This fascinating book provides a rare and valuable account of the life and culture of
these remote and romantic islands in the 1930s and 40s. It tells of an idyllic world of
great natural beauty, where the inhabitants were not only friendly but also polite and
dignified - with few possessions and still fewer needs. Serious crime was virtually
unknown.
Ann Gittins sailed out to Fiji in 1930 to marry John Wansborough Gittins, a young
Administrative Officer who served at five different stations in two and a half years,
enabling her to "get to know Fiji", unearth some of its legends and learn about its
ancient gods. Taking a keen interest in her husband's work in the villages, she was able
to wander about, observing and recording by means of camera and sketchbook, often
watching people at their various tasks for hours at a time. Her style is simple and
effective; celebrations and ceremonies, rituals and taboos, feasts and dances are all
deftly described and reveal the author's genuine empathy with her hosts. On one
occasion she was able to watch an exhibition of firewalking and on another she saw
that famed wonder - a "blue moon".
Life was not entirely without problems but the author never makes heavy weather of
them, not even hurricanes, floods and earth tremors, nor the infestations of fleas,
bed-bugs and rats which quite literally kept her on her toes from time to time. Her first
home was a ramshackle affair on an island without wireless, telephone or roads, with
medical and dental aid only at the end of a day's journey - and nearly all long journeys
were hazardous.
War came to the Pacific and she was evacuated to New Zealand, where her lot, as a
refugee with children, was not a happy one, and her return "home" was long delayed.
John Gittins's service was abruptly ended, while on leave in England, by the
discovery of glaucoma in an eye that had been troublesome for some time. Their lives
had perforce to take another direction, with the years in the Fiji Islands a happy,
never-to-be-forgotten memory, which she now shares with her readers. Through her
"Tales" we are able to learn how it was for the wife of an Administrativer Officer in
those distant halcyon days before Independence, and to enjoy a most interesting and
entertaining read.
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