Letter from David!

David's valley in South Shropshire Hills.
"England's Green and Pleasant Land"

David Cannon from the South Shropshire Hills in England very sweetly has just sent me a photograph of Lomeri Mission in Deuba. You will recall the post "A Father's Life" where I say I couldn't find one anywhere? Who would have guessed that there'd be one in the remotest part of England.

In fact, why don't I simply quote from the letter.

Read your Father Jack story. Interesting for me, particularly because of your descriptions of the beauties that can be beheld in Fiji. I know those beauties had such an effect upon my childhood development, and therefore upon who I am. And they probably explain why I will never feel at home in even this most beautiful of British countryside.

You talk about Lomeri Mission. I am not sure this is the mission near which we used to stay in Fiji. Perhaps you can tell me:

(Yes, David, this is indeed the
Cathedral at Lomeri Mission.)

I recall, if you stood on the beach with your back to the sea, there was a large concrete church on the site, perhaps a football pitch's distance from you. Over to the left were the priest's wooden quarters. Over to the right was a wooden hall. The priest who was in charge at the time (early 60s) put on films in the hall for the people in the village which was a little further along the coast to the left, i.e. to the west. He invited us to come round and enjoy these evening films.

The place we used to stay at was a wonderful spacious wooden bungalow, surrounded by trees and bush, and its front verandah was about 30 metres from the sand. If you walked across the lawn to the sand and then turned right, you would eventually come to the mission station, though I seem to remember there was a deep but narrow river that had to be crossed. Or maybe this river was further on, beyond the mission station and just before the village. Anyway, do you think it was Lomeri that we used to frequent for Mass and films?

My father and mother got on well with the priests - they always gravitated to the local clergy wherever we were, particularly if they happened to have a streak of Irish in them and liked a drink! When we lived in Laucala Bay some of the Irish Marist Brothers who had established a new boys' school a bit further along the east coast would come down for afternoons during which a kind of singing competition would erupt in the living-room. My father, who had a fine tenor voice, would stand up and hit the high notes, and then so would several of the Irish Brothers, and we would all clap at the outpouring of emotion and those long loud high notes. The songs were nearly always old sentimental Irish ballads from the John McCormack repertoire, eulogising old Irish scenes in a sentimental way.

There wasn't a lot to do in Suva back then, in the early 60s, and so driving over the hill from Laucala Bay "to say goodbye to the boats" was a regular after-dinner occurrence! The band would play "Isa Lei" and "Now Is The Hour" and my parents would weep as they watched the great liner embarking "for home", for England. (Even if it was heading on down south, to Australia, I think they liked to think it was going back to dear old England!) All of this tearful ritual over we would then drive back over the hill and by the time twilight was turning to darkness we would often see the same ship we had clapped off the quay pass along the horizon all aglow with hundreds of twinkling lights. And there always this strange sense of being left behind, of missing out on something!

David, so nice to hear from you. And thank you so much for the photographs.

Hey, and do you remember how tourists used to throw coins off the ship, and the little Fijian boys would dive in for them?