Paul Lawson's Diary
21st/22nd June 1949
As you can see this is an image of 1 page from Paul Lawson's Diary, Lawson was the man from Adelaide Museum that created the now famous plaster bust of the Somerton Man. The entry you see above is for the 22nd June or so it appears because the the month name has been cut off in the scan.
There are two highlighted areas, one shows the entry covering Lawson's writing of an article for the AGMA, It is unclear just what this acronym stands for so anyone with knowledge if you could leave a comment or email that would be appreciated. Ideally we find out the subject and content of Mr. Lawson's article.
The next highlighted area is very interesting because it reads ' Discussion with Director re duplicate casts of Somerton Body'. What that seems to suggest is that on 22nd June at least, the mold from which the bust was made was still in existence, it would have been in pieces, perhaps 4 or 5 but it certainly sounds as though it was kept otherwise why use the word 'duplicate'.
The next question is this, if the duplicates were discussed, were any more busts ever actually made? We don't have an answer to that because there were only 10 pages in the whole diary that were included in the PDF document that was created by Adelaide University I believe. The total number of pages would have been 180 given that it was a full year diary.
Here's another really interesting thought, if the original mold was around at this date, is it still around now? For all we know that is a possibility, just where it may be is another question. If it does still exist, it could be at the Adelaide Museum in amongst artefacts or perhaps the University has it or South Australian Library. On the assumption that it is still in existence then there is likelihood of DNA directly from the Somerton Man's body could still be present and trapped in the mold material.
Much depends on the method of casting used and I make no pretence about being an expert in this field. Adelaide sleuths, this is your cue!
June 17th & 18th 1949
In this next section we look at the nature of the Diary entries and showing instances of overwriting and indentation marks yet to be recovered, does this mean that some entries were altered or erased?
Here's what makes this document questionable, above is an image showing the Diary for the dates 17th and 18th June 1949. Look closely at the first highlighted area containing the words 'Somerton body'. You will see that it has in fact been overwritten and not that well. Similarly you can clearly see evidence of overwriting in the second highlighted area, the word 'Moving'. The question is who did that, when did they do it and what other instances are there throughout the Diary? In this case there appears to be nothing untoward about the overwrite although it may suggest that it had been initially erased.
When we come to the entry for the 18th June, there is evidence of indented writing and some of it has been overwritten but some appears to have possibly been erased. Is it possible that all of the original writing faded and was overwritten? The good news is that the June 18th. erasure or fading may be able to be recovered. We can make an effort with this digital copy or we try to get access to the original Diary which again I think may be held by either the Museum, the Library or Adelaide University.
Here's a negative image of the June 18th entry. If you download a copy, with some adjustment, you will be able to make out the feint outline of words:
Ideally if you are in Adelaide you could so some hunting or if anyone from Adelaide University is looking at this post they may be able to shed some light on this issue and hopefully publish a full copy of the entire Diary.