From Saturday, October 2, the Torquay Museum in the United Kingdom opened an exhibition on a very interesting subject – Fiji.
Themed ‘Far Side of the World’, the exhibition, which continues until next year, relates the story of the unique connection that Torquay and its museum share with the people of Fiji.
Almost 100 years ago, a Fijian chief named Penijamini Veli, then Fiji’s Native Lieutenant Governor, visited Torquay, Devon, in the southwest of England. Memories of his stay was immortalised in a photograph where Ratu Penijamini was pictured with former Fiji residents.
It is said that Ratu Penijamini’s description in writing of his Torquay experience helped inspire the exhibition.
“Torquay is a beautiful place. The palms and the tropical trees, the broken formation of the coast and the undulating land remind me of home.
Torquay is more like Fiji than anything else I have seen since I left for England,” noted Ratu Penijamini Veli of his visit to Torquay on June 16, 1924. This was his second visit to England.
On his first trip in 1902, he accompanied Adolf Brewster, among others, to attend the coronation of King Edward VII in London.
The group that went with Rt Penijamini to that coronation made headlines throughout the British Empire and the world.
It is said their dressing was most unusual. They turned their eyes by marching barefooted and wearing serrated white sulu and the traditional Fijian hairdo called buiniga.
“Everyone was charmed with their marching and their uniforms, and when they marched with other contingents, they were outstanding,” Winifred McHugh later described in a letter written to the editor of The Fiji Times in March 1961.
Rt Penijamini’s words in 1924 hold a clue as to how and why a small collection of items from 19th century Fiji ended up at the Torquay Museum.
According to the Torquay Museum website, the collection of traditional Fijian artefacts was given by three men who had lived and worked in Fiji during the colonial years.
They were Adolph Brewster, Arthur Ogilvie and Charles Swayne. Sir John Bates Thurston, during his term as High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, appointed Swayne as the first Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.
Swayne took up this position from 1892 to 1895. Swayne had also spent more than 20 years as a magistrate at Lomaloma in Lau.
Although Brewster, Ogilvie and Swayne had no previous connection with Torquay, two of them retired in the “palm-filled seaside town”, the Torquay Museum stated.
It is quite possible that Rt Penijamini’s description of ‘tropical trees’ and ‘undulating land’ during his 1924 visit reminded Brewster, Ogilvie and Swayne of life in their former island home.
Rt Penijamini was born in 1874, the year of the Cession and the start of British rule in Fiji.
The Pacific Islands Months of 1938 described Rt Penijamini as a chief, a civil servant and a former member of Fiji’s Legislative Council.
In 1906, he was a sub-inspector in the Armed Native Constabulary, a unit that started in the 1870s under Rt Seru Cakobau’s rule and later became the predecessor of Fiji’s disciplined forces.
In 1902 the ANC was formed.
It was involved in maintaining law and order among Fijian tribes. Rt Penijamini was appointed Roko Tui Macuata in 1909.
He later retired but was appointed again to be in charge of the province. On Rt Penijamini’s second trip (1924), which lasted 40 days in England, he reunited a small circle of friends including the curator of Torquay Museum, A.H. Ogilvie who was the first curator of Fiji’s early museum.
According to an article in the website torbayweekly.co.uk by Torquay Museum’s Collections Manager, Barry Chandler, in the 1890s, the young Rt Penijamini served alongside
Brewster, who was at the time the deputy
commandant of the ANC.
The Australian-born Brewster had moved to Fiji in 1870. He showed a keen interest in local history and the genealogies of the indigenous people and was regarded as a historian
and anthropologist.
By 1895, he claimed to have recorded the genealogies of most of the leading hill clans of Viti Levu known as the Colo people, which influenced the writing of his books on Fiji.
He owned a plot of land in Suva where he set up a sugar plantation and built Fiji’s first sugar mill in 1872.
In 1884 Brewster joined the civil service and reached the positions of Commissioner of Colo East and Colo North. He was also the Deputy Commissioner of the ANC.
In 1908 he was appointed to the Legislative Council by Governor Sir Everard I’m Thurn.
Two years earlier in 1906, he became subinspector of the ANC, and continued working with Brewster until Brewster retired and left Fiji for England.
During his retirement in Torquay, Brewster published his research from his years of work with the Colo people in a book entitled ‘The Hill Tribes of Fiji’ (1922) which is used today by scholars and students of history to understand the events during Fiji’s early colonial period.
His second book was King of the Cannibal Isles (1937).
According to en.wikipedia.org Brewster died in London in October 1937. His widow, Alice lived until the age of 113.
At the time of her death in 1982, she was the oldest person in the United Kingdom Mr Chandler said during his retirement years, Brewster maintained an active interest in Fiji’s affairs and, in 1924, hosted the visit to Torquay of Rt Penijamini, who was then a Native Lieutenant Governor.
On the occasion, Rt Penijamini toured England with two other chiefs to mark the 50th anniversary of Fiji’s cession to the United Kingdom.
Rt Penijamini died on August 27, 1938, at the age of 64 after serving as a dedicated Fijian civil servant for 43 years.
The Legislative Council was reconstituted before the 1937 elections to have five Fijian nominated members, who were chosen by the Governor from a list of ten submitted by the Great Council of Chiefs.
Rt Penijamini was one of the 10 chiefs who were nominated and was one of the five chosen by Governor Arthur Richards.
In April 1938, he was awarded a Certificate of Honour by the Governor. However, he died in August the following year.
“He was a most loyal and respected public servant, with a gift for administration. He has visited England twice,” noted the magazine Pacific Islands Month, of September 15, 1938.
Visitors to the October 2021 – February 2022 exhibition will be able to see adornments, weapons, tools, pottery, barkcloth, baskets and many more interesting objects until it closes.
In the 1990s, Torquay Museum discovered a newspaper article about Rt Penijamini’s visit to Torquay. That photograph led to what we now know as the “Far Side of the World”.
Mr Chandler confirmed the dates the artefacts from Fiji were given to the museum.
He said Brewster’s collection was donated to the museum on October 22, 1928, while the collection of Swayne was bequeathed by his widow on August 16, 1930.
The collection by Ogilvie was initially loaned to the museum but converted to a gift on Jan 21, 1946. His widow donated further items following his death in 1950.
“On the face of it, it seems more than a little coincidental that these three men should have been attracted to a town that even to a Fijian resembled the Pacific island with which they had been so involved,” Mr Chandler said.
He said he had been documenting the ethnographic collections at Torquay Museum since 1993, but among those from the Pacific those from Fiji “have always stood out for their range and beauty”.
