Tok Story: Suva Edition
This weekend, Dr Tarisi Vunidilo and I will be resuming our Tok Story sessions on Facebook for 2021. We have been working hard to get our research out beyond the walls of academic institutions, through social media to communities where the history we have studied really matters.
The last session we did was on histories of Levuka — Fiji’s original colonial capital. This week, we shift our focus to the current capital of Fiji - Suva.
We will be talking about the movement of Suva’s original inhabitants to the site at Suvavou. Their village was originally on the site where Fiji Museum and the Thurston Botanical Gardens now sits. The Polynesia Company was involved in this process of land negotiation and “redistribution” (for want of a better word). The land was rapidly put under sugar plantations, as well as the township which was made up of weatherboard buildings and muddy roads for a couple of decades.
Those living in and keeping up to date with Fijian news may know of the discussions that have occurred about the Indian High Commission and it being placed on these lands. The Tui Suva has requested that these plans do not proceed. There is perhaps no better example of ways in which the past still matters in Fiji’s present. Often this is most pronounced when it comes to the vanua.
Charles Kingsford Smith’s flight and landing at Albert Park on 6 June 1928 will also be referred to. This was significant as the first trans-Pacific flight, which he undertook in the Fokker Trimotor plane. Several trees were felled to create a runway for the plane to land safely, in front of huge crowds.
Other topics that we will cover include the Hurricane of 28 January 1952 that caused a great deal of destruction, and in which 24 people lost their lives, and three villages at Navua were destroyed when a dam burst due to landslides (Campbell, 1984).
You will recognise familiar sites from Suva, like the market, and we will discuss the move of market stalls from the banks of Nabukalou Creek — where the initial European settlement of Suva was — to the market building we are familiar with today. You may also enjoy some photos of the Colonial Memorial Hospital, and the Grand Pacific Hotel.
I hope you will join us for talanoa and join in with your questions, comments and reflections on Suva’s histories.
References:
J R Campbell, Dealing with Disaster: Hurricane Response in Fiji, Manoa, University of Hawaii Press, 1984.
