museum in 1816, the marbles were stored in a coal shed in the grounds of Elgin’s London home. Elgin’s marriage failed during this time and when he found himself in extreme financial difficulty he began to negotiate for the sale of the marbles to the British Government. The Government eventually acquired them for the price of £35,000 and an Act of Parliament transferred ownership of the marbles to the nation. And so they found their way into the British Museum.
One of the very first to criticise Lord Elgin was none other than Lord Byron. In 1828, four years after Byron’s death, his poem ‘The Curse of Athena’, in which he refers to Elgin as a robber, was published for the first time in England. In another publication dating to 1818, we find Byron and other Englishmen – travellers and historians who have visited Greece, calling Elgin ‘a shameless thief’. Sir John Hobhouse, a friend and travelling companion of Byron noted on a chapel under the Acropolis the inscription, ‘What the crooks did not do here, the Scot did here’, an obvious reference to Elgin who was a Scotsman.
In 1890, an eight-page article entitled ‘The Return of the Elgin Marbles’, by Franklin Harrison appeared in the magazine Nineteenth Century. The writer appealed to the gentle feelings of the English people and maintains that ‘even if Elgin’s looting is excused, [note the first use of the word looting], the retaining in London of parts essential to the Parthenon is no longer tolerable or convenient. Their restitution is urgent both as an act of international justice and as an act beneficial to science and the arts. In the same article, Harrison also maintained the sculptures ‘were more dear to the Greeks than to the British and that for 2,400 years they had formed an integral part of Greece and were therefore much more sacred than the Tower of London or Westminster Abbey. What would be our feelings’ he wrote, ‘if some one had deprived us of our national monuments?’ [7]
In November 1928, Phillip Sassoon, Private Secretary to the British Prime Minister of the day, wrote to The Times, saying that when he visited the Acropolis ‘I found myself wondering whether, after all, the noble ruins of the Parthenon and the glorious atmosphere of Athens would not be a better setting than Bloomsbury for the most exquisite marbles in the world.’[8]
British Damage to the Marbles
The sculptures from the pediments and frieze now on display in the British have suffered considerable damage since their removal from the Acropolis in the early 1800s. William Sinclair, the British historian has exposed the cover up by the British Museum Trustees of the enormous amount of damage they caused to the marbles. The building of a special gallery at the British Museum to house the Parthenon sculptures was funded by Lord Duveen – on condition that his name be attached to it. In the 1930s ,chemicals and wire brushes were used to scrape and ‘clean’ the marble. The only pieces that retain the natural honey colour of aged Pentelic marble are those that were not cleaned because they were considered too fragile.
The Case for the return of the Marbles
In 1941 Sir Winston Churchill was asked in Parliament whether Britain would consider returning the Parthenon Marbles ‘in some recognition of Greece’s magnificent stand for civilisation against the might of Hitler’s army’.[9] Churchill neatly sidestepped the issue by replying that he would ‘look into it favorably after the war’. And that was where the matter rested for the next thirty or more years.
In more recent times, during the 1980s, the former actress and later Minister of Culture in the Greek Government, Melina Mercouri, brought the issue of the return of the marbles to world attention.
“More than any other manifestation of human genius, the monuments of Athens reflect a form of life and an attitude that put man in the centre of the world, that made beauty and proportion divine. The Parthenon, built by free men on the Acropolis rock, has for more than two thousand years continuously expressed the grandiosity of simplicity, the passion of wisdom, the love of beauty. The marbles define our soul. And the struggle for the return of pieces that were pillaged in the past is not cahuvinistic; it is a struggle that must be undertaken in the name of humanity, civilization and justice.”
Two years later in 1983, Melina Mercouri was instrumental in establishing a British committee in London, called The British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles whose current Chairman is Professor Anthony Snodgrass. In the same year the International Council of Museums, including the British Museum, met in London and overwhelmingly passed a resolution to initiate dialogue with an open minded attitude concerning requests for the return of cultural property. One thousand delegates voted in favour of the motion, nil against and ten abstentions, five of which were from the British delegation.
[1] St. Clair, W. Lord Elgin and the Marbles, Oxford University Press, 1998 p. 87
[2] Ibid., p.93
[3]Ibid., p. 99
[4] Ibid., p.100
[5] Navy Records Society, The Keith Papers, 1927-1955, II. p.405, cited in St. Clair, p. 101
[6] Op. cit., p. 102
[7] Hitchens, Christopher, The Elgin Marbles, p 67
[8] Ibid., p. 75
[9] Ibid.
‘Seen and Unseen: a century of stories from Asia and the Pacific’, is 29 short stories in the genre of creative non-fiction. Tracing Australian connections with Asia and the Pacific through three generations, it is published in 2015 by Glass House Books an imprint of Interactive Publications (IP) ISBN: 9781925231182. Also, in Kindle and as an Audio Book. (Pecha Kucha about the book)
Influencing this collection is an acceptance that interactions with people from our own culture are generally tangible and familiar. By contrast, when beyond our immediate culture meaning and understanding must often be negotiated in intangible, non-rational and unseen ways. Foucault’s notion of the third space has influenced this work. Another influence is the Balinese belief that reality is an interaction of Sekala (The Seen) and Niskala (The Unseen).
