Hundreds of people from all over Bua in Vanua Levu made their way to the newly installed Bua Airstrip when a Fiji Air Islander made a test flight.
It seemed that it didn’t take quite long for word to get around the small island. According to an article puiblished in The Fiji Times on November 6, 1977, the first landing on the airstrip was supposed to be a hush-hush affair.
But it seemed as if everyone on the island knew about the event and they had a good reason to be interested, the article noted.
Advisory council member Alfred Edward said that a direct air service would make a big difference to the area.
“The people in Bua are not rich,” he said.
“They are farmers who sometimes travel 83 miles to Labasa with hopes of catching an Air Pacific flight.”
When they cannot get a place they have no place to stay in Labasa and they can’t afford $14 a night for hotel accommodation.
“Air services from Bua will definitely ease this cost burden.
“Now, the residents of Bua will be able to fly right from their own settlement.”
Mr Edwards was a longtime supporter of the idea of air services for Bua.
In fact, as the local agent for the Courtesy Bench Company, Seattle, Washington, he was involved in negotiating the sale of the airstrip site — 43 acres of freehold land to the Fijian Government for only $5000.
Although the Bua airstrip was not on the Government’s priority list, delays on a road construction job which halted because of misunderstandings with the mataqali (Fijian landowners) involved, allowed machines to be shifted to work on the long-awaited project.
The divisional engineer Northern, Gus Billings, said the availability of ‘the right machinery at the right time enabled completion of the project well below estimates.
Dry favourable weather speeded up the job.
Mr Billings said the Public Works Department was to erect a Fijian-style bure for the terminal building, and had found a natural freshwater spring nearby as a water source.
