Passing Of

A Pioneer

A tribute by JUDY TUDOR One more has gone from the diminishing ranks of the real pioneers of the Pacific: Mrs.

Elizabeth Hennings, who died as a result of a street accident in

Suva, in November ( PIM, Dec.,

p. 130).

Yet, when she died, she rated only a couple of paragraphs in the local newspaper way down below the ration for pop-stars, politicians and the daily tide-wash of the immediate present.

Elizabeth Hennings herself would no doubt have taken a cynical view of this fact. She had a poor opinion of modern values and things that were new simply for the sake of be ing different. She probably had a poor view of Suva also, although she lived there in the last few years, out of her element, with the city bourgeoning about her and produc ing its own kind of tropical rat-race.

It is ironical that the cause of her death was a motor vehicle in what, until a year ago, was a quiet residential street but which, latterly, by some whim of the city planners, was turned into a main traffic artery.

What a way to go for a woman who, in 80-odd years, had weathered over 50 of them separated from her native land, survived hurricanes, isola tion, stormy seas, economic de pressions and her full quota of per sonal tragedies.

A good marriage

Although her life held, too, the satisfactions of a good marriage and an active working partnership with her husband, Gus, much of the savour must have gone out of it with his death in 1955 and certainly with the sale of their plantation island of Naitauba, in Lau, in 1966.

I first met her in Suva in the early 1950’s when Fiji still retained some of the status of an outpost-of-empire, with the graded colonial society that went with it. She was there buying plantation supplies and fitting in a long list of social engagements in the approved Suva style.

In those days tourism was not even a cloud on the horizon and the people you met at the Grand Pacific Hotel

Feudal kingdom of Naitauba

usually had close connections with the Islands. However, even then, what one heard of the Hennings’ closed feudal kingdom of Naitauba was sufficient of an anachronism to be intriguing. The part played in it by the conservative, intelligent Elizabeth Hennings who, even after all those years, still retained a Continental European’s outlook on life, was to me even more interesting.

Her husband, Gustav Mara Hennings, was the son of William Hennings, one of four brothers who arrived in Fiji from Germany about 1860, established the cotton growing industry and at one time operated the most important trading company in the group. Gus’ mother was Adi Meri, a Fijian woman of rank.

Through her Gus was also a chief, known to the Fijians as Ratu Qase.

Although I have written previously that Adi Meri was a Lauan, I am corrected by Luke Vuidreketi, editor of the Fijian newspaper Nai Lalaka.

She was a Bauan, elder sister of Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, father of the late Sir Lala Sukuna, and of Ratu Tiale Vuiyasawa and Dr. Ratu J. A. R.

Dovi who are both still living. Adi Meri’s own father, says Luke, was Ratu Kamisese Kapaiwai Mara, half brother of King Cakobau.

The Hennings therefore were and are related to half the chiefly families of Fiji, including that of the present Chief Minister, Sir Ratu Kamisese Mara.

Resilience

Gus Hennings was born in 1868, six years before Cession. He received his early education in Sydney but in his teens he was sent to Germany.

When he returned permanently to

live in Fiji he was already a mature man in his mid-twenties, but not until almost 20 years later, on a shorter visit to Germany, did he meet and marry Elizabeth Vogel.

Elizabeth Hennings in her maturer years gave the impression of a woman set in her ways and prepared to stick to her principles until hell froze over. But it is obvious that the young, fair and blue-eyed German bride needed plenty of adaptability, re silience and strength of character in her initial years in Fiji when the 12,000 miles between Suva and Dresden seemed shorter than the 200 miles between Suva and Lau.

In those days Lau was reached by slow cutter from Suva, and once there, there was no further means of communication except by the small ships whose comings and goings were dictated by the whims of the weather.

Having known Gus only in Germany, as the true cosmopolitan, she must have met, too, for the first time the

other, Fijian half, of his life, with its traditional obligations and customs.

Yet to all this she adapted and be came a part. For over 50 years, first on Vanua Balavu, later on Naitauba, the self-contained world of a small island became hers.

There were periods of affluence when copra boomed; periods of economic gloom when copra hit bottom or hurricanes tore through the plantations and rendered them barren for years.

In all this and the home farm, among the pigs and the chickens and the dairy, Elizabeth took a physical and active part, arising at an ungodly hour before dawn to supervise the activities of the labour.

She and Gus also raised three daughters on their islands—Elizabeth (Liz.), Sofia (Beau) and Mara. In the late 1930’s the two elder girls left Fiji to make their fortunes in London. They worked there through the blitz (Beau at one time ferried Spitfires from the makers to RAF stations), and later Liz became a costume designer for the I. Arthur Rank organisation. She now is in business for herself in Suva. Beau married an Englishman and is still in the UK. Mara is married and lives in Australia.

Her final years

After Gus Hennings died in 1955, Elizabeth stayed on alone on the island plantation for 10 years but in 1966 the family sold Naitauba to Mr. Raymond Burr, of Hollywood. It was arranged that she should con tinue to live on the island and this seemed a perfect solution for a woman whose heart was there and nowhere else.

However, this did not work out and in the last two years she has lived in Suva, a rather lonely and unhappy figure whose chief misfortune was that her years for adapting to new conditions had passed.

I shall always be grateful that I knew Elizabeth Hennings. To me she and her generation represent the really romantic period of the Pacific Islands now fast fading away and soon to be forgotten, their stories already hazy and far less real than the stories of the men who walk upon the moon.

As a person I admired her greatly —for her courage, her strength of character, for her idiosyncrasies, for her occasional cussedness.

After she died in Suva her body was taken back to Naitauba and buried alongside Gus in the family cemetery. To this extent, anyway, Naitauba will always belong to the Hennings.