Precisely what comprises the unseen realm varies throughout the region. What might be understood as mere micro ecology, in the ‘developed world’, can have spiritual explanations in some Asian and Pacific cultures. In rational secular society people commonly eschew magic as mythology or superstition, yet in parts of Asia and the Pacific what might be seen as myths and misconceptions can possess the power of reality.
The basic and enduring interplay of the seen and the unseen worlds is of great significance to those of us from Australia, the land that’s girt by sea. While we might choose not to see, to look inwards and to rejoice in the notion that our land abounds in nature’s gifts, regional and planetary systems are unfettered by such introspective cultural constructions.
A short biography
‘Born in 1947 Russell Darnley had grandparents who were children when Australia achieved its independence, lived through World War I, and struggled as parents through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
His parents found their first paid employment as World War II broke out. Growing up in Sydney by the shore of the Pacific Ocean, and with a seafaring father, gave him an interest in what lay beyond. His childhood saw the birth of multicultural Australia, which he embraced, and ended with Conscription and the Vietnam War, both of which he resisted. As a young adult he travelled the world and discovered that his interests lay in South East Asia. Working respectively as teacher, administrator, researcher, director of an Indonesia based field study centre, consultant to the Australia Indonesia Institute, educational writer and digital education pioneer, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his voluntary work after the 2002 Bali Bombings.
Russell’s outlook is eclectic and interdisciplinary, passionately scientific yet profoundly spiritual.’
He has lived in Singapore since January 2014.
What the reviewers say
Associate Professor David Reeve, Visiting Fellow UNSW, School of Humanities and Languages
In launching the book, David had this to say: “This is partly creative fiction though it’s based on his own life and I think of it of keeping to a tradition of writing on Asia. I remember the excitement back in 1978 when Chris Koch published The Year of Living Dangerously then in 1980 Blanche D’Alpuget published Monkeys in the Dark and in 1981 Turtle Beach. Robert Drew in 1981 published A Cry in the Jungle Bar.
When I look at the similarity of those four novels in each of those Australians go forward full of high ideals and anticipation but in fact come home defeated, physically wounded or psychologically wounded or in the case of the hero of A Cry in the Jungle Bar actually dead.
So, I think this is a new and more mature and more realistic mood in Russell Darnley’s book. The Australian doesn’t go out with high hopes to Asia, gets defeated and returns partially destroyed, certainly damaged. In him it’s a much more complex engagement, it has of course it fears, it’s dangers, its sicknesses but it’s much more mature in its approach to the complexities of these enmeshments.”
T. D. Luong, author of The Refugee Wolf
Sometimes distance can help us recast our perceptions of the world. They can be based on unspoken and wrong assumptions about culture and identity. The Australian author, currently based in Singapore, but who is fluent in Indonesian because of having provided extensive cultural tours in his former career, is well positioned to recast such perceptions. He forces us to ask: is Australia’s relationship with Asia working well enough to bridge the cultural divide?
The opening and closing chapters are deftly written book-ends. They are set at Coogee beach and it is the author’s emotional connection to this place and relationship with his grandfather that helps us look outwards to inviting places like Bali, then inwards to ruminate upon the darkness and trauma that fell upon us after the 2002 bombings.
Darnley’s exceptional debut work reframes Australia’s relationship with Asia and Melanesia in a myriad of ways.
There are entertaining stories over 50 years, which traverse Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, PNG, just to name the main places. There’s a story set in Bali about adultery and told through the prism of magic; another one reflects upon Baby Boomers and their perception of the Japanese after WW2, and there’s a hilarious one about an activist uni student who dodges the Vietnam War draft.
The book also reframes Australia’s identity. Does Australia lean more towards being progressive or conservative or vacillate between both, and how might this impact on our relationship with Asia?
Through many personal journeys, observations and interesting characters, he illuminates and expands upon the notion, which is at the heart of the book. What we sometimes see in an empirical way is not necessarily what lies underneath. There are intangible structures such us cultural practice, memory, spirituality and power relationships which intersect, weave and give rise to more nuanced complexity than what we can fully rationalise or even articulate at a given point in time.
Seen and Unseen is an insightful, intelligent and very significant book which helps us learn more about the Asian region and ourselves as Australians.
With his hard-won insights and descriptive powers of observation, Russell Darnley is a cultural interpreter of the first rank.
Kim Patra, Author, In the Arms of Angels
It’s a very candid and wonderfully written account of the Bali Bombings. Pretty hard to read actually, emotionally, I guess the ghosts never really go away, do they?
Bill Dalton in Toko Buku, Bali Advertiser, (for Ubud Readers’ & Writers’ Festival) October 2016.
