Farewell Loloma Beach!

I know I mentioned this over a month ago, but it's finally struck me with the full horror of what is happening:

LOLOMA BEACH WILL NO LONGER BE OURS!

The incredibly beautiful 

Loloma Beach in Deuba, Fiji!

I've already told you how it's been bought by American developers and they're building a wall to turn it into a gated community, off-limits to we locals:

Our beach house just off Loloma Beach.

You can't get any more local than this!

I've ranted long and hard about the illegality and unconstitutionality of Fiji cutting off the beaches and banuves (the Fijian word for land beside the beaches) from locals because all Fiji is meant to have free and unhindered access to the sea at all times ... but I won't do that here and now.  I just want to farewell our beautiful beautiful beach and thank it for all those decades of beautiful memories:

My mum died looking at this exact 

scene so it's very special to me, 

It's wonderful, isn't it. I've already told you how, when I was in Fiji a few months ago, and saw the wall and realised it was all to be lost to us, I decided it was my last chance to relive my mother's last moments, to see what she saw and to understand why she died smiling. 

Little Brother (who doesn't wish to be named in my blog) was with her when she died. They were walking the dogs on the beach together at sunset so, back after it happened, he was able to walk us through the scene and tell us the exact spot where mum suddenly sat down on the beach, and how she was looking out in this direction and was smiling as the light went out in her eyes. 

Although she was such a wonderful lady and her passing so young was such a sad loss for so many people, we all have to admit it was definitely a lovely death, and how special is it to be so at peace with yourself that the passing is easy and beautiful.

Anyway, since we were back in Fiji and knew we were about to lose all, I thought it was my last chance to sit on that exact spot at the exact time of day she died and get a record of exactly what she saw in her final moments. I thought beforehand that it would be morbid and twisted, reliving our mum's final moments, but it wasn't. Just look at that photo. It was a simply beautiful experience, yes, and I love having this as a record.

So do you too understand why she smiled. I certainly know.

However that is just one memory among very many more memories that go back for nearly five decades, back well beyond my birth, back to when mum and dad were first married - and they got married several beaches along from this one too - and used to camp right on this beach ...

 Loloma Beach, 1953. 

Check out their bivouac! 

... promising themselves they'd one day build a beach house right there so they'd one day raise their future children to be wild and free, enjoying it all.

And they did, and we did, and it was such a beautiful gift from our parents to us and it's only just now, when we're on the verge of losing it all, that I realise that we can't take these things for granted because they are life's true blessings.

Such fun we had here, most weekends and during holidays at our little cottage ... but it's also where mum and dad moved after they retired, after we'd left home and gone out into the world, although they had to build a couple of extensions because originally being just a hut it wasn't designed 'for real life' everyday living and quickly became impractical.

But the memories!  Such lovely memories of growing up here.

Like that reef you can see in that photo there. All those late afternoon walks at low tide, examining all the interesting things trapped in the rock pools? Mainly little fish and lots of crabs and vivid blue starfish, sea urchins and, hey, once there was even an octopus in there and when I poked it it squirted all this black ink, but then it couldn't escape as it usually does because it was trapped, so we recalled mum's injunction never to stress wild animals because it could kill them, so we left it alone.

Or when the tide was coming in, we'd go body-surfing over that reef with snorkle and goggles ... being dragged in and out by the waves, and learning the hard way to always wear a T-shirt - or even better a wetsuit - because that red coral could really burn and sting.

And there was the time, as a teenager, I took my new boyfriend Rod snorkling along the outer edge of the reef at high tide. It was all great until Rod freaked out when we saw a shark right beside us. It was the usual one that always hunted there so I was used to it, so I told Rod that it was only a grey nurse and was simply looking for food, so we should just ignore it and it would ignore us, and then, minutes later, while I was exploring a little cave, something grabbed my flipper and shook ...

... and I came to on the beach where Rod had dragged me. And what was so particularly astonishing was seeing those brutal gouges all over Rod's body, and the savage bruising that quickly followed, and realising that I'd given that 'shark' a most vicious battle, even though I'd been ostensibly unconscious at the time.  Odd, right! But at least it taught Rod to not play stupid practical jokes on me!

