From Notes Made In Fiji and Norfolk Is.

By R. W. Robson, Editor of P.I.M.

NOTHING could be more comfortable than the “sleeperette’ in that Pan American plane, with warmed air, woollen rugs and an attractive blonde hostess watching attentively over her 30 mixed travellers. But, for a passenger who cannot sleep, nothing can be more boring than the monotonous, darkened flight over endless leagues of Invisible, empty sea. Departure from Sydney at midnight; breakfast in New Caledonia; lunch at Fiji—this certainly is the kind of travel that is priceless for men in a hurry, but I thought nostalgically that I had not had a chance to travel on an overseas luxury liner since 1941.

Sleeplessness perhaps was induced - by a calculation that came upon me in the stilly watches of that weary night. Fare, Sydney to Nadi, £55; flying time, ditto. 10 hours; cost per minute, 2/-. ♦ * * IN the bleak dawn light I recognised, in the sleeper beside me, the hard-bitten features of an old friend—Harold A.

Mitchell, of Suva—“Candlenut Mitch” to you of Fiji. This is the indomitable Mel bourne lad who has founded a good Fiji industry on the hitherto despised candle nut, from which he gets a worthy rival of tung oil.

In 1945, I saw him looking for candle nut around the back of Viti Levu. In 1947, I examined his Heath Robinson con traptions which were expressing candle nut oil on the Suva waterfront, near the Metropole Hotel. And now. in 1948, I learned with pleasure that he is prosper ing in a neat new factory further out along the harbour-side road, and that he has added a new paint-manufacturing business to his Island Industries, In bigger countries, under modern con ditions, babbling Socialist politicians dance on the necks of individualists like Mitchell, and private enterprise is ground in the dust. But Fiji is still wedded closely enough to the old ways to allow men who develop sound, new industries to expect due and proper recognition by a grateful Government. Sir Harold Mitchell, some day? ♦ * * NADI airport amazed me. When I was last there (February, it was a horrid jumble of grass huts, wherein airways travellers hung their clothes on dusty floors, and fought savagely with endless mosquitoes.

Now, adjoining the large, cool mess room, there are two large, well ventilated, wire-screened buildings, providing ample bed-rooms, hot showers and cool comfort for people from the steadily-growing numbers of planes which use this drome. <They come in regularly now from Sydney, New . Caledonia, Norfolk Island, New Zealand, Honolulu, Samoa and Nausori; and irregularly from all sorts of places.) Big Jack Turner—still remembered affectionately in New Guinea as a Guinea Airways pilot—is New Zealand National Airways manager of this important air port, and he seems to be largely respon sible for the metamorphosis. He showed me over a nearby village of neat bungalows, which house the European staff. Here are a water supply, electric light, telephones, a school —counting all Europeans and Fijians, Nadi airport now supports a community of over 600.

Travellers’ amenities are supervised by Mr. and Mrs. Guest, who certainly are successful in giving the transient visitor a favourable impression of Fiji; and the good work is carried on from there by Mr. R. A, Hewlett, of the Fiji Public Re lations Branch, who has an office in a corner of the big mess-room, and meticul

ously distributes printed matter to the 2,500 people who pass through each month.

An excellent idea, in publicising Fiji, and it is beautiful printing, if a trifle out-of-date. It indicates that the Indian population is 80,000, and that the only way to get to Fiji is by sea! Much has happened, in birth-rate and transport, since 1936.

H* H* H*

INDIAN workmen were busy on a large, two-storey concrete building which dominated the busy little town of Nadi, some 21 miles from the airport. This is the latest enterprise of Sir Hugh Ragg’s company, Northern Hotels Ltd. It is well planned, in modern style; and, when it is finished, it will give the Ragg organisa tion a good, comfortable hotel in every Viti Levu town outside of Suva and Sigatoka.

I was interested to learn something not generally known —that way back in the thirties, long before Nadi airfield was ever dreamed of, an emergency air-strip was cleared on Nadi Plain for Charles Ulm, who pioneered the Pacific airways with Kingsford Smith. But Ulm never needed it —on his last flight from America, he was lost somewhere in the ocean around Hawaii.

Fiji, destined to become the airways cross-roads of the Pacific, should erect a memorial to “Smithy” in Suva, near where he made that famous landing in Albert Park, and another, to Ulm, at Nadi, to mark the original air-strip. ♦ * * THEY had had rain, and the country was so green and cool and pleasant that, as soon as I reached Lautoka, I went immediately to apologise to our old friend, “Jerry” Adams, and to ex plain that I had never before seen his north-west looking like that.

