Suva’S Missing

Beauty

Flea For More Trees and Flowers

SUVA, March 8.

SUVA, by right, should be the mos picturesque of the larger centre in the tropical Pacific. Its harbou: setting has more natural beaut: than that of Honolulu; and, if it immediate surroundings are no comparable in picturesqueness witl those of the smaller capitals, liki Papeete and Apia, that is the faul of the spoilers rather than o: Nature.

For years the trouble has beer that Suva, a city of few architectura pretensions, seems to have had n< awareness whatever of the loveli ness of its situation. To-day, i sprawls in a rapidly-spreading mazi over the low hills fronting the har bour, while a considerable part o: the commercial centre is a ho muddle of narrow streets with —to( often—a suggestion of slums abou them.

Perhaps the main cause of Suva’s more or less haphazard develop ment into a conglomeration o small, utilitarian and architectur ally uninspired buildings, with hopeless inadequacy of open spaces is the fact that when it becam< the capital of Fiji, 70-odd years ago nobody envisaged a city in which £ considerable proportion of th ( population would be low-wage work ers living in tenements ranging from the shabby to the downrighi slummy.

But in the period of rapid growtf —that is, the last quarter-centurj —nobody seems to have been movec to secure more open spaces, or tc attempt to curb the tide of over crowded ugliness.

ANEW weekly, the Guardian has the laudable objective o: trying to stir up interest ir local affairs and to promote a spiril of civic pride. However good the intention, it is difficult to see hov this can be done.

The population of Suva contains a large section of people who dc not regard Fiji as a permanent home, and many of the remaindei are concerned solely with making all the money they can lay theii hands on, while they can. The rest —people who might take a con scientious interest in the welfart and the appearance of Suva—an often disgusted with the man oeuvres of conflicting interests whether sectional or individual, and flatly refuse to be associated with developments which produce racia] tugs-of-war in civic affairs.

This minority group still raises its voice at times, but mostly with out effect. It was from this source that protests came (too late) over

the removal of the once-famous “Post Office tree” (which provided one ol Suva’s picture-postcard views) and the coconut palms in the central Triangle. Members of the same group keep up a spasmodic agitation against the substitution of two concrete-walled garden plots, in the middle of the Triangle’s main traffic thoroughfare, for the

Fijian traffic constable who used to be stationed there.

The 1952 tourist conference, in cidentally, called for the return of the policeman on the grounds that Fijian traffic-duty men are the most tourist-photographed figures in Suva. Others, however, not noticeably impressed by their argu ment, claim that the policemen

sorted out the traffic with more efficiency than the present system.

But the minority does not count.

The Triangle policeman has gone, like the Post Office tree; and the removal of the Triangle palms a year ago has robbed the centre of Suva of the tropical flavour that gave it individuality.

TO the credit of the City Council, a good deal of tree-planting has been done along Victoria Parade.

But it has been pointed out that this planting is a minor effort com pared with what could be done. In this respect, Suva might take Hono lulu as an object lesson —and Hono lulu has an obsession for planting and preserving coconut palms, for obvious reasons.

Barring a somewhat muddy stretch at Laucala Bay—at low water you have to journey out a considerable distance to get really wet—there is nothing in the way of a bathing-beach within many miles of Suva. That is Nature’s fault.

But it is not Nature’s fault that the road around Suva Point to Laucala Bay is, for most of the way, uninteresting to the point of bleak ness. Years ago this writer, calling at Suva for the first time, drove along the Suva Point road seeking something like the palm-shadowed, flowery roads of Samoa, Tahiti and Rarotonga, and has never fully re covered from the shock.

There is still a good deal of un used freehold land along this road; but it is a pound to a peanut that when it is cut up and “developed” it will be covered by the cottages of people who have a sort of antipathy to trees. Then it will be for the local authority to plant the road sides, taking as inspiration a Hono lulu newspaper report which noted,

not long ago, that a stretch of main traffic highway was to be planted with 218 coconut palms, 164 bougain villea, 4 mahogany trees and 725 flowering shrubs.

It is one of Suva’s tragedies that so many opportunities have been lost and that there seems to, be so little prospect of the remaining opportunities being made use of.