Life And Laughter

In Lau

Recent Book by Copt. J. R. Grey

WAR and other delays prevented the publication of Captain J. R. Grey’s “World’s End” (Robertson and Mullens, Melbourne, price 9/-> until re cently. The narrative ends just before Pearl Harbour and, since that time, Cap tain Grey has been on active service with the Navy.

It is a simply-told story of life on copra plantations in the Marquesas, and in the Lau Group of Fiji, written without jour nalistic flourishes or other artificial aids to readability, which should be of tre mendous interest to Fiji residents, and scarcely less so to others interested in life in the South Pacific.

Captain Grey served in the Royal Navy in World War 1, and thereafter led a life of adventure, and learned to know the Pacific well. A few years before World War IU he married Margaret, just 25 and (according to her husband) beau tiful. Margaret mere or less becomes the heroine of the story and together they set out for the Marquesas, to manage a copra plantation.

The Marquesas venture proves to be temporary and they decide to go in for copra producing on their own account on the island of Vanuabalavu, in the Lau Group. Fiji. Here they spend several years of isolated but satisfying labour be fore war catches up with them.

Captain Grey is at present in Sydney and his one desire these days is to return to his Lau plantation, as soon as possible.

It is ironical that, although the years he spent there on his plantation coin cided with the copra depression of the first war years, copra has boomed ever since he left it to return to the Navy.

The story of the Grey’s life on Naba vatu (the name of their plantation) is the story of the typical island planter in isolation in those pre-copra boom days; a never-ending battle with erratic labour, low prices, minor accidents and depend

ence upon irregular communication with the outside world. But they find com pensation in living their own kind of life and doing work of their own choos ing. A sense of humour and a fatalistic attitude to the doings of Fate and Fijians generally overcame most difficul ties.

DESCRIPT [ONS of some aspects of this outport life will have particular interest for Fiji residents, and no less so will Captain Grey’s remarks on the Suva scene .and his criticisms of native policy—including the education policy and the appointment of young, in experienced University graduates as Dis trict Officers in the outer islands.

He has not fallen into the error of sentimentalising the Fijians who, by and large, he sees as indolent, bad-mannered, disrespectful and, although large sums of money are spent on education, ignor ant from both native and European points of view.

Captain Grey is of the opinion that the Fijian race has rapidly gone downhill and for this he blames, not the Fijian himself, but the unrealistic policy of the Government. His solution is simple; to replace the young, inexperienced DO’s, who “spend the first few years in the Colony swotting themselves sick at Fijian and Hindi and law” with men of experience (“and let them be hefty ones with chins like steam shovels”) who could supervise cleaning and re-building in the villages and show the villagers how to set about acquiring a planting indus try of their own, from building the copra-driers downwards. The building of roads, paths, bridges, etc, could come under the control of the DO also —and men should be appointed, as they were 50 years ago, who are capable of such work. In those days, Captain Grey re marks, apparently real men were sent out to the colonies to lead the natives in the way they should go. These men have now been replaced by a tribe of University theorists, and the Fijians have suffered

accordingly.

J.T.