Battle Of Fiji Airfields

How it Ties in With Future of Fiji's Tourist Traffic

Prom a Special Correspondent

Suva. Feb., 8.

ARRANGEMENTS for the accommoda tion of trans-Pacific air services in Fiji, both trans-Pacific and regional, are still in chaotic condition.

The land planes now are all using Nadi, on the north-west coast. Passengers from America for Australia and New Zealand are kept there overnight. Pas sengers bound east spend a number of daylight hours there.

None of them like it. They are accom modated under raw military conditions, in what were recently military buildings.

This is the least beautiful part of Fiji.

Those who can spare an hour or two are shown the pineapple-canning factory, and the flat and featureless town of Lautoka, and they are not impressed. All —especially men—complain of the discomfort of the barracks to which they, as high paying passengers, are sent.

Many people assume that the Nadi buildings (100 miles from Suva) are being used because the Nausori airfield (only 12 miles from Suva) is unsuitable, and overseas aircraft are forced to go to Nadi.

This is not so. The battle of the air fields is not yet over; but, even if it were, and Nausori had won, the big planes must go to Nadi, because there literally is no hotel accommodation avail able in Suva.

THERE are seven licensed and five private hotels in Suva, and they can house at least 200 people. But, owing to the house shortage acute here, as elsewhere they are half full of “permanents”; and Fiji’s normal tra vellers fill the remaining rooms. Suva, on any day, has not ten rooms available for overseas travellers.

One day lately, there were four Sky masters and 120 passengers and crew, on the Nadi drome, and they were all ac commodated though pretty roughly, in some cases in the barracks. Over crowded Suva could not have housed a quarter of them.

A British “mission” is due here on the 26th. It will remain three weeks, and decide whether the future airfield is to be Nadi or Nausori. The Fijian com munity is frankly bored at the prospect —it has seen several inquiries, which have arrived nowhere.

The general opinion is that there is not enough difference between Nausori and Nadi to justify travellers being taken away from the numerous advantages and amenities of Suva, to the rigours of Nadi, if travellers can be accommodated in Suva. Expert opinion seems unani mous that there is no great difficulty in the way of the big planes using Nausori.

The outstanding problem is the shor tage of hotel accommodation in Suva.

Big institutions the Union SS Co. and Morris Hedstrom Ltd., are two of them —have made plans for big, modern hotels for Suva. But all hesitate —first, because of the high price of materials and lack of labour and, second, because of the possibility of permanent, ample ac commodation being provided in Nadi, It seems to this writer that if only the Fiji Government and the big com mercial institutions would act boldly, and quickly solve or guarantee to solve — the Suva accommodation problem, the airways travellers would certainly go to Suva.

THE New Zealand Government appears to be taking an important hand in this situation, and pushing the Fiji authorities around, for its own purposes and convenience.

New Zealand, nowadays, judges every thing with the jaundiced eye of the

Socialist fanatic. Private enterprise has been wiped out of the air-transport busi ness in the Dominion —all plane services, whatever their label, are Government owned and operated. NZ Ministers are not likely to have sympathy for Fiji’s private enterprises or plans for new in dustries.

New Zealand’s Air Force now is operat ing Sunderland flying-boats between Auck land and Fiji, and between Fiji and Samoa, Tonga and Cook Islands. These machines are based on Laucala Bay (in the lagoon, four miles from Suva). The passengers of these machines absorb the very little surplus hotel accommodation available in Suva.

Also, as part of her defence plan, NZ is sending a training force of Mosquitoes

to Fiji, to be based on Nadi.

Therefore, it would suit NZ admirably if all oversea land-plane passengers were sent to Nadi and Suva left free for the accommodation of her regional flying boat services at Laucala Bay and- Suva.

Already, NZ Air Force officers, in the persons of Flight-Lieut. Lylian and Flight-Lieut. Irvine, are in charge of the Nadi Barracks, and are trying to pro vide better accommodation for the grum bling travellers. They are capable men and can do much; but they can never, from the travellers’ viewpoint, make Nadi and Lautoka a substitute for Suva.

THE economic future of Fiji is bound up with this decision (Nadi or Nausori) to a greater extent than is generally recognised.

None of Fiji’s four leading industries (sugar, gold, copra and curios) carries any certainty of prosperity for even five years.

The newest industry (export of curios) is already failing. Tortoise-shell, for which no less than £ll per pound was paid a year ago, is now worth only 15/per pound. The shells known as cat’s eyes, for which the Indian craftsmen would pay 1/- each in 1945, are now quoted at 6d. per dozen, and the Fijians have ceased to gather them.

But if Fiji goes to work now she can build a profitable and permanent industry —tourism—on something with which she has been endowed lavishly by Nature — namely, her South Seas beauty and charm, which soon will be sought by masses of tourists. For that, the first essential is plenty of good hotel accommo dation, and an efficient internal organi sation for handling travellers.

The fact that Fiji is to be used as an important staging-station in the trans pacific air services is a happy accident.

It may be turned to good account. Apart from Government officials, every Trans- Pacific air-traveller is rich—he has to be —and every one who passes through Fiji should depart with a good impression of these Islands, and become an advocate of pleasure-travel there.

It would be a thouand pities if Suva allowed the unimaginative bureaucrats and New Zealand’s ruthless planners to establish the Colony’s chief airport at Nadi. All that is needed now, to put Suva in the way of permanent and pro fitable tourism, is a little co-operative effort and enterprise.

Mrs. M. Jackson, left brisbane for Lae New Guinea, by the “Montoro,” on Jan uary 16. Her husband is a member of the Forestry Department there.