1937: Samoam Fiji dance and music on Naivukulani, Fiji

The taralala is an innovation. I was told that it originated in a simple little kindergarten dance in a mission school and spread, ere long, with great rapidity throughout the Group. There is now an endeavour to suppress it. In itself it is perfectly harmless, but the aftermath is not always without harm. In [...]

1937 visit to the Island of islands of Ngau, Mbatiki, villages of Yavo, Saweieke, Fiji

In Levuka Days of a Parson in Polynesia By C. W. Whonsbon-Aston London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1937 recorded a visit to - in an undated year to the Island of island of Mbatiki, and villages of Yavo, Saweieke, Fiji .

1937: Solomon-Fiji cultures of death and dying in Levuka

Levuka Days of a Parson in Polynesia By C. W. Whonsbon-Aston London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1937, writes “The “water queue” in the kitchen one Sunday morning revealed two rather pleasant looking, strange lads, who, I was informed, had arrived from a place on another island about sixty miles [...]

1930s: Blackbirded Solomon islanders return from Queensland to Levuka

Levuka Days of a Parson in Polynesia, By C. W. Whonsbon-Aston London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1937 reported on blackbirded or indentured Solomon islanders at home in Levuka in the 1930s - “most of them by way of Queensland sugar fields, to the cotton and sugar fields of Fiji. [...]

1937: Decline of copra and Levuka port economy of network of individual planters and traders

Planters and traders in isolated islands are models of hospitality and cheeriness. I cannot remember in my many travels among them any unpleasant interlude. To-day they constitute a brave lot, fighting with their backs to the wall against a cruel fate that allows huge European combines to make excessive profits while they, the primary producers, [...]

Multicultural Levuka in the 1930s: the view from Anglican parson, C. W. Whonsbon-Aston

Anglican parson C. W. Whonsbon-Aston, wrote in 1937 - “People are led to believe by the novelists of to-day that the Pacific islands are inhabited by beachcombers, dissolute sons of noble families who are remittance men, or silent men who have been disappointed in love and seek consolation in solitude and trade gin. Some [...]

Levuka in the 1930s: Empire’s most easterly township; decline of copra: a ‘tragedy of the South Seas’

The 1930s brought the decline of copra exports from Levuka, and the shift of population to government at the new capital of Suva and to Lautoka, to the sugar mills. “When we arrived in Levuka the white sails of many cutters were daily to be espied bringing in copra to be shipped abroad; ere [...]

1937: Levuka population decline, as copra costs rise; and growth of sugar-cane area, Lautoka

The Anglican parson of Levuka, left in the mid 1930s, and it appeared the mission was closed as the gardens were “abandoned”. C. W. Whonsbon-Aston reported in Levuka Days of a Parson in Polynesia published London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1937: “My period at Levuka [...]

C. W. Whonsbon-Aston’s 1937 sea journey, to visit to Maafu at Loma Loma

By C. W. Whonsbon-Aston in Levuka Days of a Parson in Polynesia in London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1937 reported on a visit to Maafu, as he was about to end his term in Levuka.
Stars of the Southern Cross overhead: Long hot tropical days, in a turtle boat, [...]

1937: Condition of Indian indentured labour in Fiji

Project Canterbury, Levuka Days of a Parson in Polynesia By C. W. Whonsbon-Aston London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1937, reported on the condition of Indian indenture labour.
Sugar milling centre at Labasas in 1937: Next day we arrived at the big sugar milling centre at Labasa (pronounced Lambasa), eight [...]