On June 28, 1938, Sir Harry Charles Luke was appointed the Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. He replaced Sir Arthur Richards who had been appointed the Governor of Jamaica.
On July 26, he was on his way to Buckingham Palace to ‘kiss hands’ following his appointment.
The King George VI sat him down and talked to him about the three days he and the Queen spent in Fiji in 1927, when they were Duke and Duchess of York.
Sir Harry also had a conversation with the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Malcolm MacDonald, who had also spent some time in Fiji and described his time here as “one of the happiest periods” of his life.
Sir Harry travelled to Fiji from Vancouver in Canada on board the s.s.Niagara.
Also on board with him were the Governor-General of Australia, Lord Gowrie, and Fiji’s Director of Agriculture, Dr Jack. The s.s.Niagara crossed the International Date Line on September 14 and sailed into Suva a few hours after dark. Therefore, passengers slept on board and did not disembark until next morning. On September 16, 1938, the ship landed at 9am and the Governor was received by a Guard of Honour at the Fiji Defence Force.
“Their turn-out was extremely smart, and I like their full dress of scarlet tunic and white sulu (kilt) with Vandyked edge,” Sir Harry said in his book, From A South Seas Diary.
“Was then sworn in, first as Governor, then as High Commissioner, in the Supreme Court by O.C.K. Corrie, the Chief Justice, formerly a colleague and close neighbour in Jerusalem.”
According to Pacific Islands Monthly, Sir Harr Luke was born in 1884 and was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford.
He obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Arts in 1906, Master of Arts in 1910 and a Bachelor of Literature in 1919. At the time, the indigenous Fijian population was 103,000. One of Sir Harry’s first public engagements was a lunch that he to attend with a Dr S.M.Labret and Dr Strode of the Rockfeller Foundation and Claude Monckton, the Adviser on Native Affairs, who brought with him a young Fijian chief, Ratu Granville Wellington Lalabalavu.
“Dr Lambert has been working in Fiji and the Western Pacific for some 20 years, first on hookworm, then on every other disease,” Sir Harry said.
Monckton and Ratu Lalabalavu, fondly referred to as Ratu Lala, wanted to discuss details of a soon to be held meeting of the Great Council of Chiefs in Somosomo, Cakaudrove.
Ratu Lala was both the Government Roko and chief of Cakaudrove.
“On coming into the drawing-room, Lala gave the Fijian tama (salutation) of squatting on his hunkers and clapping his hands before we shook hands in European fashion,” Sir Harry noted in his diary.
Sir Harry was impressed with the way Ratu Lala spoke his English. In October, the Governor got his first experience of attending a GCC meeting.
He left Suva in the boat m.v.Yanawai, which he described as “a comfortable little ship” chartered for the occasion because the official government ship Viti was still under construction in Hong Kong. Then the GCC met every two years and was the representative constitutional body of all Fijians.
It usually sat for about a fortnight and never met twice consecutively in the same province.
This was before the days when a permanent meeting structure was build.
“The Governor opens the council, whose agenda has been prepared beforehand, then departs and leave the adviser on native affairs to preside at the deliberations, which are conducted in Fijian,” Sir Harry said of his role.
“When these are concluded, he returns for the summing-up of the council’s recommendations and communicates his own decisions on them.” Sir Harry was impressed with the way Ratu Lala spoke his English.
In October, the Governor got his first experience of attending a GCC meeting.
He left Suva in the boat m.v.Yanawai, which he described as “a comfortable little ship” chartered for the occasion because the official government ship Viti was still under construction in Hong Kong.
Then the GCC met every two years and was the representative constitutional body of all Fijians.
It usually sat for about a fortnight and never met twice consecutively in the same province. This was before the days when a permanent meeting structure was build.
“The Governor opens the council, whose agenda has been prepared beforehand, then departs and leave the adviser on native affairs to preside at the deliberations, which are conducted in Fijian,” Sir Harry said of his role.
“When these are concluded, he returns for the summing-up of the council’s recommendations and communicates his own decisions on them.”
Sir Harry was impressed with the indigenous people’s display of their traditions and cultural practices and talked about their yaqona, tabua and sevusevu, among others.
“At the end of ceremonies, I read my address in English and was followed by Ratu Sukuna, who read the Fijian version. Each reading took about an hour and the council then adjourned for the day.”
“I was glad of this for the same of Ratu Lala, who at times was in obvious pain from his recent operation.”
Sir Harry said in his diary that Ratu Lala had been dangerously ill with an abscess behind his ear, caused when an enemy “put a draunikau on him”.
“This spell, like well-known forms of sorcery in mediaeval Europe, is worked the aid of hair or nail or some other emanation of the intended victim, hidden somewhere about the house or under the lintel…”
“I don’t know what truth there is in all this, but I am told that Lala firmly believed he has been bewitched and at one time gave himself up as lost. Happily he now seems very well on the road to recovery.”
After a number of traditional dances, the Governor returned to the ship in the evening, while Ratu Lala entertained some of the visiting chiefs with water snakes.
“This is one of the chiefly foods peculiar to the district, for it is a feudal obligation of the chief of the village of Tavuki to send periodically a slither of these creatures to the Tui Thakau (Cakau),” Sir Harry’s diary said.
“After they have been kept in pits for a while and fattened for the occasion the snakes are seasoned, then steamed together in banana leaves and served neatly arranged in one continuous coil, so disposed that the heads are carefully tucked away underneath the coil and are not seen.”
“The guests pick the particular pieces they fancy, skin them and eat them like eel. Sukuna told me that, having Thakaundrove (Cakaudrove) connections, he was compelled by etiquette to partake of the dish but did so without enthusiasm.”
On the day after the opening the GCC meeting, Sir Harry returned to Suva but left again for Taveuni a few days later to close it, paying a visit on the way to Fiji’s first capital, Levuka, on Ovalau and Savusavu on Vanua Levu.
On November 4, he closed the Somosomo GCC before that he read a message from His Majesty the King.
“I have received the loyal message from yourself and the Great Council of Fijian Chiefs on the occasion of their first meeting to be held in my reign,” Sir Harry read out.
“The Queen and I have most happy recollections of our visit to Fiji eleven years ago and a vivid remembrance of the loyalty of its people.
“I am glad to receive the chiefs’ message on this occasion and I wish them success in their deliberations and prosperity in the future.”
In the evening the governor attended a dance organised by the European women of Taveuni, particularly Mrs MacKenzie from the north of the island and Roode Tarte from the south end of the island, wives of wealthy copra planters of the time.
The Governor was delighted by the decoration of the supper table with tagimoucia flowers obtained from a lake in the crater of a 4000-ft mountain today called Uluiqalau.
“I am taking some plants to Suva, but am told it is forlorn hope and that no one has succeeded in growing them away from their natural habitat.
According to Sir Harry’s dairy, he returned back to Suva on November 5. He worked in Fiji for four years until July 21, 1942.
Sir Harry was the Governor at the onset of WWII in the Pacific.
According to The Fiji Times records, he oversaw the construction of the Nadi Airport and had warned Fiji’s legislature about Japan’s imminent threat of war in the Pacific.
On January 25, 1940, he laid the first two foundation stones of the Anglican Church in Suva.
In 1943, Sir Harry retired from the Colonial Service and served for three years as chief representative of the British Council in the Caribbean.
He died in Cyprus, on May 11, 1969.
