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Below is a copy of a newspaper article by Daniel Pardon found in the Sunday Dépêche, Tahiti's most popular newspaper, on November 4th, 2001. Daniel flew down from Tahiti to interview me for this extensive and thorough report, that is certainly the best article that was ever written as concerns my work collecting the artifacts of Tubuai. Daniel Pardon was perhaps the first journalist to appreciate the amount of work that I had done in collecting, analyzing, cataloguing, illustrating and amassing a wide range of artifacts. While at the same time noting a complete lack of support from any official body within the administration. His article was therefore penned with a number of different objectives, however from the opening statement he sets the important tone of this piece. "One might think, that a collection of 10.000 relics from the past, in a country where certain elite seem obsessed with "culture" (which is all they ever talk about), would raise a great deal of interest, not at all! The most important archaeological collection of its kind ever seen in French Polynesia, finds only a cold indifference" (my translation). This article covers a lot of ground, including biographical details, that help to explain how I came to eventually reside in Tubuai, and then how I became interested in collecting artifacts. Amazing how in just a few pages he has been able to sum up the last 30 years of my life and create a fairly accurate portrait of who I was and who I am. My humble thanks to this professional journalist who has helped to tell my story, far better than I could have done myself. |
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