NEWS FROM FIJI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20024, 14 August 1928, Page 12

NEWS FROM FIJI.

FIRE NARROWLY AVERTED. "JOY RIDERS" TAKE ENGINE. (.from our own correspondent.] SUVA, Aug. 9. The Suva Chamber of Commerce has formed a luncheon club, which will meet monthly or alternatively when important people travelling by mail steamers can be prevailed upon to give an address on any subject in which Fiji is particularly interested. It will take the place of the Rotary Club. Tho first luncheon is being held this week, the guest of honour being the vice-admiral of the visiting Japanese squadron. The Burns, Philp steamer Malake, on its first trading trip round the Fiji Group, broke the record for inter-insular steamers for the amount of copra collected on one run Calling at Savu Savu, the Taveuni Coast, Loma Loma, Mango and Cicia, she picked up 560 tons and brought her cargo to Suva. A record was also broken in loading. At Waimarque 100 tons of copra wore loaded from the beach by surf boats to the ship in three hours and a-half. A ball has been organised to be held in the Grand Pacific Hotel to raise funds for the Mokogai leper station comforts' fund. A largo block of offices was narrowly saved from destruction by fire this afternoon. The building is an old Y.M.C.A. and is of timber construction. Two business men. Messrs. R. Noerr and A. H Martin, were preparing to go for lunch. There was no one else in the placo. They noticed smoke corning from behind a locked door and broke into tho room, which is at present used by a visiting soft goods traveller. Papers in a corner were burning merrily and part of a partition was already well alight. A chemical extinguisher saved tho situation. The building is surrounded by other timber buildings and a timber yard. A few minutes more and Suva would have seen one of her biggest fires. After the picture show at Lautoka on Saturday night it was found that a Canadian Sugar Refining Company steam engine was missing from the locomotive shed. A second engine was sent out after it along the ono line which it could use, and found it abandoned some miles out. It is believed that a party of Fijians had attended the pictures and. wishing to go home in comfort, con) mandeered tho engine. A party of Methodist clergy and lay men arrived from Sydney by tho Sierra to-day to act as a commission of inquiry into certain matters of policy affecting the conduct of the Methodist Mission in Fiji.