My Mum's Tsunami Story

In my mother's diary is the most incredibly beautiful report of the tsunami that hit Suva, Fiji, back in about 1953. She was caught up in it and wrote up the entire account that night, and it's just the most chilling, goose-bumpy and incidentally very funny piece of writing I think I've ever come across. Gosh, she could write. (Related to Elizabeth Barret Browning, you know!) I wish I could reproduce it here in it's entirety, but I have no idea where mum's journals are now.

From memory, and summarising, what happened is that mum was in Suva, shopping, on a brutally hot, muggy day ... and was just crossing Nabukulau Bridge ... when suddenly all the Fijians simultaneously froze. Yes, every single one simply froze, and then their heads came up and it was like they were all sniffing the air, like wild horses before an electrical storm. Mum froze too because what they were doing was all tingly and contagious, and then someone yelled "Tidal Wave!" and suddenly mass panic as everyone charged for Waimanu Road to get up the hill to Toorak as fast as possible. Traffic jams. Bus crashes. Everyone getting out of transport and running madly up the hill. A giant, screaming stampede.

Mum, however, was made of other stuff and thought "I want to see. I want to see." so charged off in the other direction towards Pratt Street.

And, as she was running along the Morris Hedstrom's arcade along Nubukulau Creek ...

 We're talking about this spot right here!

Although this is today and not 1953.

... there was this astonishing and enormous "Swoosh!" as all the water was sucked out to sea and the moored punts crashed one by one onto the creek bed.

Behind her she could hear the swoosh roaring louder and louder ... and then she reached Sacred Heart Cathedral and raced up the bell tower.

She said what she saw was Suva Harbour empty of water and inter-island copra cutters laying on the sea bed ... then, coming from around Beqa way, the most enormous wave.

The reef took most of the brunt, but what was left hit the shore away from downtown Suva, coming in around Government House, Thurston Gardens, Albert Park, Grand Pacific Hotel; that end of town. And there were three of them, these giant waves, the biggest one being the one in the middle.

Then, immediately after the third one hit, the sea returned to normal, so mum came down from the bell tower, and raced over to Ground Zero, wanting to see if there was anything she could do to help.

It was all fine! Bit of mud and damaged trees ... but no one was around to be hurt, since all had got up the hill in time, and what she mainly saw was, all over Albert Park, hundreds of happy Fijians racing around, gathering up the thousands of fish that were flopping all over the grass.

And that's the story. Of course, when mum tells it, it's vastly better and much more interesting, but ...