Farewell to Mother Mac’s . . .

ALMOST unnoticed, a Suva build- ■ ing closed its doors for ever on August 8, and thus ended a chapter in the history of Fiji. That chapter is richly studded with events in the lives of characters and personalities that have walked their little hour and gone their way through the past seventy years.

The building was Macdonald’s Hotel—Mother Mac’s, as it was known in the early years following its erection there on Victoria Parade. Few know that its timbers were towed across from Levuka—as were the timbers of other old buildings—by James McKay, an early Levuka resident. Mother Mac’s had, in fact, been a hotel of another name in Levuka in the heyday of that former capital.

Mother Mac opened her doors for business about 1883. She was the wife of a ship-master who overloved the bottle, and from the first she made clear her feelings on the subject of drunkenness. She ruled the house with an iron hand. She was known to be handy with a horsewhip—having marked the rump of more than one gentleman who thought to overstep the bounds withm her walls.

Mother Mac’s thus acquired a highly respectable reputation, and wa ® the fashionable hotel in Suva m the days before the Erection of the much more pleasantly situated Grand Pacific Hotel, in 1914.

The barmaids, almost invariably, were elderly, if it became necessary to temporarily employ a younger one, Mother Mac kept constant guard; and, if any customer was noted as showing undue interest in

that direction, as he sipped his beer, he was hustled off about his busi ness, as were loiterers at the door.

A fine looking woman, she was kindness itself to those who met with her favour.

One Suva old-timer tells how, on coming in from the country for a few days, he arrived at Mother Mac’s with a type of cane hamper that was popular in those times.

Mother Mac glanced at it with some disfavour as she checked her room bookings. Then, as he was a mere youth, she inquired kindly whether he could not afford something rather better —because, if not, she would buy him one. She expected her customers to be correctly attired, and correctly equipped in keeping with the reputation of the house, she said.

Mother Mac’s association with the hotel seems to have ended about 1923, when the late Mr. Jack Griffiths took over the lease; though Mother Mac again took over for a short period before it passed to Mr.

William Nicholson, of Sydney, about 1926. In about 1933, Fiji Hotels took the lease; and Burns Philp & Co. soon after acquired the pro perty.

Mother Mac is dead and gone, long since; but, if the old house could talk, its tales would fill a book.

A few old-timers dropped a quiet tear as the last handle of beer was pumped on the second Friday of August, 1953. Since then, the jemmys and hammers have been busy completing what the 1952 hurricane began. Mother Mac’s has

“had it.”

J.P.S.