From Suva to Nadi

Suva Colonial War Memorial Hospital

Today we rose early to meet with Josef again at 9.30 as he is going to guide us to some of Ros’s old haunts. First visit was to the hospital where she was born, the Colonial War Memorial Hospital, which is still much the same as was 60 years ago, although there are many new additions. When Ros was born the European section was full, so she was born in the Indian section.

Ros's birthplace

 After much taking of pictures we progressed onto Tamavua, the Central Pacific Union Mission (now the Trans Pacific Union) where Ros’s Dad used to work. The staff kindly let us out the back which revealed a magnificent view across the harbour and surrounding hills. Again much picture taking happened.

Trans Pacific Union HQ

Then it was onto Suvavou where Ros used to live when her parents worked in Suva. Ros met some staff who still remembered her father when he worked there, so much talking was done there, while Josef and I waited patiently on. I admire Josef for his patience and willingness to guide us around Suva. Nothing seemed to be too much trouble for him. Leaving Suvavou we drove past Government House with the mandatory Fijian soldier standing out front. Like the guards at Buckingham Palace, they do not move a muscle while guarding the entrance.

It's too hot for windows!

By then it was lunch time so Josef managed to wangle us into the Suva Bowling Club nearby where we bought lunch for Josef for his time and trouble with us. The meal for all three of us only came to FJ$35 and there was more than we could all eat. Very good value and tasty too.

We dropped Josef back at his car and hit the road for Nadi, along the Queen’s Road that runs along the southern edge of the island, a distance of only 181 km, but the trip would take us over 3 hours. Back home in Perth we could do that distance in an hour and a half!

Ros's childhood home

The road is better than the single lane gravel road I remembered from 27 years ago, but only just. It was sealed but potholes that had been patched many times littered the road for most of its distance. It winds and turns a lot, with many hills and only few passing lanes, with villages every few kilometres with those terrible speed humps. The Fijian drivers care not for double-white lines, often passing us and the car ahead on crests of hills and blind bends, and always getting away with it. How, I do not know! And forget about finding petrol stations with toilets. The only one we found on the trip was barred from top to bottom, and even the entry was a little square foyer all barred around with a tiny little Indian women peeking out through the grill who informed us there were no toilet facilities. We finally found a Fijian restaurant that had toilet facilities, not a moment too soon.

Finally we staggered into Nadi, where we attempted to find a swimming costume for Ros, but no such thing existed in Nadi that we could find, so we gave up and proceeded on to the airport to drop off the hire car, after filling up the car with another FJ$50 worth of fuel, in Suva it cost us over FJ$100 to fill the tank. One Aussie dollar is buying $1.76 Fijian. We were a little worried because both ends of the front bumper had popped out from their clips, and we expected to have to pay for damage, but the car rental firm was really busy, so they did a quick odometer read and inspection, never noticed the bumper and gave us back our $1000 bond.

Government House guard

Downtown Nadi

Next stop was the Novotel Hotel where we presumed we were booked into, only to discover on arriving that we had no such booking. Perplexed, because we had checked before we left on Tuesday that we had a room booked for Friday, I got onto the internet and read the email from the reunion organiser and found out that she had omitted to tell us which hotel she had booked for us. Fortunately in her last reply she had included her mobile phone number, so we rang her to discover that we should be at the TokaToka hotel, so we paid the very patient taxi driver to take us over there. Ros had great fun greeting all her old nursing school mates, we got our room and had dinner together at 8pm and whiled away the evening reminiscing about old times.