Hush! t’is Fraught! quoth ‘OMOTH’ all-a-twitter
Shades of Peter Sellers and his goonish ‘60’s ditty “They’re digging up Grandpa’s grave to build a sewer....”, surround the final resting place of Donald Friend’s ashes, just as the launch of the artist’s diaries and an exhibition of his works crown the final night of the most successful Ubud Writers Festival yet.
While researching two articles on Donald Friend published last year covering the Australian painter’s time in Bali (1966-79) and his role in creating the Batujimbar estate and other ventures with his friend Wija Wawo Runtu, I had it confirmed by two impeccable sources that following his death in Sydney in 1989 he had had his ashes returned to Bali and placed in an urn at the bottom of a pond in the garden of the house he had built in Batujimbar.
I was touched and surprised by this. Having read his final diary covering the period, it read as if he was ‘done’ with Bali, and leaving in some bitterness. ’Someone doesn’t want me here”, he darkly informed his friend Idanna Pucci at the time. What this served to confirm was the abiding nature of the artist’s love for Bali, its art and culture and many of its people. That it was a phase of his life that had meant a great deal to him, to the extent that he wished his ashes to be returned there. On mentioning this to most of the people I knew who had been his friends and lived in Sanur at the time, I was even more surprised to find none of them knew about this and were as surprised as I.
That the story is a true one, I’ve no doubt. It was told me by hotelier Adrian Zecha, who had taken over the lease of the Friend house in the early 1980’s and would have to have known about it. The story was further confirmed by Graeme Robinson who bought the house from Wija Wawo Runtu in the mid-1990’s. “Oh, yes. It’s true right enough”, he told me. “Poor old Donald”, he added with unsentimental affection, “I probably dug him up and scattered him all over the place when I re-did the garden”.
The mystery deepened, when earlier this year at the suggestion of a mutual friend, who knew of my ongoing interest in the subject, I contacted the man I now know as the ‘old man of the hills’, the OMOTH of my title, who’s been somewhat erratically and proprietorially involved in putting together a programme on Donald Friend to coincide with Ubud Writers Festival. The highpoint of which is an exhibition of the artist’s work and a rather belated ‘Asian launch” for the Donald Friend diaries, with readings by actor Terry Clarke. Clarke knew Donald Friend well and is married to the daughter of “Tas” Drysdale, another of Australia’s great 20th Century painters and a lifelong friend to Friend.
I mentioned what I’d found out about Donald’s ashes to Omoth, since he’s auditioning for Methuselah and general know-all, to see what if anything he knew about this. Omoth did not disappoint. If the ether can tremble with mystery Omoth’s return e.mail was a-quiver with the drama and high import of hidden knowledge.....
“....be extremely discreet about DF’s ashes”, Omoth enjoined.
“....It is FRAUGHT with serious consequences if news gets about “!
That’s a pity, I say, since I’ve already spilled the beans in the YAK and as the cover story in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post’s Sunday Magazine. I have to say, Omoth had succeeded well and I was intrigued by the mystery. I racked my brains to come up with anything that could possibly warrant such drama. For the life of me, I couldn’t . It could hardly be that his interment thus, was illegal, it being against the law to take body parts across international borders etc. Far too mundane and were it so the secret lies safe as Graeme Robertson has already scattered DF across the garden he created and loved. Perhaps it was a last Donaldian cock-a-snoop from beyond the grave at an Ozzie art establishment that had not during his latter years given him the respect he felt he had earned, their believing that his ashes, along with his reputation, were safely tagged and placed in the hierarchy of Australiana someplace else.
Omoth put me right very quickly.
“Noooo!”, he said “....MUCH more sinister!”.
And with that, having piqued my curiosity sufficiently, the old tease forebore to say more. Subsequent communication with Omoth disintegrating into crotchety silliness.
