LIFE IN FIJI

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25080, 11 January 1947, Page 2

LIFE IN FIJI

IMPRESSIONS OF MR G. A. FURBY Contrasts between living conditions in Fiji and in New Zealand were made by Mr G. A. Furby, of Suva, who is spending a short holiday at Ashburto.i. Mr Furby, who is the eldest son of Mr and Mrs G. V. Furby, was educated at the Ashburton High School and left for Fiji three years ago after working as a journalist fol several North Island newspapers. He is revisiting Ashburton after an absence of nearly 16 years. Shortages of essential gooas in New Zealand were not so apparent as he had expected, said Mr Furby, and he contended that the rationing of meat, drastic as it sounded overseas was not so fearsome in practice. Many meat dishes were unrationed, and the meals obtainable without coupons were often preferable to those that carried the “penalty ’’

After three years of the tropics and in outer clothes left over from his former residence in New Zealand, he felt inadequately clad in the cold weather now prevailing, said Mr Furby. “In Fiji we wear the minimum of clothes—and those light. in ’ colour and texture —so we are not • much troubled about clothes rationing, even if it were formally introduced.”, he remarked. For all intents and purposes nothing—except building lines—-was in short supply in Fiji, from necessities to luxuries, and had rarely been in the last three years even when the Pacific war was at its height. Any romance about life in the tropics engendered by novelists was a thing of the past—if it ever existed— Mr Furby commented Except - that life in some respects was freer and easier than in New Zealand, there was little difference in civilian living conditions between Ashburton and Suva. Diet, clothing, and habits of life were varied only superficially and not in essentials.

The colourful saris of Indian women, the long “Mother Hubbards” of the B jian “marama.” the rags of the Indian beggar, or ultra-immaculate European costume of some Indian merchants, the extremely neat and tidy shirt and sulu of the Fijian, all under a brilliant sun or steamy rain, provided an ever-varying kaleidoscope in Suva streets to which the eye became accustomed after years of residence, and the comparatively drab dress of New Zealanders and their unvarying complexions made him yearn to return, said Mr Furbv. “However.” he concluded, “it is probable that last week’s hailstorm and the subsequent cold snap have most to do with my desire to go back to where I can swim all the year round and can keer warm with a blanket or a cardigar in the coolest weather.”