Fiji’s 5-year-old star swimmer in the late ’60s, Justine Macaskill, returned to the country from New Zealand because she was homesick.
This was after her parents had sent her off to school at Epsom Grammar the previous year in an effort to let her get more coaching and competition with New Zealand swimmers.
“I wanted to come back home because I missed my friends, my family, and Mrs Pickering’s chicken curry,” Justine said at the Olympic Pool in Suva.
According to a report in The Fiji Times on May 15, 1982, Mrs Pickering was the mother of Sharon Pickering, Justine’s friend and swimming competitor.
The Wellington-born youngster preferred the warmer Fiji waters and her old friends. Before the year was out, she was hankering to get back.
“We’re pleased to have her back home with us and the people she stayed with thought it better that she come back if she really wanted to improve her swimming,” Jean Macaskill said.
The family came to Fiji in 1969 when Malcolm Macaskill (Justine’s father) arrived to manage the Kooline Refrigeration Company.
Justine was only two years old then and coming from a wintry New Zealand, the family spent any spare time they had at the beach or the pool.
Two years later, the Macaskill’s entered Jason, Justine’s elder brother, and Justine in the Dolphin swimming competitions at the Olympic Pool in Suva.
“Bob Kennedy, national swimming coach, then suggested that we enter them after having watched them swim,” said Jean Macaskill.
At the first competition for the year, Justine showed a natural potential for the breast-stroke event, which is her main specialty.
Under the expertise of her coach Horace Peterson, who also coached Sharon Pickering, she competed in most of the international swimming competitions that Fiji had entered since 1979.
Justine’s best time in the 100m breaststroke was 1min 18.39sec and her 200m breaststroke time was 2min 52.11sec.
In 1979, she won two gold medals for Fiji at the South Pacific Games in two separate events.
She again won gold in 1981 at the Oceania Games in the 100m breaststroke.
At the beginning of 1981, Justine had just become a member of the Dolphin Swimming Club competing in the Auckland Provincial Age Group Championships where she won first place in the 100m breaststroke event in the under 14 category.
She won second place in the open 100m and 200m.
In the North Island Secondary Schools Championships in Rotorua, she won the same events there and, travelling back on to Rotorua to take part in the New Zealand Open Swimming Championships, she won the women’s 100m breaststroke and was second in the 200m event.
Several months later she swam in the Oceania Swimming Carnival in Suva and won gold in the 100m breaststroke and silver in the 200m.
During all these competitions Justine competed under the Fiji flag.
In November the previous year she broke away from studies to receive her award of Fiji’s Sportswoman of the year.
Her goals for the year were to focus on the 1982 Pacific Games and the coming Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia.
