A year after the death of Timorese resident Antonio Maia , a special memorial service has been held for him in the Holy Family Catholic Church , Karama, Darwin. He is pictured above, right , in 1997, a Free East Timor button on his turned up hat , joking with John " Paddy" Kenneally , an Irish Australian commando who had fought the Japanese in what was then Portuguese Timor .
A young boy at the time of the Japanese invasion , Antonio helped some Australians , and was shot while doing so , a bullet still in his body the day he died , in his 90s .
He and his wife went to Tokyo and detailed atrocities carried out in Portuguese Timor .
At this week's church service was Darwin agronomist , Robert Wesley-Smith , involved in the Timor struggle for freedom since l975, who delivered the eulogy at Maia's funeral a year ago .
Following the service , Wesley-Smith told this blog how Antonio helped build a Timorese Uma Lulik - a sacred house- on Wesley-Smith's rural property, which was displayed locally and then shipped south in a container and put on show in Canberra and Sydney . He supplied the following photo of Antonio holding a sacred house carving .
.JPG)
He wondered if someone took a fancy to it , especially the carvings, and spirited it away .
The artwork of Timorese , many of them Darwin residents , including the building of the sacred house , was showcased in a publication launched by the Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art, which involved The Cross Art Project, Sydney .
According to Wesley-Smith, Darwin's Timorese community is a well organised and active one . He also said arrangements have been made for the Darwin screening of the film , Circle of Silence , based on Shirley Shackleton's Walkley Award winning book about the murder of the Balibo Five, at the deckchair theatre, in August .
