FEATURE | Culden Kamea reflects on a week spent on Levuka

I spent the whole of last week on the beautiful island of Ovalau staying at the Old Capital Levuka which was founded around 200 years ago as the first permanent European settlement in the Pacific and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.

For context such sites are proclaimed by the World Heritage Committee as special places of natural or cultural value around the world for their outstanding universal importance to everyone.

This to me means Fiji is the custodian of this world heritage site for all the world — all of mankind. Sadly, by this definition Levuka is a national disgrace.

For many Levuka families and landlords of old, the UNESCO listing has become an unbearable burden, resulting in heritage homes and commercial buildings frozen in very poor state and wasting away because most owners cannot afford the costs to maintain or refurbish them under the onerous requirements of the UNESCO World Heritage rules.

As a result, apart from Westpac bank, Morris Hedstrom Supermarket, Levuka Public School, the Blue House and a couple of other residential homes, every other heritage building in Levuka including the Catholic church at Cawaci, is falling apart, in a state of very sad disrepair.

Since the 2013 UNESCO declaration, how many hundreds, if not thousands of government leaders and civil servants have driven through Levuka, past the distinctly fishy smell from PAFCO, past the thumping noise from the EFL diesel generators, and past the derelict and defunct shame that is Levuka Hospital?

All very, very sad for Fiji’s old capital UNESCO World Heritage site.

The symbolism for me, comparing the undoubted potential of Levuka with our country Fiji, is the ongoing saga of the MV Sinu-i-wasa III — still grounded high and dry just metres off the main coastal road that runs around Ovalau.

That ship ran aground during Cyclone Winston back in February 2016.

A report in The Fiji Times seven years ago, on May 19, 2018, stated “a removal notice has been issued to the owner of the passenger vessel Sinu-I-Wasa III that ran aground in Levuka, Ovalau, two years ago.”

Responding to an Opposition question in Parliament on the FijiFirst government’s commitment to remove the vessel, Minister Parveen Bala said the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji would oversee the removal of the ship.

“The ship owner has engaged a company for the removal of the ship and has purchased equipment from overseas to assist with the operation,” he added.

Five years later, in October 2023, another media outlet reported that the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji has given Venu Shipping the green light to remove the MV Sinu-i-Wasa III from the beachfront of the Ovalau Resort.

The same report quotes the MV Sinu-i-Wasa III owner Ben Naidu confirming they will dismantle the vessel and take it to a recycling plant in Ba.

“We are waiting for clearances from the Ministry of Environment. Once they gave us clearance, we got the buyer ready and everything in place.”

Nearly a decade after the MV Sinu-i-Wasa III ran aground, and 20 months after the above report, she is still stuck high and dry like the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, or like the Sydney Opera House, but unlike these global monuments, the crumbling rust-bucket MV Sinu-i-Wasa III has probably already leaked all her diesel, oil, grease, paint and sewerage into the surrounding waters.

Like the sorry state of Levuka, the nearly decade-long saga of the MV Sinu-i-Wasa III is so sad and so symbolic of Fiji. What needs to be done is so glaringly obvious, but nothing gets done, and what little that does get done, takes forever.

Thankfully, my trip to Ovalau wasn’t all so depressing and sad. I enjoyed some very memorable moments re-connecting with family and friends.

I met and shared kava with the Tui Levuka, Ratu Etonia Seru Rokotunaceva, at Buresala and I also got to visit Lovoni Village again and this time I took my youngest son Curtis. It has been way too long since my last visit for the funeral of a former Tui Wailevu Ratu Sikia Rogoyawa.

I was honoured and so happy to meet the current Tui Wailevu, Ratu Betaro Vuniwaidrau Rogoyawa, at Lovoni Village and his younger brother Ratu Vili. As always, they were so hospitable and warm.

Our family connections go back four generations before me through my maternal grandmother Eliza Mitchell, her paternal grandmother Adi Matila, na marama ni Kai Viwa, who was the daughter of the then Tui Wailevu.

We had the great fortune to stay the week in Levuka at “the lookout” — about 100 steps above the famous 199 steps, at “Alice’s Artisan Fiji B&B”, which was built in 1870 by Jock Sword. As I said to Alice: “It isn’t five star as such, but it definitely is five star for history and good old fashioned homeliness.”

In fact, the old Sword home in Levuka brought back so many memories for me of my grandparent’s home in Vugalei, Lami where my grandmother Eliza used to bake the most amazing cakes in a wood-fired stove. Alice also produced some delicious home-cooked meals which made our stay at her home just that much more special. Thank you Alice.

I also enjoyed one of the best curry chicken’s ever at “Kumar’s Kozy Kafe”, about 30m up Totogo Lane, off Beach Rd, cooked by the young owner Adash’s grandfather, Ashok Kumar. And for absolutely the best citrus juice in Fiji, nothing beats a glass at Meripa Café on Beach Rd, which specialises in delicious Fijian meals.

I must also thank Goundar’s Shipping for a wonderful ferry service to and from Levuka, admittedly I didn’t go to the washroom!

A final word of thanks to some special people on Ovalau — Anthony Sahai the “Mayor of Levuka”, Dom our tour guide and Leone and Virgilia out at Buresala Estate.