WOMAN’S ORDEAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 April 1936, Page 8

WOMAN’S ORDEAL

SPENT FOUR DAYS ON REEF

SUVA, April 6.

On Saturday, March 28, an old Fijian woman, a grandmother, set out from Suva, in a small punt en route for . her home at Samabula, round in Lauthala Bay. She was accompanied by her little grandson, aged five years. She never reached home, and search parties failed to find any trace of woman, boy or punt. On Wednesday some fishermen from Dreketi saw some person feebly waving from the famed reef at Naselai, opposite the beach from which the late Sir Charles Kingsford Smith set off for Los Angeles. The Fijian is in most cases at heart still a pagan, and these men, believing that it was a tevora (native devil), refused at first to investigate. At last, as the waving continued, erratically and feebly, they went out and found an old woman, wrapped in a costume of seaweed, and with almost all her clothing torn from her body by the action of the heavy seas on the reef. It was the missing grandmother, but there was no sign of boy or punt. The woman was taken to the fishermen’s “bure” at Nasese Point. Here she lies, too feeble to be moved, nor could she speak or give any account of what happened. It is presumed that her punt, was blown into the bay, where the seas are often very rough, and that the punt capsized. How she managed to exist for over four days on the reef, where the seas dash and smash in majestic fury almost unceasingly, is a mystery still unrevealed. It is yet another remarkable instance of the wonderful powers of endurance of the Fijian native.