So Cute

Sydneysider Goes Walkabout

Fiji Is Now

If you dropped out of a space capsule, right into the ining room of the Korolevu Beach Hotel, Fiji, any Saturday ight it would be a matter of “three guesses, where am I?”

7 this season of the year it could be any place in the world on the American tourist beat—Bali, gkok, Benares or Berlin. Even food is pseudo-American —or Australasian, anyhow. Only the m waiters indicate that you are iji. all goes to prove what the 'es periodically issued by the Visitors’ Bureau have been say for the last five years—that in the tourist sense, has ed. has some excellent hotels of four-star grading (and some merit no stars at all) and is jnised internationally as a re- This has all been done in the 10 years, and by hard work not mirrors, as some Pacific ;ories who pay lip service to dea of tourism (without doing i about it), seem to imagine, good proportion of the US sts that are currently arriving ji have already been in Tahiti, however much Tahiti seems to vided on the matter of whether Jts are hateful or not, that > to be the developing travel rn—Tahiti and Fiji to New nd and Australia and then re to Hongkong and Japan or le Middle East and Europe. ; trick in this sort of tourism, arse, is to appear to give some new or unique while still pro

viding all those four-star comforts —and this comes just about as high priced in Fiji as any place else on earth.

One result of this cost structure is that—judging by the “American season”, anyhow—the Pacific

islands are becoming the play ground of the ageing and aged.

In four days at Korolevu recently I saw one teenage American girl in a family party; two Australian girl tourists who were living in the annex at cheapest rates and who spent their time mooning about the beach like shipwrecked sailors; and my own 21-year-old niece.

The sole presentable represent ative of young European, masculine gender, was an engineer en route between a job in Pakistan and another in Canada. He had a grey haired mamma in tow and she never let him out of her sight.

Things may be different in the “Australian and New Zealand” season, which occurs in the Southern winter, but I seriously

DOWN THE LAZY RIVER. The river is Fiji’s Navua, and for £4 a head you have a Fiji guide, a picnic hamper and a bundle of yaqona as a ceremonial offering to the chief in the village you will visit.

abt it. It is a far better travel •gain for youngsters to do the v recognised two years’ working iday in Europe; or if they must ly for a while in the tropics to to the far cheaper resorts in rth Queensland. In either case y will find companions of the >osite sex in their own age groups.

By’ll be lucky to do so in Fiji.

All the Romance

ny girl who has read about the nance” of the South Seas in ks and would like to sample ie, would do better to invest in round trip on the Bulolo to lua-New Guinea, where there are hundreds of young, white, ible unattached males—a com lity that is shorter in supply in than hens’ teeth. :ost of the elderly American •ists, however, do find the ific terribly cute, and even igh the cost is high, they get r money’s worth. But even in department you can’t please yone all the time, and the last r I spent in Suva while waiting a plane was by appointment i a 60-odd-year-old, male Can n who had come all that way see “aboriginal life” and was :rly disappointed. What he ted to know from me was what ould do about it; and would he the kind of thing he wanted in Guinea if he went there, le kind of thing he wanted was go out with the forest rangers” without wishing him on my -suffering friends in the Native irs Department, in New Guinea, is able to tell him that very sionally a special visitor was a along on a jeep patrol. the end of the interview he i if it were true that some r es in New Guinea still went t without clothes, and when I able to assure him that it was :d so, he registered keen ure. I gathered that the only essed, wild life he’d seen in Fiji been American, left me, still cogitating, to a date with a travel agent, had promised to ship him off five-days cruise to the outer is in a cutter—an experiment could well cure the most ardent r after new experiences.

4 —All in with the Yaqona

iba Beach Comber Hotel, ugh it belongs to the same i and is closer to Suva, lives ‘ the shadow of the more •ate Korolevu Hotel these days. ■t does have in its repertoire rip up the Navua River, ou are a tourist and you want what Fiji is like away from the road this is as easy a way of it as any. For £4 per head you >e provided with a Fiji guide, lie hamper, and a newspaper e of yaqona root as a cere

monial offering to the chief. Most of the cash, I understand, goes to the village which is your host and which provides the transport—a long, narrow, flat-bottomed boat with outboard motor.

The expedition, which takes the best part of a day, is not up to the standard of being out with the forest rangers that our Canadian friend desired, but there is enough hit and miss about it to make it seem like adventure to tourists.

There is no communication with the up-stream village except by these long-boats or over the local broadcasting station in Suva, which

sends out a call during the daily Fijian session. The village then arranges to send a boat down on the designated day.

Life on a Canoe You join it a couple of miles up stream from Navua township. The boat itself, although a very modem outboard motor is clamped to its rear, is a bit beat-up, and although you find in the course of a couple of hours that it is not as precari ous as a powered Sepik canoe, where you just about have to have a centre hair part to keep your equilibrium, it has its moments. (Over)

There is about an inch of water over the floor boards when you get in and this level is maintained throughout—due to your guide con siderately putting his big toe over a small leak up forward, and one of the two-man crew bailing con tinually both going and coming.

I should imagine that in very dry “seasons it is necessary to get out and push over certain upper reaches but on this day there was a fresh in the river and something like an 8-knot current with which our out ward coped with a high-powered roar.

The stream remains wide and tumbled right up to the village. It twists and turns and climbs by many rapids, with occasionally its

banks levelling out but more often towering right and left and spout ing waterfalls.

When the sun is out you frizzle and fry and when it rains you get wet but come what may, the serious faced youngster, who is O/C opera tions, steers with uncanny know ledge and precision and lands you in the village in just under two hours from take-off. (The return voyage, downhill, takes 45 break neck minutes).

Admire the Pin-ups

After the ceremonial kava in Ratu Tavita’s house, you admire his pin-ups that range from Winston Churchill, through past and pre

sent members of the Royal fami. right down to his own brother w! is serving with the NZ Navy.

You stroll in the village and fii that one of the village industri is the cultivation and export to t coast of yaqona, the roots of whit are the makings of kava, and y< realise that in that newspap bundle of same which was broug: up from the coast on your behs and off-handedly tossed to Ra Tavita at the end of the kava drin ing, it was indeed the kind thoug behind it and not the gift th mattered.

After lunch we visit the schO' and are told that, after the ch. dren have sung for us, it would in order to offer suitable gifts.

We hadn’t been briefed about tt one, but we had brought some swe€ for the kids. Some money, perhap Yes, that seemed satisfactory.

A swift accounting amongst ensures that we’ll be able to do tl right thing when the time comes and the sweets, too, after all a also accepted with acclamation.

And on this note our visit to tl inland village comes to its close. ' this event, the party was of thr phlegmatic Australians without i isn’t-it-cute among them. It is som times otherwise.

A Riot, Sometimes

During the wet season a par goes to the village only about thr or four times a month. At oth seasons it can be as many times p w r eek and up to six long-boats together.

It must be quite a riot, to s nothing of disrupting village a] educational activity—it it does sh( that there are pickings in the tour: industry not only for the Indii taxi driver and the European hoi keeper but for the stray Fiji; village as well.

In the ultimate analysis probably adds up to more and bett outboard motors —and that’s pr gress.

Who would want to pole a pu up those 18 miles of river, anyhow