Other memories:  oh, here's a good one: whenever the wind blew from the north, sand would bank up and cut off the creek so the fresh water flooded the banuve-side of the beach, and that water was always so warm and pleasant and the trees provided such good shade that we'd spend hours in it pretending to be crocodiles.

And then there was blue-bottle jellyfish season where, if the wind blew from the west, they'd be acres of them covering the sand, all looking like beautiful azure bubbles, so we'd have race down the length of the beach to see who'd reach the farthest end first ... but since this was a Murphy Game there was a catch. We called this Girl's Club and you couldn't be our friend unless you could play without crying because The Rules stated you could only move if you jumped directly atop a jellyfish - they'd make the most delicious squelching sound when they popped - and this game took all afternoon and naturally the tide would come in, and the waves would wash the jelly-fish tentacles around our ankles and we'd end up stung like anything.  But no matter how much it hurt, you had to take it with stoical fervour.  Gosh, it was such great fun.

 (Actually, once you'd played it a couple of times, you knew to always carry a stick so you could hold the tentacles away from you when you saw a wave coming.  But the new kids never knew this so ... yeah, yeah, a worthy initiation.)

Oh, and let's not forget that stand of ancient giant buttress trees at the other end of the beach, down beyond the Governor's Cottage, that always felt so sacred we called it "The Cathedral" because it always felt so appropriate. That part of the banuve always had the most extraordinarily rich and majestic silence and almost preternatural stillness that you could only speak in whispers, and since you're coupling that with the most sublime, unearthy light coming through the trees' canopy, being there always felt like a religious experience.

Many many years ago, when I was still a child, British writer Jessica Mitford was holidaying in Fiji just down from us. Mostly she and dad talked for hours on end, but one afternoon she said to me "You look like a girl who'd know all the secret and special places around here. Will you share them with me?"  I had grown up knowing all about the fabulous and famous Mitford Sisters and thought that I couldn't show her anything she'd find "Wow!" but I took her up Red Hill (which came down in the violent storm surge that also knocked our house off its foundation) to pick wood roses, and then, when I saw that the tide had gone out, I took her onto our reef to look into the rock pools, and then, late afternoon until just before sunset, I took her to The Cathedral, and then we sat on the beach to watch the sun go down and she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said "You have the best secret and special places I've ever seen."  

So, yes, I can tell you that all this specialness was once endorsed by Jessica Mitford, my favourite ever Mitford Sister - even before I met her - because the Mitfords' novels always felt exactly like us growing up - what with the larger-than-life father, the sweet and gentle mother, and far far too many kids who were all so quirky and badly behaved - and Jessica was the sister I always most identified with!  And when she said to me "You're the ME in your family." I felt so entirely validated.

By the way, these developers cut down all that stand, the vicious swine.  In most of the rest of the world, old stands of buttress trees are World Heritage, with good reason, so this is definitely a rat act of the first order.

  

I could go on and on and on because I've barely scratched the surface of these memories, but the day has got away from me, so I'll end with just one more.  

Let's make it a good one: OK, got one:  the time that travel writer Paul Theroux left our beach in a kayak to row to out to Beqa, the island you can see out there in that photo, and Little Brother, who was only about three at the time, saw him go and, since there was an old bilibili (bamboo raft) left abandoned on the beach, decided to follow him ... and got so far out to sea before we even noticed he was gone - and without Theroux even noticing a very little boy was rowing behind him - that when mum finally spotted him she had to race home to phone Robert Miller, who was back then running the local marina down at Pacific Harbour, to send out a boat to rescue him.

And now I think about it, Robert often had to send out a boat to rescue lots of people. A huge number over the years. Loloma Beach could do a spectacular rip and a great many swimmers would be pulled out to sea, including us, although we knew how to get out of them so never needed rescuing. 

And let's not also forget that Loloma Beach also does a very savage and destructive storm surge. 

I do hope someone informs those nasty developers.

But this is meant to be saying a fond farewell to our beautiful beach. And also, I guess, to our wonderful childhood.

So Goodbye Loloma Beach.  For over 50 years we Murphys loved you so much and you will be deeply and sorely missed.  

Ave, Hail and Farewell.