My Album

This is a photographic retrospective of my life to date - a mere 30 odd years. (Click on any of the thumbnails to get a full-sized picture.)

Here is one of the few remaining chiefly bure (traditional house) in Fiji. It belongs to the distinguished gentleman on the right who is the Tui (chief) of a number of clans that make up the powerful Noikoro tribe in Viti Levu's   interior. The high house mound denotes the chiefly status of the owner. The Noikoro are our neighbors. On the left is my Dad.

Fijian soldiers in the Solomon Islands get their next orders from their Kiwi commanding officer during WWII. My grandad is the partly obscured gentleman just behind the commanding officer. He had been in the area for 20 years as a missionary when the war broke out. The Japanese put a price on his head after he refused to join them. Instead he joined the Australian Coast Watchers as a sergeant and then the 3rd Battalion Fiji Military Forces as a chaplain with the rank of captain.

Grandad's people on Tavea island wait at the waters edge to recieve his body after he died on Vanua Levu at the ripe old age of 80. 

My mother (with scarf) and her brood on a boatride across Namatakula bay during the school holidays.

Mereia my half-sister getting married to Kalouvatu a cross-cousin of ours. Hers was an arranged marriage where the elders from both the groom's and bride's sides got together and deliberated before calling in the prospective bride and groom to seek their permissions with a question which was to be repeated three times and answered with either a yes or no. Despite my earlier misgivings of the match (Mereia was educated in the city while Kalouvatu had always been a fisherman in the village), I have yet to come across a more loving and understanding couple.

On visting a Fijian village, one would be welcomed by the ceremonial drinking of kava or yagona. It is one of the most used ceremonial and social beverages in the South Pacific. Here a group of us are about to go and pound the roots (wrapped in newspaper in the hand of my uncle to the left) by using a steel pestle & mortar. In the olden days young unmarried women of the village were given the task of chewing the kava and preparing it for serving. Yours truly is second from left with my cousins Vili Tani and Niko. 

After the yagona is prepared, it is served following certain ettiquette depending on the nature of the occassion. Here a tribal elder (right) at my Namatakula village presides at a social gathering to farewell a member of the clan who is leaving for the city.

Namatakula coastline. Below is a map of the village. (click on thumbnail)

The small village of Namatakula is also famous for its rugby exports. Here below are a few of them.

Lote Tuqiri
Brisbane Broncos 

Noa Nadruku
Fiji, Canberra Raiders, N.Queensland Cowboys

Eparama Navale
Fiji, Paramata Eals