JOSKE’S Thumb is perhaps one of the toughest peaks to ascend for many climbers in Fiji.
Its steep mountain range juts out to the skyline, west of Suva.
The peak rises 1450ft above sea level and has a large overhang on the southern face.
The peak is named after Paul Joske, one of Suva’s pioneer settlers.
He came to Fiji via the Australian-based Polynesia Company in 1870.
Joske and his son, Adolf Brewster, started Fiji’s first sugar mill, importing machinery and beginning the country’s sugar industry.
The mill, which operated between 1873 and 1875, was on the site where Fiji’s parliament building currently stands.
But before Paul Joske’s arrival, the mountain was known as “Rama” or Devil’s Thumb, “because the locals said it looked like a man trying to claw his way out of hell”.
The first climbers of Joske’s Thumb were naturally the iTaukei people.
The Fiji Times reported in 1964 that a Jone Taura of Nadoria, Dreketi, Rewa conquered the peak more than 100 years ago.
“The first Europeans known to have reached the summit was Dr Thompson, of the Fiji Medical Department in 1932.
Ratu Suliano, chief of the yavusa which owns the land, accompanied Dr Thompson.
Dr Thompson later made a second climb to prove that his claim that he had done it previously was true,” reported this newspaper.
Few people attempted the harzardous climb between Dr Thompson’s ascent and the beginning of the war.
But during the war the mountain was climbed quite frequently by servicemen stationed in Fiji and it was reported that a party of signalmen from the 2nd Battalion, Fiji Infantry Regiment also climbed the Thumb.
Mr R.A. Derrick, in his book The Fiji Islands, a Geographical Handbook reported an ascent by members of the New Zealand Alpine Club during 1941.
For many years after the war only an occasional party made the climb.
Among the climbers who have made the ascent were some of the members of the Rucksack Club; Andrew Drysdale and Graham Southwick who made the climb in August 1963 and some of the first women known to have reached the summit included Mesdames Loolie Rolls and Gael Morris who did the climb in September, 1963. Sam Levu was perhaps the most notable climber.
He, unlike Dr Thompson, who took 10 days to reach the summit, made the ascent in less than two hours.