This entertaining and enlightening book of short stories spanning 100 years is a work of naked and unflinching honesty. The subject matter perfectly compliments the spirit of this year’s UWRF whose dictum is Tat Tvam Asi, translated as ‘I am you, you are me.” Darnley’s experiences help us understand the lives of others and recognize our common humanity. As the writer himself puts it, “Seeking meaning across cultures we each absorb a little of the other and enter a new cultural space where I am you and you are me.”
Emeritus Professor Stuart Campbell author of Cairo Mon Amour
‘Seen and unseen’: testimony of a man who kept faith with his vision for Australia in the world.
I bought Russell Darnley’s Seen and Unseen some months ago and tucked it into a corner of my Kindle, dipping into some of the ‘stories’ in the gaps between my backlog of novels-to-read.
With some holiday time on my hands, I decided to start at the beginning – and I couldn’t stop reading. I now saw that the ‘stories’ formed a coherent narrative woven from threads of spirituality, self-discovery, and an expression of one man’s understanding of Australia in the world.
The motif of the seen and the unseen, drawn from the Balinese notion of sekala and niskala, signifying the ubiquity of the spiritual world, is the strongest of these threads: How else to interpret the first and last sections of the book, when Darnley converses with his dead grandfather on the cliffs at Coogee.
But Seen and Unseen isn’t an extended navel gaze. There’s wonderfully powerful and evocative material about intellectual life in seventies Sydney, about student parties in inner city flats, about the study of Bahasa Indonesia in the brief period when the Australian Government was prepared to fund it generously.
In reading Darnley’s book, I realised that he and I had moved in intersecting circles in the seventies and eighties but had (perhaps) never met. As a university languages school head, I rode the crest of the Indonesian studies movement for a few years, but Darnley’s book brought back uncomfortable memories of my having to close an Indonesian program as funding tightened and the popularity of the language waned in the face of Japanese and Chinese. I was also reminded of the hopes for deep engagement with Indonesia during Gareth Evans’ tenure as Foreign Minister, and the dashing of those aspirations under his successor.
For a newish Australian (I arrived in 1977), Darnley’s account of a childhood in Coogee was fascinating; I’ve lived mostly on the north side of the Harbour Bridge, and Coogee is foreign territory for me. Indeed, the biographical thread running through Seen and Unseen is subtly and tenderly handled. While the ‘stories’ follow chronologically, there are gaps, but the reader is given to understand that each story tackles a new stage in the author’s progress through his professional, personal and spiritual life. The middle section of the book is set mostly in south-east Asia, from which I drew two main impressions: One was Darnley’s wonderful work in establishing and running an overseas study centre for Australian students; the other was his extensive knowledge of Indonesia, and especially Bali, based on his years of residence in the region.
But the core of the book – in my view at least – is the section dealing with the author’s voluntary work in the immediate aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings (for which he was awarded the OAM). The description of those days is the most harrowing and powerful writing I have encountered in a long time. I had the strong impression that Russell Darnley’s life up to that moment in 2002 was a preparation for the awful work that he volunteered to do, including searching body bags for identification evidence. Russell Darnley surely was the right man in the right place.
Ian Burnet author of ‘Where Australia Collides with Asia
Russell Darnley seeks to cover an extensive time span in his book Seen and Unseen: a century of stories from Asia and the Pacific.
I have read it as a memoir written as 29 stories, beginning when he was a boy growing up in Coogee in Sydney, Australia. Here, his stories begin with him exploring the headlands and rock pools around this beachside suburb with his grandfather. They delve into the early years of the 20th century and then on to descriptions of his childhood, family and friends.
He tells stories of his student days at Sydney University and of his first travels through South East Asia in the 1970’s. I can identify with this period as we would have travelled around the same time to Singapore, Malacca, Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
Years later in 1984, Russell is involved in setting up Asian Field Study Centres for Australian students in Bali. It is here that he first becomes aware of the interplay of the ‘Seen and the Unseen’ and begins to realise that it has always formed part of his life. Here, in Bali, he experiences just how the Balinese are immersed in both a physical and a spiritual world, and some practice ‘black magic’ as well.
In Indonesia in 1999 to deliver workshops for [Indonesian] teachers whose students are studying Australia meant he happened to be in Surabaya and Jakarta during the tremendous outburst of joy and energy of the nation’s youth, after 35 years of suppression under Suharto’s military dictatorship. He is present in the middle of the excited masses and vividly describes the political campaigning for the first democratic elections after this long period.
Russell’s description of his response to the 2002 Bali bombing in the immediate aftermath of this tragedy and his volunteer work in aiding the victims and their families at the Sanglah Hospital, must be highlight of his book (if that is the right word). Personally, I had to pause several times to recover my emotions while reading his descriptions of these traumatic events.
Seen and Unseen concludes where it starts with the now elder Russell in conversation with his long-departed grandfather around the headland of Coogee, while trying to understand his life experiences and the significance of the seen and unseen. The strength of Russell Darnley’s writing is his ability to position himself as an observant outsider. Central to his work is the idea that interactions with people from cultures other than our own, in particular those of Asia, allow us to challenge many of our own assumptions. His engaging memoir will be a ‘must read’ by all those who have an interest in Asia and wish to follow his footsteps.
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