Parcel from Australia

I have just received a parcel from my cousin in Brisbane.  She had a portrait of our great grandmother which she wanted to pass on to the family in the "old country".  It's fragile being painted on silk about 120 years ago.  So she packaged it up extremely well and posted it with 30 Australian Christmas stamps plastered over it.

According to family "legend" my great grandfather had the portrait painted from a photo while he was in China.  He was a stoker in the Royal Navy and was on HMS Dido when it took part in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion.  HMS Dido arrived in China in January 1900 and left Hong Kong in October 1901.  My great grand parents married in Wigan in February 1902.  So he must have taken a photo of his fiancée with him, looking rather somber.