Blessed with picturesque sprawling sands and aquamarine shallows, resplendent with tropical fish and marine life, it is no wonder lots of adventures could be planned with effortless ease in the village of Vadravadra in Gau.
There’s the pompous traditional fish drive, yavirau, now seldom practised in rural Fiji, that you can participate in with the villagers.
You can swing in a hammock and disappear in a John Grisham best-seller, you can sit under the shade of a mango tree and sip a few kava bowls and you can even take a hike through the jungle and observe the rich flora of the area.
But nothing beats walking barefoot along the sparkling stretch of the beautiful Nuku Katudrau, a sandy shoreline that runs from the village of Lovu to Yadua. Nuku Katudrau losely translates to “sandy shoreline a hundred giant steps long”
Vadravadra, which sits somewhere in the middle of this “long beach” and its coastal vistas have inspired the lyrics and melody of many local songs as well as the setting up of a few serenade groups that find Gau their island home. Such as Miramira ni Katudrau, Muaigau Trio and Nuku Katudrau.
It was on a Friday, with a felt humidity in the air, that The Sunday Times team visited the village, located at the southern end of Gau Island, many kilometres from our host village – Levuka.
One of the first things that will strike you at the village is its commemoration plaque just outside the church, which in most villages, take up a prominent structure and space on the rara or green.
It is said that Vadravadra was the only village in Gau that the Spanish flu of 1918 failed to corrupt.
According to historical records, the epidemic, which raged between January 1918 and December 1920, infected 500 million people worldwide and claimed 50 million lives.
The Fiji Times of November 1918 reported that when the pandemic first broke out, six locals who contracted the disease died at the Colonial Hospital. Seven Fijian on board the ship, SS Atua, in Sydney, died as well.
In November, as the flu worsened, schools started to close.
By December 1918, temporary hospitals were set up. One of them was a reconfigured Boys’ Grammar School.
According to a Secretariat of the Pacific Community literature, in Fiji 9000 people lost their lives.
The outbreak was only four decades after the great measles epidemic, where native Fijians buried a third of their population. Some 40,000 people died in that outbreak.
To celebrate the annexation of Fiji in October 1874, Hercules Robinson, then Governor of New South Wales, invited Cakobau and his two sons to Sydney. There was a measles outbreak in the host city and as a result all three Fijians came down with the disease.
It is said that upon returning to Fiji, colonial administrators failed to quarantine the ship the convalescents travelled in, allowing the infectious disease to enter Fiji and spread through the population. Fiji population was still recovering from the measles outbreak when the Spanish flu hit in the early 20th century.
“While people were dying all around the island, during the rage of that dreadful epidemic in 1918 our ancestors were saved,” explained Lenaitasi Gukinaivalu.
A man by the name Uraia Racule, who was serving as church elder or vakatawa in Vadravadra during 1918, told villagers to fast and offer prayers so that the disease might miss them.
Only seven families were in Vadravadra at the time. They engaged in soul-searching and sought divine intervention as was told to them by the church elder. In the end, no lives got lost and members of the seven families multiplied in numbers to reach where it currently stands today.
The shoreline known as Nuku Katudrau is carpeted by very fine sand that runs for kilometres across three villages. At various points on the sand, between Vadravadra and Yadua are very peculiar stones and rocks, each with its own significance.
The first stone, partially buried in the sand is called Vatu ni Leba Yasavi.
According to stories passed down by ancestors, there is a rare leba plant that grows in Sawaieke, the chiefly seat of the Turaga na Takalai-Gau. The sweet-smelling plant is odourless and can only be smelled at vatu ni leba, many kilometres away.
“The distinctive sweet tones of leba which grows right in Sawaieke can be smelled when the tide is low at dusk, just when the sun is setting in the horizon,” Lenaitasi Waqasaga, the head of mataqali Dalisau said.
A legend contends that an underground pathway connects the leba tree in Sawaieke and Vatu ni leba in Vadravadra.
Vadravadra’s beauty and prestige did not come by chance.
Waqasaqa said their ancestors were wise in choosing the place to settle on.
Another story goes like this. One of the founding fathers of Vadravadra once sailed in a canoe and after he got tired, he allowed the seacraft to drift in the open sea.
He ended up in the mythical island of Burotukula. A fair maiden found him and after admiring the visitor she placed a franchipani flower on him. The two started a secret love affair. When the man left, the fair maiden gave him gifts, including the kacau ni gau (Fiji petrel), ruve vula (white dove), a patch of soil and liga ni marama (a type of banana).
The man came and told his parents that he had found someone which he would like to marry but when he made the next trip to Burotukula, the island disappeared.
Waqasaqa said the soil given by the lady was why Vadravadra was fertile. He added that an underwater reef, off Vadravadra now holds remains of the soil from Burotukula. The reef is known among locals as cakausomo.
“Women who have been to the reef have collected soil from it. It is said to have earthworms too,” said Waqasaqa.
Although the tide was out, the scent of Vatu ni Leba eluded me on my visit because it was too early in the afternoon.
After another stroll on the beach, the dunes ended abruptly, giving way a thin sand line with a rocky stretch. At the very corner was the rocky ledge locals call vatu caqeti. At the top of the rock face is a rocky table. This is the rock that receives stones kicked up the ledge by men.
Vatu caqeti is used when a man wants to find a wife or is secretly in love with a girl who doesn’t know anything about the man’s yearning.
“One foot is used to place a stone on the other free foot. Then the stone is kicked up the rocky ledge so that it lands on the receiving stone,” Waqasaqa said.
“When this happens, your dreams will come true and the person you’ve always admired will start getting attracted to you.”
Waqasaqa was a small boy when he went to vatu caqeti and kicked a stone after making a wish,
“I remember wishing that my wife would come from a faraway place. It landed on the rock at the top but I thought it was just a legend and I was just too young.”
Many years later, Waqasaqa was driving a forklift at work in Suva when he got into an accident and got suspended for two weeks. He decided to go straight to the village.
Little did he know that a young teacher from Ono-i-Lau had just been recently transferred to Gau Island, in fact one week, before he was suspended.
His time in suspension developed into a love affair and he finally married the teacher from Ono-i-Lau.
“Years later, I remembered kicking a stone at vatu caqeti when I was young. I knew then that the Vatu caqeti had miraculous powers.”
Many young men still try their luck at vatu caqeti today.
After vatu caqeti, is a place called Mua i Gau, a portion of Vadravadra’s coast that acts like a corner, where sea breezes blow in different directions over a small distance.
“You can be walking along the coast and have southern winds blowing against your face and suddenly winds blow from behind you and you know you’ve gone past the “corner” because the winds are coming from a different direction,” Gukinaivalu said.
The last of the famous stones along Nuku Katudrau is what is called vatu ni ceva (Southern Winds).
In the olden days, men would step on the stone when revelry was fun and villagers didn’t want visitors to leave.
“They would step on the Vatu ni ceva and bad weather would develop, delaying visitors’ return trip. Disturbing the stone brought strong winds and rain,” Gukinaivalu added.
At the end of my walk, I realised the real deal about Nuku Katudrau was not so much the long stretch of white sandy beach that crosses Vadravadra because there many similar long beaches in other parts of Fiji.
To me what made it stand out was the little stopovers, punctuated by mysterious stones and rocks that had stories behind them, stories that have survived the test of time are still being told today.
n History being the subject it is, a group’s version of events may not be the same as that held by another group. When publishing one account, it is not our intention to cause division or to disrespect other oral traditions. Those with a different version can contact us so we can publish your account of history too — Editor.