There seems to have been little change hereabouts —not even the “Blue Lagoon” irruption had disturbed the peace and calm of the neat, little Anglo-Indian town, I found a two-days’ loaf in Lautoka, with visits to Saweni Beach and the beautiful golf links, very easy to take. ♦ ♦ ♦ BUT I did find something to snarl over —namely, Lautoka Hospital. It is the main hospital in this part of Fiji, but it is so starved for funds that its condition is deplorable. The TB patients, for example. If the TB sufferers have a chance of recovery, they are sent off to the Tamavua institution; if incurable, they are kept in one ward of this hospital, to cough their lives away. While I was there, a half-dozen poor wretches were doing that very thing. No one wanted them there; but there was no place to send them, except back to their villages, to infect healthy people. Almost as bad as Sydney!

There is no hot-water service in this hospital. When surgical instruments have to be sterilised, water is boiled on a primus stove. A shed is used as a laundry, and the front lawn as a drying room. They have no isolation ward. The original small room used for isolation be came an obstetric ward: and when it had 18 cases in a year, Dr. Harper, then medical superintendent, yelled for more accommodation. Last year, the hospital handled over 200 obstetric cases —and they still have the same little ward!

The authorities have just spent £70,000 on an impressive new addition to f hospital, nroviding modern facilities nd 20 or 30 more beds. I found locked and empty. They cannot it because

they can get neither electrical fittings nor electric power!

Dr. Richard Maxwell and Matron Cleaver and a spirited bunch of nursing sisters run the hospital extraordinarily well, considering their handicaps. But, in the words of Sir Hugh Ragg, who sent me to see it, “the place is a damned dis grace!” * * * IN the neat and pretty Fijian village of Veitogo, three miles from Lautoka, I found growing lustily some specimens of the Malayan dwarf coconut palms introduced to Fiji by the late Edward

IN a group of old hands in Ba I met Mr Les Davidson, who has been practis ing law in that famous sugar town for 43 years. A book would be needed to con tain this interesting memories of the place.

Perhaps he is going to write them —he is on the point of retiring, to join his son at Norfolk Island. I can imagine no place better suited to authorship than that cool and peaceful island—where there is no income tax and the £ attains its maximum value. * * * I FOUND conditions delightful in the Raki Raki Hotel, situated on a low hill overlooking the northeast coast of Viti Levu. On one side, a bowling green and tennis court. On the other, a broad sweep of green lawns and bright gardens.

Nearby, a large village of unsophisticated Fijians. A couple of miles away, a lagoon in which one can catch large fish on a troll.

This is sugar country—the Penang Mill is only round in the next valley from Raki Raki. Penang I found the usu? 1 ' pyy, busy and rather exclusive .iibn community that is so typical of che'" sugar Company’s organisation in Fiji.

Occasional peripatetic writers wail about the “poor Indians,” victims of the rapac

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Duncan. This 10-feet high palm is just as good a coconut, in fruit production and oil value, as its taller brother; but it has the advantage that one can pick the nuts while standing on the ground, and it is not so liable to be battered by strong winds. I was told that they are seriously experimenting with it on Taveuni.

ious CSR. They should make an inspec tion sometime of the amenities which the CSR provide for its European staffs —I doubt if there is anything better in the Southern Hemisphere, As for the poor Indian —I never saw such swarms of merry, well-fed youngsters as the Indian school-children around these sugar-towns of Northern Fiji.

I was reminded of a remark, once, of the late Sir Philip Goldfinch —that the CSR return on its total Fiji investments seldom averaged more than 2\ per cent, per annum —a calculation fully borne out by the later investigations of Professor Sheppard. * * * FROM this north-east coast I looked out across the lagoon to the pretty little palm-grit island of Nanarhu, a recent acquisition of Mr. Pat Costello, well known Suva business man. I was in terested in his establishment of a new industry.

It appears that Pat was eagerly mak ing plans for the effective utilisation of his new possession; and, one day in Suva, he noticed that the Indians readily pay 2/- per pound for goat meat, delivered off carts which come around regularly. The next development was the appearance in Fiji of 25 billy-goats, complete with pedigrees, beards and an Australian accent. These new arrivals were duly in troduced, in Nanamu, to 170 female goats, brought directly from Vanua Levu. Mr.

Costello made his contracts with the Indian meat vendors, and sat back com fortably. “They work while I sleep,” said he.

In Suva, already, they are referring to him as “the man who put the nannies in Nanamu.”

Conspicuous on a bluff, overlooking the junction of the Tailevu Road with the main trans-island road, was the framework of a large building under construction.

“Gatward’s new pub,” I was informed — an unexpected, but healthy sign of pro gress in a district that, for too long, has been a sort of Sleepy Hollow of the Rewa.

By making a mile’s diversion along a secondary road, we found Mr. W. T.

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Gatward, and his present “pub”—a rambling, old wooden building, also crowning a knoll. We were hospitably entertained by the long, lean proprietor, whose memories of men and affairs cover a most interesting period.

