AustLit

'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)

'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)