Fiji's

Wonder In A

Wheelchair

From Beryl Cates, in Suva Joint holder of Fiji’s Sportswoman of the Year award is archer Mrs. Margaret Ross, mother of three teenage boys. She’s a wonder in a wheel chair!

MRS. ROSS shares the award with Tarika Varo, the 30-year-old mother of five, who during the past year made an astonishing comeback to Fiji athletics, to carry off the national and allcomers record for the 100 metres.

Eight years ago Mrs. Ross’ life was typical of that of the wife of a South Pacific Sugar Mill official living on one of the company’s estates on the north-west of Viti Levu.

She had no wheelchair then, nor suspected she would ever need one.

Born in Fiji, she was educated in Australia, and her education included five years at East Sydney Technical College, studying textile design and crafts.

She returned to Fiji as soon as she achieved her diploma, married David Ross shortly after her return, and settled down to marriage. She spent her leisure hours not in paint ing but at basketball, hockey and tennis, at all of which she excelled.

At first, despondent

About 1959 she became aware of a persistent backache, which began hampering her activities. Eventually she went to Australia, where doctors discovered a tumour in the spinal column, inoperable because of pos sible damage to nerves.

Two years of pain and distressing treatment followed, and Mrs. Ross returned to Fiji in a wheelchair.

Doctors said the tumour was arrested, but beyond that they could do nothing.

She was despondent at having to give up her active outdoor life but the founder of the Nadi Archery Club, Arnie Anfinson, told her she should try the sport, and one day her husband wheeled her chair to the ground, they gave her a bow, showed her how to set the arrow and she fired.

The sport gripped her imagination, and she and her husband soon were regular shooters with the Nadi Archery Club.

Meanwhile, in other ways Mrs.

Ross was successfully rebuilding her life. She began giving art lessons, and in so doing revived her own desire to paint.

She began making pictures of dried flowers and wood, which find sale with tourists to Lautoka. She also drives the car, shops, sews, and takes an active part in her church guild and Nadi Multi-racial Women’s Club.

Between times she practises her archery. “As with most sports you have to keep at it,” she says. “Playing only weekends you’d get nowehere.”

During her husband’s after-work hours the pair make arrows, buying the shafts and doing the assembling themselves.

Uor kin rlianro ner Dig Cnance She got her big chance while on leave in Australia in February last year. She shot in the NSW State paraplegic competitions and bettered by one the Commonwealth record for the Columbia Round. The record had been set at the Perth Games at 507, With that success, Commonwealth Games officials invited her to go to Jamaica to compete in last year’s Commonwealth Paraplegic Games.

The Archery Club at Nadi soon

had organised an appeal for funds, and Mrs. Ross began practising with grim determination to keep faith with the people who were financing her trip.

Her determination paid off. From Jamaica she brought back a gold medal for a score of 564 for the Columbia Round, the one in which she had scored 508 in Australia, Life today is full for Margaret Ross. She rises at 5.30 a.m., sees her husband off at 6 a.m. to start the labour on the sugar company estate, and is ready to breakfast with him when he returns to the house at 8 a.m.

She sees him off again 8.30 a.m., and at 9 a.m. is ready for her art students, who arrive three mornings each week, She’s a fine choice for Fiji Sports woman of the year, o Mr. L. Devambez, Fisheries Officer in the Fiji Department of Agriculture since early in 1965, left Fiji in April to take up a new appointment as Fisheries Training Officer for a Food and Agricultural Organisation project in the Caribbean. He will be based at Barbados. Before going to Fiji, Mr.

Devambez spent 15 years with the South Pacific Commission.

Margaret Ross, joint holder with Mrs.

Tarika Varo, of Fiji's Sportswoman of the Year award, has not allowed a wheelchair to keep her from a busy and successful life. Photo: Nitin.