(and rhino huntee)

A Mau Mau hunter (and rhino huntee) holes up in Suva

From JOHN CARTER, in Suva It’s a far cry from the branches of a tree in Northern Rhodesia with an angry rhino beneath, o the comparative quiet of running a private totel in Fiji, but Gordon Innes of the South Seas hivate Hotel at Suva has made the trek, taking a some gold-prospecting and murderer-catching m the way.

GORDON in his time has collected J enough material for several ooks. The first could be on India, nd what life was like for a small oy in Calcutta, his birthplace, where is father was a company director.

Schooling in England wouldn’t ring many chapters, but itching feet ame when he was 18, and off lordon went to Kenya to learn affee planting. He was enjoying lat until a depression hit the in jstry in the early 19305, so he went fid mining at Kakamega (Kenya).

He even had his own gold mine at the jackpot eluded him. When his line petered out after two years ordon went after copper on the orders of Northern Rhodesia and ie Congo.

Enter Hitler

Hitler brought the next change, ordon joined the East Africa Army ;rvice Corps, and helped chase the alians out of Ethiopia and Italian imaliland. Then he went to Burma id fought the Japanese.

It was back to Kenya after the war, id in 1948 he met the matron of doret High School, Eileen, from verpool, England, and married her.

They tried farming. But it wasn’t e humdrum stuff. The farm was on e edge of the Mau Mau country id a rifle was part of the farming uipment.

There was additional excitement cause farming had its off-season, d Gordon joined a tourist venture, exciting one, Safari Land Ltd., d became a white hunter.

His job was to take out parties of arists hunting big game.

“This was the best job I ever d,” says Gordon. “Each client paid 00 a day and I got half, and each fari lasted for from two weeks to month.”

It might have been good pay but it was a risky living.

“Being treed by a charging rhino ceros is no joke,” Gordon says. “It happened often. The rhino comes on at 40 miles an hour and the only trees are thorn trees. You shin up them fast, and what a relief it is to get to the top. But when old rhino has taken himself off, there comes the worst part, getting down. It takes hours to pick the thorns out!”

But there have been many occas ions when there wasn’t a handy tree

and Gordon has had to stand his ground with a rhino or a buffalo.

“You hope for the best and let fly, and thank heaven I never had a misfire. But we always felt superior to the beast. Who wouldn’t with a young cannon like a .450 rifle in your hand?”

Gordon has a souvenir of those days—a bronze badge which he has had fixed to his reception desk at the South Seas Hotel. The badge is that of the East Africa White Hunters’

Association, and there aren’t many of them in the world.

In between farming and safaris, he undertook another kind of hunting— Mau Mau hunting.

“I joined the Special Police and went on night patrol three times a week. We often had a useful bag of captured Mau Mau.

“But the situation in Kenya became untenable, and we moved off to Canada.”

Off to Canada

In Canada, where they spent six years, it was quiet. Yet once adven ture sought him out even there. That was when he found a gaol escapee, a convicted murderer, in the bath room. Gordon held him up with a rifle, and his wife telephoned for the Mounties. They got a big spread for that in the Canadian papers.

In 1961 they went to New Zealand and Gordon tried his hand at deer hunting—“l found it too tough com pared with Kenya”.

And so here they are in Fiji.

Gordon is once again entertaining tourists, but he hasn’t had to shin up any thorn trees.

Gordon and Eileen Innes, in Suva.