A treasure island for

Travel

A treasure island for the rich and famous

HISTORIC Wakaya, Fiji’s newly developed Pacific island paradise for wealthy holidaymakers, offers a “hidden extra” which just might send them home even wealthier: a hunt for real treasure.

Wakaya, with luxurious accommo dation for guests and also blocks of land on which to build hideaway homes, already has lured such american show business luminaries as Burt Reynolds, Cheryl Ladd and Australian Rocker Glenn Shorrock.

But until recently the most famous visitor to this 2200-acre islet of forests, wild deer and sandy beaches, was the notorious German sea-raider of World War I, Count Felix von Luckner. In one of the great war’s more bizarre incidents, the Count and five of his crew surren dered on September 21, 1917, to a team of six Fiji policeman in the mistaken belief that they were armed.

The embarrassed and angry Count spent the rest of the war in a New Zealand internment camp. But what happened to his loot? Where was and is the gold and other treasure trove which von Luckner and his crew of the schooner Sea Adler took from allied vessels around the world after approaching them sneakily under a neutral flag?

For decades, the rumour has been that von Luckner brought the captured goods with him to Wakaya’s Homestead Bay aboard the launch Cecilie after the See Adler was wrecked on Mopiha island in the Tuamoto Group when von Luckner foolishly anchored her too close to a reef with a storm approaching.

According to a Wakaya promotional letter from President Jay Boland, “it seems that Count von Luckner may have deposited his gold booty in Homestead Bay just before capture.”

The letter adds pointedly that scuba diving and snorkelling over the Home stead Bay reef will be a popular pasttime for residents and guests.

As for von Luckner, the old sea dog returned to the South Pacific between

the two world wars. But published reports said he was watched so closely he may not have had the opportunity to retrieve any treasure if in fact he had secreted it in the region.

Meanwhile, Wayaka has opened both to visitors or would-be residents from the far upper end of the market, one of a number of such havens of peace, palm trees and blue lagoons in the fabled South Seas where those to whom money doesn’t matter can escape from the tensions of New York, Tokyo or Sydney.

The island is owned outright by Canadian-born industrialist David Gilmour, who himself has spent about US$2 million so far on his own spacious hilltop residence with panoramic sea views.

For one cool million you can have your own sandy bay

For visitors (who must be 16 and over), the

Wakaya

Club of

fers just eight two-person bures, lavishly furnished with Fijian and imported fittings and set amid vivid tropical trees with the Pacific lapping near the front door. There’s an epicures’ restaurant offering local seafood and homegrown vegetables, plus a well-stocked bar.

Transport to the island is by Air

Wakaya, comprising one Cessna 402 c

which flies up to eight people at a time from Nadi or Nausori international airports, on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu.

The cost of staying at the Wakaya Club: US$B75 per couple per night. That covers the accommodation, all meals and drinks plus sporting activities apart from deep-sea fishing expeditions, an optional extra. Sport includes the three hole, par-10 Cheryl Ladd Golf Course, named for the former star of television’s Charlie's Angels , and the David Niven Junior Croquet Court. Both are friends

of the Gilmour family.

Then there is a floodlit Wimbledon tex tennis court, a glass-bottom boat for

coral-viewing and scuba-diving equip

ment to help locate the von Luckner hoard.

Some 150 residential blocks have been pegged out, with 60 sold and 10 actually built-on. A two-acre block costs US$2OO,OOO but there’s one five-acre lot with its own sandy bay going for a cool US$l million. Residents may pay an extra US$35OO a year for use of the Wakaya Club facilities.

According to Wayaka’s Australian

born manager, Rob Miller, the Gilmour company has spent about US$5 million over the last couple of years alone on infrastructure. Since buying Wakaya in 1973, Gilmour has built an airstrip, jetty, a 14-metre barge to bring in supplies, a network of roads, reservoirs and water purification plants.

His stated aim: “To create a bastion of ecological and architectural sanity among nature’s inspirations and to offer privacy, time and space to Wakaya residents and guests alike.” The enterprise is staffed by Wakaya’s 200 local villagers, who have their own bures, church and school. Medical problems are handled initially by Miller and his wife Lynda. For serious cases, Nausori Airport near Suva is only 25 minutes away.

The laws of Fiji prevail on Wakaya, with a few bylaws introduced by the company including a ban on alcohol among the villagers. “They’re good methodists and are happy with that,”

Miller said.

The Wakayans weren’t always so peaceful and content. In 1789, Captain William Bligh told of being chased by canoeloads of cannibals as he passed by the island during his epic voyage in an open boat after being set adrift by the Bounty mutineers.

Some 40 years later, invaders from a rival island trapped about 100 Wakayans atop 200-metre cliffs which became known as “the chieftain’s leap” after their leader and around 20 followers jumped to their deaths on the rocks below rather than surrender. □