'Our Lady of the Fence Post is an imaginative response to news reports of the appearance of a Marian apparition on the construction site of a memorial for victims of the Bali bombing at Coogee, Sydney, in January 2003.
'One year after 9/11, terrorists had bombed Paddy’s Irish Pub and the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians. Within days of the report of the Marian apparition huge crowds started visiting the site, dubbed ‘Our Lady of the Fence Post’ by the press.
'Our Lady of the Fence Post tells the story of the ‘war on terror’, from the Bali bombing to ISIS suicide bombing in 2015, from the point of view of locals in the fictional setting of Sunshine Bay, in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs' (Publication summary)
'The work ranges wider than this terrorist event, gathering within its orbit other facets of the "war on terror" that include a 2015 ISIS suicide bombing and the 2005 Cronulla Riots that pitted Caucasian Australians against largely Lebanese immigrants, thus placing issues of domestic and racial violence against a broader backdrop of global unrest. There is also a set of Twitter excerpts from a now-defunct account by Jake Bilardi, an eighteen-year-old Melbourne man who converted to radical Islam and died in a suicide bombing in Iraq, March 2015. ("Graffiti Triptych," 26) Also, The ocean cliff's buoyant wind wantons goose-bumped skin ("Something is Lost," 46) The often lush imagery points toward the realm of wonder and divine, of fertility and the chance for change, countering the violence, racism, and sexism that threads through much of the content.' (Publication abstract)
'Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the contemporary world, accompanied by the (usually religious) phenomenon of pilgrimage, may be understood as an instance of the medieval manifesting in the modern. On 12 October 2002 Paddy’s Irish Bar and the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali were bombed by Islamic terrorists, an attack in which 202 people, from twenty-one countries, died. Twenty of the dead were from Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, and six were members of the Coogee Dolphins football team. In late January 2003 Coogee local Christine Cherry of the Beach Street Gallery Laundrette revealed to the media that, viewed in the afternoon sun, the fence on the headland that had been recently renamed “Dolphins Point” in honour of the dead appeared to resemble the Virgin Mary. Crowds flocked to Coogee to see the apparition (which technically was not an apparition because it was a trick of the light that made a fence post appear like a statue of the Virgin) and there was a short-lived media frenzy, interviewing “pilgrims” (Protestant, Catholic, New Age, not religious at all) and reporting on acts of vandalism that imperilled the fence through which “Mary” became visible.' (Introduction)
'The work ranges wider than this terrorist event, gathering within its orbit other facets of the "war on terror" that include a 2015 ISIS suicide bombing and the 2005 Cronulla Riots that pitted Caucasian Australians against largely Lebanese immigrants, thus placing issues of domestic and racial violence against a broader backdrop of global unrest. There is also a set of Twitter excerpts from a now-defunct account by Jake Bilardi, an eighteen-year-old Melbourne man who converted to radical Islam and died in a suicide bombing in Iraq, March 2015. ("Graffiti Triptych," 26) Also, The ocean cliff's buoyant wind wantons goose-bumped skin ("Something is Lost," 46) The often lush imagery points toward the realm of wonder and divine, of fertility and the chance for change, countering the violence, racism, and sexism that threads through much of the content.' (Publication abstract)
'A book called Our Lady of the Fence Post (UWA Publishing, $22.99 pb, 105 pp, 9781742589121) by a poet called J.H. Crone is an irresistible proposition, simply as a notion. Luckily for readers, neither is at all fanciful. This verse narrative explores the events around the appearance in 2003 of a likeness of the Virgin Mary on a fence post at Coogee, near the site of a memorial for five local rugby players killed in the Bali bombings. Crowds of fervent worshippers flocked to the scene.'
(Introduction)
'Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the contemporary world, accompanied by the (usually religious) phenomenon of pilgrimage, may be understood as an instance of the medieval manifesting in the modern. On 12 October 2002 Paddy’s Irish Bar and the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali were bombed by Islamic terrorists, an attack in which 202 people, from twenty-one countries, died. Twenty of the dead were from Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, and six were members of the Coogee Dolphins football team. In late January 2003 Coogee local Christine Cherry of the Beach Street Gallery Laundrette revealed to the media that, viewed in the afternoon sun, the fence on the headland that had been recently renamed “Dolphins Point” in honour of the dead appeared to resemble the Virgin Mary. Crowds flocked to Coogee to see the apparition (which technically was not an apparition because it was a trick of the light that made a fence post appear like a statue of the Virgin) and there was a short-lived media frenzy, interviewing “pilgrims” (Protestant, Catholic, New Age, not religious at all) and reporting on acts of vandalism that imperilled the fence through which “Mary” became visible.' (Introduction)
