The End of an Old Tradition

Vale Mocambo! There were many sad faces on Saturday, September 30, at the closing down of the Fiji Mocambo Hotel at Nadi. Many thousands of travellers through Nadi had stayed a while there, and gone away intrigued with its Fijian atmosphere.

The famous transit lounge, dimly lit, walled with bamboo and masi, with the thatched hut bar in the corner has been the scene of many parties, many meetings, and has watched many strangely dressed people pass through it. For its good-bye party, Tony Wilkinson, the manager, staged a party in the old tradition, with all races taking part in a wildish ‘houlie’ which lasted till the small hours. Many of the fittings were souvenired, and the notice ‘Male showers’, which has tickled the fancy of travellers for many years, was early missing.

There are still a few who remember the Mocambo as a converted Army barracks, whose partitions did not reach the ceilings in the bedroom blocks until 1952, when Barry Philp took it over.

Never classed as a luxury hotel, it was comfortable, homey, attractive to drink in and had an atmosphere which will probably never be duplicated.

Of late years, particularly since it was the staging point for USAF crews, the back wall of the bar, the refrigerator door, and the fittings have borne decorations of all sorts of peculiar things from drawings to USAF and RAF service banners and badges.

The new, plush, carpeted, Mocambo on the hill above the air port will carry on the name—but it won’t be quite the same.—AJCF.