150th anniversary: Hanley’s visit to Fiji

Listen to this article:

The ocean liner SS Southern Cross. Picture: EN.WIKIEPDIA.ORG

In the first week of April, 1959, the ocean liner SS Southern Cross berthed in Suva.

Among its many passengers that day was Frank Hanley who first and last visited the colony almost 40 years earlier under rather unusual circumstances.

Mr Hanley not only reminisced about his last trip to Suva but decided to share his story in The Fiji Times’ publication of April 4, 1959.

He was an adventurer.

With a friend, he was on his way to the United States from Australia in 1921 in the steamer Tahiti in a quest to “hitch-hike their way around the United States”.

The passage from Sydney to Suva was so rough that his companion, a farmer, insisted they “disembark at the next port”.

So they stopped in Suva and lodged at Beddoes’ boarding house “up Renwick Rd somewhere”, Mr Hanley told The Fiji Times.

“We went from place to place looking for a job but we were told the same thing, that men were being put off everywhere,” Mr Hanley said.

“In desperation we went to see the colonial secretary. I told him that my friend George was a farmer and that I was a printer.

“He said he didn’t know what he could do for us, but he finally gave us a chit to the Public Works Department (PWD).”

The PWD chief clerk placed a pile of ledgers in front of the pair and the two friends “sat until 12 o’clock trying to puzzle these things out”.

The clerk came around again and was agitated when the work was not done. He gave them the option of being posted to one of Fiji’s “outposts”.

In the end Mr Hanley was posted to Levuka as a fourth-grade clerk while his farmer friend was posted to Lau.

One day he met the engineer from one of Burns Philp’s ships at Levuka’s Royal Hotel bar who said he was resigning from his job and invited Mr Hanley to replace him.

“I went to see Burns Philp’s manager, the late Mr McKenzie and he gave me the job. I resigned from the PWD and joined the ship … Captain Dixon was the master,” Mr Hanley said.

During a passage to Suva Mr Hanley received a letter from his father in Australia saying their business was facing stiff competition from a new newspaper.

“Blood is thicker than water,” Mr Hanley shared, “so I went home”.

Mr Hanley said the Levuka he knew was a “very lively centre and contained some very famous characters” like Jack Dunn or Bugler Dunn.

“He went to South Africa from England as a bugler in one of the Fusilier regiments during the South African War. Later he joined the Merchant Service as a steward and finally settled at Levuka.”

Mr Hanley said Dunn later took over the management of the Polynesia Hotel at Levuka which the police closed down.

He said he later read in a Sydney newspaper that Burgler Dunn had died in a Sydney Hospital.

Mr Hanley took over his father’s chain of small provincial newspapers when he returned to Australia and lost most of them except one on the south coast of Australia.

On his second visit to Suva in 1959, Mr Hanley was accompanied by Mrs Hanley.

The two had just completed a tour of Europe and the United Kingdom when they visited Suva.

Array
(
    [post_type] => post
    [post_status] => publish
    [orderby] => date
    [order] => DESC
    [update_post_term_cache] => 
    [update_post_meta_cache] => 
    [cache_results] => 
    [category__in] => 1
    [posts_per_page] => 4
    [offset] => 0
    [no_found_rows] => 1
    [date_query] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [after] => Array
                        (
                            [year] => 2023
                            [month] => 12
                            [day] => 28
                        )

                    [inclusive] => 1
                )

        )

)

No Posts found for specific category