Of course there are still many questions about Donald Friend’s time here that go unanswered and some of them hotly disputed in some quarters 40 years on. Donald Friend and Wija Wawo Runtu, aided by their friend Chris Carlisle, had a vision for a real estate venture in Bali using the local vernacular architecturally and stylistically. Out of that collaboration came the Batujimbar estate, the Sanur Hyatt, what is now the Oberoi, the Amandari and latterly Begawan Giri, a Bali style that went right around the world inspired by the work of architects and designers like Geoffrey Bawa, Peter Muller, Kerry Hill, Ed Tuttle, Cheong Yew Kuan, Made Wijaya, Bill Bensley and others. As Chris Carlisle remembers “coastal land in the area was cheap then and Donald simply painted up the money needed”. If in those days you could buy enough land on which to buy a house for US$200 compared to the US$1,200,000 or upward land for a house there would cost you today, some have wondered how it was that Donald ended his days in straitened circumstances living in a humble 1-bedroom apartment in Sydney.
Carlisle is very explicit on the subject. “Donald was not cheated by Wija , nor was Donald thrown out of Bali”. Chris Carlisle is a man who uses words with precision and he is correct on both points. It was of course impossible for Wija to “cheat” Donald as some suppose because Wija owned all the land they purchased together as the law required. Nothing in the record shows that Friend was deported from Bali or even asked to leave. He left on his own accord for, among other things, medical treatment. On the other hand, was he taken advantage of financially by his friend and was he priced out of Bali on account of his sexual proclivities with no-one prepared to go into bat for him with the immigration authorities, as some believe? I have spent an uncomfortable 20 minutes in the very heart of Wawo-Runtuland being harangued by a man who belierved he was.
A man who was not even there at the time, but is married to someone who was, and who took exception to the considered approach on these questions I adopted in my two articles. After 40 years I reckon what a bunch of interesting and talented men and women got up to on a beach in Bali is what makes them interesting.
It seems to me a disservice to them and to pretend they were saints, which patently they were not, and whitewash their memory into two-dimensional sanitised figures. It also seems to me that it is high time these various dusty controversies are put to bed and not left to fester on. That said, I do feel a degree of consideration is due to people alive today who could be upset today over what was written about them back then. How far that consideration should extend,depends very much on geography and the circumstances of publication.
In any event Donald Friend’s diaries are not only a great read but very revealing on these questions. During his time in Bali he records when and how much money he paid to Wija to buy land and for related expenses. He also records the times when he was paid money by Wija for his share in their ventures together, including substantial payments to him for the lease of his house and some A$400,000 in 1980 or thereabouts for his Hyatt shares. Whether or not the money paid to him was paid in a timely manner, or to what extent the sum paid reflected the correct market value due to him are good questions, and hard to assess. However, it certainly seems true to me to say that Wija did not only NOT cheat Donald Friend, but that he was fair to him in his fashion and that he was, circumstances permitting, a fair man.
The question of whether Friend was engineered out of Bali via the immigration authorities in collusion with interested parties is hard to answer definitively. But again, probably not. Certainly the constant attrition of negotiations with the immigration authorities from Day One, wore him down. As indeed it must all local friends we use to intercede for us to expedite these matters. The question of his sexuality, historically a negotiating factor with immigration folk, comes into the price of it too. Unwisely, in this day of outing international pederasts, in his diary Friend refers to himself as “a pederast going to seed”. Sexually and technically I have not come across any other evidence to suggest that he was. The phrase being more an example of the bitter and exaggerated humour he often directed at himself over matters to with age, health and the loss of good looks and a hangover from his juvenile identification with John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. Though he loved their presence, nothing in the diaries indicate he bedded 12-year olds. According to Warwick Purser, who stated as much while launching the diaries at the Ubud Writers Festival, and other people who knew him then, that was not his style. He liked Balinese hunks aged 17 to 19.
As for Friend the diarist, it is overstating it to compare him to Pepys and Boswell. There is not the same level of involvement with great men and events of the time as with Chips Channon and other political diarists, to excite wide readership. A comparison with Evelyn Waugh and James Lees Milne come more to mind. Certainly, as a diarist he is their equal. This final volume covering Bali is a great read for anyone who wants to know or re-visit Bali of that time, as it is for anyone interested in the Australian art scene. The National Library of Australia has done us all a service in a workmanlike undertaking, though one hopes one day for an expanded work including more of the script and illustration from the master. Few nitpicks: I couldn’t help noticing the distracting habit of spelling the word “deity” à la phonetic ‘Strine. Also, one assumes, but cannot be sure, that all $ sign amounts are AUD. It would be nice to have that stated.
