Knowing Nausori
Anyone who has flown into Suva will likely have landed at Nausori Airport. Nausori sits a little ways out of Fiji’s capital, but is home to histories that are just as interesting and rich as those of the larger township.
Dr Tarisi Vunidilo and I will be resuming our Tok Story series on her facebook/youtube channel Talanoa with Dr T in March, and our focus will be on Nausori.
As we do our preparations, we share some fo our findings on our social media networks. So if you aren’t following us, I suggest you do!
While we present some of the information we can find in published sources, archival materials and that we dig out of our own memory banks, we are loving engaging with Fijian communities through social media platforms to help expand community knowledge about Fijian pasts.
I have been focusing some of my efforts on histories of the Methodist facilities around Davuilevu, Dilkusha and Navuso.
With a large number of plantations set up along and around the Rewa River that flows beside Nausori, the township became one of the first sites where large numbers of migrant workers resided. It was partly due to this that Methodist missionaries decided to establish the centre of its Indian mission by the Rewa River, close to the Nausori sugar mill.
Davuilevu, Dilkusha and Navuso all feature at some stage in my book, A Mission Divided. I will fall back on this a little bit for our talanoa, while expanding on the research I did so many years ago. After all, it’s 7 years since I finished the PhD, and there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. And then I really can not wait to hear what Dr T says — she will illuminate many things.
Hope to catch you for the facebook live — check out Talanoa with Dr T so you don’t miss it!
