Brian F. Darcey

Bougainville Blue

PUBLISHED BY DIANE ANDREWS

COVER DESIGN BY BELINDA DARCEY

What is Bougainville Blue about? It’s about Bougainville . It’s about a ‘blue’ – Australian slang for a fight. It’s about the ‘Bougainville Blues’. It’s about the beauty of Bougainville and its flora and fauna. It’s about the destruction which is a byproduct of ‘modernisation’. It’s a novel but, it also will enlighten the reader about the true happenings regarding the Panguna Mine. It was closed by a ragtag militia bent on reclaiming their land.

The author lived in Bougainville for 15 years and saw the Bougainville Revolutionary Army come into being. He observed the rise and fall of Australian rule in Bougainville . He watched the ‘blue’ take place.

I discovered the book while reading an interesting blog about the building of an enormous dugout canoe. I saw a tiny note about an unpublished novel at the bottom of the blog. Check out the author, Brian Darcey’s, journal at for a fascinating read.

I met the author and liked his manuscript - ‘Sankamap’ - and decided to publish it. Using my years of experience writing and getting published and two years research of the book publishing industry I set about turning the book into a marketable novel. The author, Brian Darcey has done a stellar job, putting into practise most of the revisions suggested - including restructuring to make the first chapter more intriguing.

‘Sankamap’ has become ‘Bougainville Blue’. It’s a page-turner, it’s fast-paced and it’s informative. So, what really DID happen on Bougainville , which caused the destruction of a huge, productive open cut mine? There was a beautiful island. There was a mine. Someone got hold of some guns. The rest is history. That history is outlined in the book Bougainville Blue, (though it’s a novel) - which is an eyewitness account of the ‘blue’. You’ll have to buy the book to read about it.

Do you want to become a published author? I am, right now, accepting stories of Bougainville . These will go on the website. It is hoped there will be enough good stories collected to create an anthology. The stories can be fact, fiction or faction. Refer to the guidelines page for more information.