Leaving Fiji soon - last post?

We leave this very relaxing resort "Crusoe's Retreat" shortly. We will be back in British Columbia in about 24 hrs.

It is an hour and a half's drive to Nadi, an 11 hr flight to Los Angeles, 9 hrs layover, 3 hr flight to Vancouver arriving 11.30 pm. We overnight in Vancouver and the son Mark will take us to the 9 am ferry to Victoria on Thursday. This may be the last post on this Blog.

It has been an enjoyable fairly active three weeks "Down Under". We look forward to sharing more details with family and friends. Shaun (and Penny).

A Day in Suva

It was an hour and a half's drive into Suva. Unfortunately it turned out to be a public holiday "for the prophet Mohammad". Most shops were shut. We had lunch at "The Grand Pacific Hotel". This magnificent remnant of Colonialism was closed for 22 years but has been lavishly renovated and reopened in 2014.

Funding apparently has come from the New Guinea Foundation which as I understand is made up of mining royalties.

We later dropped into "the Defence Club", a men's club with reciprocal visiting with Victoria's Union Club. We were welcomed and even found connections with members who have relatives in British Columbia.

The club is struggling with changing their by-laws to allow women to become members!

This is the bar at the Defence Club

The Villagers

A youngish woman waited on us at lunch. She had worked at the resort for eleven years. She was a single mother with one child about to leave school and two three year old twins. She lived in a two bedroomed house (more like a shed) with her parents and her three children. They have running water, flush toilet, electricity and a TV. They cook on kerosene either outdoors or indoors.

We walked through the village, listened to a church service and after spent time talking to two 18yr olds in their last year in high school.

Crusoe's Retreat

This resort was the first to be established on the Coral Coast, the south shore of Viti Levu. This happened in the 1960s. Viti Levu is the largest of the 300+ Fiji islands and the only one where there has been significant economic development.

This economic development will have been in part because of the building of many resorts along this Coral Coast.

What is particularly interesting is that 90% of the staff come from 

Namaqumaqua village which is just along the beach from the resort. There are third generations of villagers working here. The "happy hour" bar man has worked here for 27yrs. They are very friendly people and provide excellent service and are clearly well trained for their jobs.

The contrast between the villagers living conditions and the resort that they serve is extraordinary. 

Here are some pics of the resort.

39 C in Melbourne

(I had run out of data available on my Australian SIM card but we are now in Fiji again with plenty of data on my previously bought Fiji SIM card)

We flew Hobart - Melbourne where Penny's sister and niece met us for a brief visit. It was 39C outside. There is presently a high risk of bush fires for South Australia and much of the state of Victoria. We then had a four and a half hour overnight flight to Nadi. Now we are at Crusoe's retreat. It is 29C - hot and humid.

Light plane crash

On December 29th a Cessna 172 with the pilot and a yachting photographer was off Port Arthur taking pictures of Sidney - Hobart boats. This is the southern most headland of Tasmania that the boats round. One of the boats observed the plane, which was flying at low altitude, climb and then dive into the sea. The boat immediately sent out a "Mayday". Both those on board drowned. There was a lot of local media coverage and the day we left Hobart the police were hauling the plane to the surface with the two bodies in it when the cable broke. They were going to try again with better equipment. A sad story for the S-H race. Having piloted Cessna 172s in the 1980s my guess is that the pilot stalled the plane at low altitude and was unable to recover.

Port Arthur

Although it was a one and  half hour drive a visit to the Port Arthur world heritage site was worthwhile. It was firstly a prison for those who had reofended after being transported to Australia. It was involved in prison reform after it was acknowledged that flogging did not work. Then solitary confinement was tried as a means of reforming the minds of crimminals.

Here are a few pics.

Mount Wellington

We were fortunate to find a fine day to drive up Mount Wellington (about 4000 ft) to take in the view of Hobart and go for short hikes.

Cascade Female Factory

The owners of our accompdation Judith and Chris are actors - originally from England. We went to see them in Cascade Female factory.

It was a women's prison where the women who had been transported lived with their young children and the women were trained in various domestic duties and then released with strict conditions.

If they got pregnant they were retuned to the female factory! Then when their babies ere weaned they were sent to an orphanage. The acting made the stories more realistic.