That new Tailevu Hotel should become not only a landmark, but also an at tractive stopping-off place for travellers, in an interesting area of tropical dairy ing country, within sight of historic Ovalau Island. * * * HAVING seen the Ragg family’s string of comfortable hostelries. and Gatward’s enterprise, I naturally be came interested in Fiji hotels generally, and how they could treat overseas travellers.

There is quite a comfortable licensed hotel, owned by Willoughby Tottenham and run by a manager, at Valethi, an ex ceedingly pleasant place tucked in behind the southern horn of Savu Savu Bay, over on Vanua Levu. This is something that should appeal to any imaginative traveller.

Savu Savu is part of “unspoiled” Fiji.

As well as being in a beautiful place, Valethi is in a thermal region—there are hot springs close around. There are a score of places to visit by launch in calm water in and around vast Savu Savu Bay. The clean and comfortable little vessel “Yanawai” goes out from Suva every fortnight or so, spends a couple of days nosing into isolated copra norts, drops you at Valethi, goes on around Vanua Levu, and picks you up again at Valethi a week or so later. What about it, Mr. Traveller? * * * SUVA has no spare accommodation for tourists, especially at week-ends.

Owing to the way the planes come through, there isn’t a vacant bed in a

Suva hotel or boardinghouse on Satur day nights.

Shortage of houses and boardinghouses has driven scores of Suva residents into the hotels; casual travellers fill all re maining vacancies; and the outlook for the tourist traveller is blue indeed.

When it was reported that the Indian official community was trying to buy the well-known Oceanic boardinghouse as a residence for the new Indian Com missioner—whom no one, except extremist Indian politicians, wants, anyway—there was a near panic in Suva. Only the

previous week-end, Public Relations officials and Tourist Board managers had spent hours on the telephone, trying to induce private residents to take stranded travellers into their homes for the night.

What was to happen if the 40 people in the Oceanic were thrown out? m + * IT seemed to me an astonishing thing that Suva should simply sit around and wring its collective hands over the hntPi rvmhipm noiei prooiem.

It is clear that, in this matter, supply is very much short of demand. Everyone, from the Governor down to the

corner shopkeeper, wants to see the tourist traffic encouraged. Tourists are eager to go to Fiji. There are a number of companies and people with huge funds lying idle in Suva’s banks, moaning for investment. Then why, in the name of commonsense, don’t all interests concerned get together and solve the problem, for the good of all concerned?

It is a nasty, difficult problem—but it certainly could be solved, by a united effort. The cry about shortages of build ing materials, technicians, dollars, ser vants, and so forth, achieves nothing but frustration and exasperation. And it is putting a grave handicap upon the Colony.

A SHIP lay at Suva wharves, and a popular type of small English car was being landed in dozens—and sold, for the general benefit of Mr. Tom French, at a price ridiculously below that charged for the same machine in over taxed Australia.

To be able to buy a car, without argu ment, at a price within reason, and fill it up at any petrol pump without tickets, was like the breath of old-time freedom to me.

But Suva people still grumble. It is the price of petrol that annoys them— -3/1 per gallon, compared with 1/1 before the war. “The damned Government takes 1/2 per gallon in straight-out taxation,” cried one man, “and they’ve got more revenue now than they know what to do with.” * * * THEY were waiting eagerly at Suva to welcome the liner “Aorangi,” re turning to the trans-Pacific run after seven years. In Suva, suffering so long from a shipping shortage, they put some venom into the popular wheeze: “Why is the Aorangi called the Iron Lung?”

“Because she kept 200 carpenters alive in the Sydney dockyards for two years!” ♦ * * IHAD flown from a country of crippling taxes (Australia) to a place of very moderate taxes (Fiji) and now I flew on to a lovely little Territory (Norfolk Island) where there are no taxes at all.

Here, also, was something that pleased my ancient Scottish heart; Air fare, Syd ney to Nadi, £SSA; fare, Nadi to Suva, say, £SF. Fare, Suva to Norfolk Island, £I9F; NI to Sydney, £22A. Work that out, and you will see that it is £I7A cheaper to travel via Norfolk Island —with the added pleasure of a couple of days in NI.

Norfolk Island's 1,000 or so people com prise Islanders (descendants of the Pit cairners who were settled there in 1856), Mainlanders (mostly non-Pitcairn people, with private means, who have gone there for a quiet, pleasant, untaxed life), and tourists (mostly intense and seemingly joy-less holiday-makers from New Zea land). The three communities do not mix much; and all are ruled over by a handful of Australian officials.

The administrative set-up interested me

very much; but the discussion of it calls for an early special article, which I am afraid will be distinguished by our usual lack of respect for Australian politicians.

