Welcome to the waves!

We called in on Bungan Beach the other day. It's right there in the middle of the Northern Beaches beaches, but it's relatively unvisited and unknown. Not at all like Newport to the north, or Mona Vale to the south.

How can this be? It's just not that easily accessible. Difficult to get close to it by car, a bit hard to park, and a steep incline to walk down. A perfect situation, I thought!

The surfers seemed to know all about it, of course. There they were, running to catch the waves. We were there just to drink in the views, dip our toes in the water, and enjoy the seemingly endless 2016 summer sunshine. Wouldn't be dead for quids, the saying goes.

'Welcome to the waves', said the sign in the footpath.

Centennial sunset

Centennial Park yesterday afternoon

On the buses, Fiji style

Fiji's Viti Levu 'big island' has a big fleet of colourful and mainly comfortable buses, plying the routes between and within its main population centres. It wasn't difficult (or expensive) getting around.

Our day trip from Nadi to Suva and back went quite smoothly. It's about four hours each way along the Queen's Rd, and the buses were fine. Even the driving in Fiji is relaxed and sensible - there's none of the prolonged passenger terror you experience in India or Indonesia, say. (Maybe it's the kava, we thought.)

There was one thing that was decidedly wrong about our evening ride back though: the driver's choice of video to screen. In other places at other times I've been subjected to noisy kung fu, Bollywoods, silly slapstick comedies. You name it, somebody will make you watch it on a bus journey somewhere. This one though was totally new to me. It was a rather horrible ultra-violent junk prison 'drama'. I doubt there was much of a story line, just endless scenes of the prisoners, male and female, beating each other almost to a pulp. I was making a point of trying to look out the window, though it was soon too dark to see anything out there. Many of the other passengers were riveted to the screen however. Including small children. My companion, being a teacher, had to suppress her urge to march to the front and order the driver to take it off.

It was quite a revelation to encounter this unexpected facet of Fiji culture. They're generally so calm and gentle and friendly. Maybe it's all the rugby union they play, and the violence porn they watch, that keeps them so outwardly calm? As well as the kava.

Fiji's first village furphy?

The village of  Viseisei, just north of Nadi, is said to be near the place where the first people landed a few thousand years ago.

It's all a bit muddled actually. We were told by our guide that it was people from Tanzania in Africa that came. Before that there were 'only a few cannibals'.

This was all a bit new to me. Reading up on it later, it's looking like the majority view is that it was Melanesians that arrived, from islands far closer than Africa, and they largely took over from the Polynesians who were there before. It was probably only 500 years ago rather than thousands. While the current inhabitants are genetically now more Melanesian than Polynesian, it's accepted that culturally they're more Polynesian.

I haven't forgotten that 40% of the population are actually of Indian descent. That's a whole different story though.

Anyway, Viseisei is a rather lovely little place. Very neat and clean and orderly. There's a Methodist church, and a memorial ground where important Fiji Day commemorations happen each year. What's not disputed is that Christian missionaries of all flavours arrived in force in the 1850s, and the Methodists had the most success.

Birds of Fiji

Here's a Fiji parrotfinch, and below is a spectacular maroon shining parrot. There are many very colourful birds in Fiji.

But frankly, most of the birds we saw were dreaded Indian mynah birds. By one account, 83% of all the birds in Fiji are now of this species! It's been quite a mynah apocalypse.

Australia may be headed that way too, and there are fightback campaigns underway!

Kava karma

Kava is everywhere in Fiji, and the diligent tourist obviously has to take an appropriate interest in it. It's a mild narcotic, made from the ground-up roots of a particular tree.



I observed this tourist admiring the tangled stack of  kava roots in Nadi market.

She was soon whisked off to another stall where they had some ready-mixed drink on hand, and were more than ready to share it. She doesn't look that enthusiatic.

Actually it doesn't taste that bad. Just like muddy water, which is what it looks like too. And the effects aren't that dramatic, so long as you just drink these sorts of quantities.




Mind you, I understand that many Fijians drink all evening every evening. It makes them very relaxed. And looking around Nadi market, where business was rather slow that day, it seemed like many of the market traders were sipping away the day too.