Early Notes

On Fiji

A hurricane which swept the island of Ovalau, in Fiji, in De cember, 1883, is now perpetuated in the title of an autobiography by Australian novelist Katharine Susannah Prichard— Child of the Hurricane. Miss Prichard has for many years lived in Western Australia, but she was born that night at Levuka, where her father, T. H. Prichard, was the editor of The Fiji Times.

Miss Prichard gives the im pression in her chapter on her Fijian days, and in a curious ap pendix headed “Papers on Fijian Affairs by T. H. Prichard”, that she could give more information from her father’s notes, about those interesting times in Fiji. If so it is a pity that she didn’t be cause there is much other material in her book which is irrelevant and dull, and which could well have been left out in preference for some early Pacific history. Mr. Prichard Snr. arrived in Fiji about 1868.

What she does include in the volume doesn’t shed any impor tant light on developments of that time. There is much talk of land tenure, some nasty asides at Sir John Thurston, an unclear and possibly inaccurate reference to the Rev. Shirley Baker and his control in Tonga and some unflattering references to King Cakobau, described by Prichard, as “an old blackguard”. But Mr. Prichard sounded an in teresting fellow for all that.

(Child Of The Hurricane.

Angus & Robertson. 27/6.)