A Sydney Mystery: Doll Found at Canal Reserve, Wigram Road, Tuesday, February 19, 2013.

I found the doll lying in the bark and rubbish that had washed down after a rain. As the doll appears to me to be an artifact, I went back to photograph it in the place where it had been found.

(See re-enactment photos below from April 20, 2013)

By coincidence, a few days after I found the doll, I attended a recital at the Sydney Conservatorium. Waiting outside the hall for the concert to begin, I saw a similar doll in a case of artifacts. That doll had been found when the site for Conservatorium building had been excavated.

In searching out the mystery of where ‘my doll’ could have come from, I looked online and found yet another similar doll on sale through ebay.

(ebay advertisement, found on the Internet February 28, 2013.  http://www.etsy.com/listing/101317982/on-sale-vintage-micro-miniature-bisque )

A somewhat tragic fact of contemporary life: in searching for information (about what looks like an artifact to me) the only trace I could find through the Internet is there because a very small profit is considered worth the price of parting with such an object from a time past.

So where does that place communication and the power of reception in the electronic age? The mystery remains of how the little doll was lost and where it washed out from, how long was it trapped in a culvert, under a rock or caught in debris before I turned and saw it lying there. …