My old mate Brian Darcey in his retirement in Cairns wrote, apart from his first and only book, "Bougainville Blue", some very evocative articles on his blog www.darceyco.com which, alas, is no more.
Well, neither is Brian who sailed over the horizon in May 2018, but it would be a shame not to share some of his history with his four children and five grandchildren and, indeed, all "Territorians" of the "taim bipo".
We never met on Bougainville where Brian was a cocoa and trocas exporter while I was scrutinising and, more often than not, knocking back inflated contractors' billings on the Bougainville Copper Project.
He wrote in response to my Bougainville Copper Project website ...
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Dear Peter, I ran across your website for the first time today. I lived in PNG for 25 years, 1955 to 1980. with the last 15 or so on Bougainville. Operated B.F.DARCEY & COMPANY PTY LTD at Rabaul until '65, then at Toniva. We were Cocoa and Trocas exporters, but also had a retail store at Toniva selling artifacts, jewellery, clothing etc. I flew my own Aztec, P2-BFD and the pics of Kieta Town, Bagana ( that's my wingtip ) and the road to Panguna were taken from the Aztec and sold in our Toniva Store and elsewhere on the island as post-cards. We were the original Rabaul agents for CRA Exploration when geologist Ken Phillips first started the exploration phase and Frank Espie was still an up-and-coming middle-level exec in Collins St. Knew Col Bishop, Don Vernon, Paul Quadling, Frank Paholski and their families very well. We looked after their children to and from PNG on their way to school many times. My blog has some reminiscences of Bougainville in some of the early posts. I'm about to publish Bougainville Blue, a novel based on the Bougainville Conflict and the BRA. Fiction, but basically historically correct with names changed and some liberties taken to pull the narrative together. Will let you know when it goes to print. Brian Darcey, Cairns |
... and from this a long-distance friendship developed, based on our mutual interests in sailing, any music composed before 1890, anything about the South Pacific, and all the books written by Joseph Conrad.
Sometime in 2009 he phoned me to say that he had had enough of looking at the walls of his suburban unit in Cairns and that he was going to buy a boat instead and live on it - click here - and also do a spot of sailing and come all the way down to "Riverbend" - click here. Well, due to mechanical problems he never quite made it, but I stayed aboard his boat TEKANI II in 2011 while safely moored in Yorkey's Knob Marina, refreshing our memories of Bougainville over a bottle of whiskey.
Until the end, his pet project was his book "Bougainville Blue", an allogorical tale not too far from the truth about the beauty of Bougainville and its flora and fauna and about its destruction by the Panguna Mine and a ragtag militia bent on reclaiming their land. As he wrote, "There was a mine. Someone got some guns. The rest is history."
Click here for a bit of history about my old friend Brian Darcey and, saved for posterity, listen to his interview following the book launch:
