Looking for Lamingtons and Chasing Čupavci

In an earlier post (here) I raised the issue of the provenance of the Australian lamington having discovered, in Croatia, the exact same cakes calling themselves  čupavci. (When I made my notes on a scrap of paper in a cake shop in Split I wrote down čupavac which Google has persuaded me is the wrong spelling. Čupavci is obviously the plural -we would translate this as lamingtons - but I don't know whether the singular lamington is the čupavc or the čupavca, such is my knowledge of Croatian.)
From the little research I have been able to do, thanks to the internet, the general consensus seems to be that čupavci are a traditional cake/dessert in Croatia with no hint of how far back that tradition might go. Since coconut seems to be the defining feature of both lamingtons and čupavci the answer would seem to hinge on the availability of dessicated coconut. The process for drying coconut was developed by a gentleman by the name of Henry Vavasseur whose company began producing commercial quantities of dessicated coconut in Ceylon (as it was then) and shipping it to Europe in the 1890s. This would suggest that both lamingtons and čupavci could have been 'invented' at around the same time and certainly no earlier than 1890. Advertisements for desiccated coconut imported from London began appearing in Australian newspapers in 1895.*
Lord Lamington was governor of Queensland from 1896 until 1901. According to Dr. Katie McConnel, curator of Old Government House in Brisbane, Lady Lamington mentions the cake named after him (or her) in her memoirs and credits their French chef, Armand Galland, with its creation. ** Galland stayed in Brisbane after the departure of the Lamingtons, where he established a wine business. I couldn't find an obituary for Armand (who died in 1923) but that of his wife, Cladie, who died in1934, confirmed that she was born in France, not Tahiti as I quoted previously, and that the couple came to Australia in 1897 ( The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, 23 June 1934). Armand was not employed at Government House until some time after that, perhaps as late as 1900. In none of the early newspaper references I could find is  the creation of the lamington attributed to Armand Galland, or indeed to anyone else.
In The Brisbane Courier 19 July 1901, Galland is advertising himself as 'open for engagement to do Luncheon, Afternoon Tea or Dinner Parties in private houses' but he does not promote his association with sponge cake dipped in chocolate. Nor would it appear that the lamington was instantaneously well known.
In the 'Mutual Help' column of The Queenslander (Brisbane), 14 December 1901, the editor responds to a reader's query with 'Have not heard of a 'lamington cake'. Can you give some clue to the appearance and ingredients of the cake?' So it seems that by the end of 1901 the lamington was known outside the confines of Government House but only to a select few. Perhaps the few who had sampled afternoon tea as prepared by M. Galland.
Subsequently (4 January 1902) The Queenslander  publishes a lamington cake recipe, the first to appear in a newspaper, submitted by 'a subscriber'. Although called lamington cake rather than lamingtons this first recipe was for small cubes of cake exactly as we know lamingtons today. Now would have been the perfect moment for Galland to claim ownership of the recipe but he did not do so.
On 26 November 1904 The Queenslander again publishes a lamington recipe this time provided by Miss Schauer of the Brisbane Technical College. Amy Schauer trained at the Sydney Technical College and was appointed to the Brisbane Technical College in 1895 where she taught until 1937.   Miss Schauer  and M. Galland were at least acquainted - Galland was an examiner of chefs at the Technical College in 1902 - but she does not attempt to credit Galland or acknowledge his claim to the recipe for lamington cake. It has been suggested that the lamington may have been invented by Miss Schauer but she makes no such claim at the time her recipe is first published or throughout her long life (she died in 1956). Perhaps neither M. Galland or Miss Schauer thought that the invention of the lamington was anything special or indeed anything to be proud of. Nonetheless lamington cakes quickly became established in cookery competitions at local fairs and horticultural shows and recipes appeared regularly in newspapers and began to be published in cookery books in all states.
Very recently David Lebovitz wrote about lamingtons on his blog and garnered a tremendous response from his audience. There was no mention of čupavci but two responses linked lamingtons to Hungary and other responses confirmed a link with Eastern Europe through the popularity of 'coconut bars' in of all places, Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland boasts a sizable population with Eastern European ancestry. In particular large numbers of Hungarian immigrants came to Cleveland between 1870 and the beginning of World War One and it is claimed that at one time Cleveland had the highest Hungarian population of any city outside Budapest (see here).
'Coconut bars', called kókusz kocka (coconut cubes) in Hungarian, described as 'smallish, stout oblong cakes entirely covered by a thin icing of chocolate and shredded coconut' are a speciality of Jewish bakeries in Cleveland and almost unknown elsewhere in the US (see here and here). It would appear undeniable that 'coconut bars' were brought to Cleveland by immigrants from Europe. If my original assumption is correct, that is that lamingtons, čupavci, and coconut bars all date from around 1900, when desiccated coconut became readily available, the question then becomes why Australia, or more specifically Brisbane, and Hungary? Which came first, the lamington or the kókusz kocka, or is it possible that identical cakes were produced at roughly the same time in both Hungary and Queensland?

* All the information I have managed to glean from newspapers is thanks to the wonderful National Library of Australia Trove database.
** The Age, Melbourne, 6 June 2009