There have been countless inquiries about living conditions on NI. So, in this or next issue, we shall publish a fairly complete general article on the subject— something to assist most people to decide whether they really want to go to the island, as permanent residents. * * * BECAUSE Norfolk’s 400-500 residences are scattered pretty evenly over the island’s 8,500 acres, the people’s chief

interest lies in communication. But, with one or two brief exceptions, the roads are deplorable.

There are 200 cars on the island. The Administration socks each owner £3 per annum, and there is a hidden tax in the 4/1 per gallon they pay for petrol. The Administration got £65,000 out of the special stamp issue.

From these sources, argue the residents, they surely should get adequate money for their roads. But they don’t. The funds just disappear.

Then there is the telephone system.

After the war, the Air Force left its tele

phone service to the islanders—a godsend,

seeing there is no business centre, and all residences, stores, etc., are indiscrimin ately scattered over about ten square miles.

But the system is not maintained.

While I was there, all cars wore chains to get them across the slippery surfaces (it had been raining for several hours); many vehicles were hopelessly bogged: and most of the telephones were in their usual condition —out of order. The Cable Office was, as usual, closed down for the week-end —and it is miles away in the northwest corner. Its telephone is mostly broken down, anyway, they say. * * * NI is like a great, green-turfed park, spread out under the übiquitous pines—and the lovely picture spoiled by methods of farming I never expected to see outside Australia.

In a two-days’ wander I did not notice one good tidy fence.

Mostly the fences were broken and dilapidated—roughly mended with tem porary stakes and bits of wire, after the manner so typical of the shiftless Aus tralian cockie —and the luxuriant hedges were wild and untrimmed.

A soil that will grow anything; an amazing freedom from pests; herds of sleek, well-fed European cattle; trees that break under their loads of clean, luscious fruit —these things surely deserve a tidi ness in farming worthy of their quality, which might delight the eye. of the in terested visitor. * * * A LARGE portion of Nl’s herds were eaten by servicemen during recent SW Pacific activities, and the stage has been reached now where the island is conserving its cattle and actually import iryg large quantities of meat—surely a very ridiculous proceeding.

There would be a call upon the herds during the war, of course, but the war ended in 1945. What sort of Adminis trative blundering allowed a position to develop wherein Nl—a vast, natural pasture—starts importing meat on a con siderable scale in 1948? ♦ * * ISEE I have written three snarls in a row —and given a wrong impression. NI, despite a certain shiftlessness in ad ministration and occupation, is still a de lightful place to live in—temporarily, at any rate; and if Government, transport interests and local businessmen have got any spirit of enterprise and co-operation they will get together and make of it one of the most attractive holiday resorts in the South Seas.

For long decades, its holiday attractive ness was strangled by its lack of a sea port. The new airport solves all that.

You can fly now from Sydney or Auck land, in complete comfort, in less time than it takes you to do a double round of golf. * ♦ * A LOCAL lad was put into the ancient gaol, for getting drunk on zup. (Zup is home-brew, after fermentation. Taken before fermentation, it is dip.) The sports ground is alongside the gaol wall.

Two spectators sat under an old tower, and drank, and cheered their favourites.

A voice came through an aperture (left in the tower, 150 years ago, for a gun barrel): “Eh, lad, give us a drink.”

They obligingly passed up their bottle of zup.

They saw no more of their bottle: but, soon afterwards, the prisoner appeared atop of the wall. He tried to emulate a barnyard rooster, and crashed.

The game stopped, because the referee had urgent business elsewhere. He was also the local policeman. He had to go and get his keys, collect his bemused prisoner, and dump him back in the time-

Worn old prison. Then the game was re sumed.

Great stuff, that zup. With a pound of hops, on Norfolk Island, you can buy any thing, from an ancient jalopy to the baron’s bright-eyed daughter. ♦ ♦ ♦ THE queerest thing at Noifolk is not on Norfolk —it is Phillip Island, a couple of miles off Norfolk’s south coast.

When Europeans first saw it, it was bonny, and green, and covered with Norfolk pines. To-day, it is a high mass of reddish, bare clay, hideously eroded, and slowly weathering down into the sea.

The cause? Rabbits!

No one seems to know when the rabbits were turned loose there. Presumably, someone a long time ago imagined that he thereby could ensure a meat supply for Norfolk. But the rodents increased in numbers until they ate out the ground vegetation completely. That allowed the seasonal heavy rains to start erosion, and the erosion killed the trees —there are now only a few tattered skeletons of trees remaining. Phillip Island is just a heap of clay, steadily shrinking, and apparently without any means of sustain ing life; yet, I was told, the rabbits still are there.

I asked why they did not poison the rabbits, and try to re-establish the vege tation, But they fear that poison would harm the sea-birds which, in countless thousands, still make Phillip Island a sort of rendezvous.

I should like to see pictures of that concentrated specimen of rabbit-pest and erosion exhibited in every inland town in Australia.