After 50 years, a return to Laucala Bay amid warming NZ-Fiji relations

As the Hercules lumbered its way over Fiji's hilly interior, inside a duel of noise was playing out between the deafening thrum of the aeroplane's engines and the constant chatter - and barbs - from reunited comrades.

"You had more hair last I saw you," quipped one.

"He doesn't need ear plugs, he can just turn down his hearing aid," quipped another, as the attendant handed out orange plugs ahead of take-off.

For the 70-or-so veterans who went for a whirlwind three days in the capital, Suva, it was a grand return to a place they once called home. For various stints until 1967, they were stationed at what was the New Zealand Air Force base at Laucala Bay.

On Friday, a memorial was revealed to mark the 50th anniversary since their departure.

The bay, with its placid waters about 8km down the peninsula from Suva's city centre, was first scouted by the New Zealand military in the late 1930s, as the drum of war in the Pacific started to beat louder.

At a conference between Britain, Australia, New Zealand (and few Fijians) in 1939, Fiji was determined to be strategically crucial. It was an important location at the centre of the Pacific, with vital fuel depots and one of two communications cables between Australia, New Zealand and Britain.

As war flared, the Pacific was carved between powers yet again, with New Zealand handed responsibility for Fiji's defences. Airfields were built in Nadi and Nausori, on each side of the main island, Viti Levu, while near Suva, Laucala Bay was chosen as the site for a flying boat base.

In 1941, a team of engineers - the Aerodrome Construction Squadron - arrived. They built a slipway, a rock wall that curved its way from the shore out into the bay, as well as moorings, hangars and dozens of buildings and roads. It finally opened in 1942, at a cost of about 313,000 pounds.

"It was pretty spread out," said Ian Brousch, who was a flying boat pilot based there from 1961 to '62. "There were hangars and buildings and sports facilities. It spread over quite a large area."

The war never made its way as far south as Fiji, but it came close, and those based at Laucala Bay were mostly involved in maritime patrol and the occasional cat-and-mouse chase with Japanese submarines.

After the war, the New Zealanders stayed for another twenty years, becoming the home of 5 Squadron, which operated the Sunderland flying boats. Round, big-bellied planes with a plump nose, four propellers and big drooping floats that protruded from their wings.

"They were very slow," said Mr Brousch. "They weren't protected from the elements either. If it was raining outside, you could guarantee it would be raining inside. It would be hot when we took off and we'd be freezing up in the sky."

"But they were very good to fly," he added. "Genuine workhorses."

"They did a lot of search and rescue and island surveillance," said Bill Starkie, who was posted to Fiji as an aircraft mechanic in 1962. "They'd do big patrols out over the equator and further afield from there."

In 1949, Fiji was struck by a large cyclone, and immediately the Sunderlands were loaded up and sent island to island. Personnel who didn't fly were fanned across Viti Levu.

"One thing about the Sunderland is we didn't have to build an aiport for them," said Jay Soko, a veteran of the Fiji military. "They can land anywhere and that is ideal for them."

"After the hurricane, I seen [sic] them going up the Rewa River in the barge. They were always there."

A rescue that stood out for Mr Brousch was at Minerva, the disputed reef about halfway between Fiji and Tonga, when the Sunderland was deployed to rescue a group of people stranded by shipwreck.

Both Mr Brousch and Mr Starkie said the work at the base was hard, but it was also relaxed and social.

"Working on the engine if you got hot, you just jumped overboard," said Mr Starkie. "Though it was still a military base and although it still had military to do with it, it just seemed a more casual atmosphere - a more enjoyable atmosphere."

"You just felt as if you could relax."

"We had a big social life on the base itself," said John Trantor, who was ground crew from 1958 to 1960, and whose daughter was born in Suva. "The Garrick Hotel was one," he said, laughing.

"A lot of the fellas I worked with married local girls."

But it would not last much longer. In 1967, war in the Pacific had long ended and the New Zealand government had bought new planes - Orions - that could cover the vast expanse of the Pacific from New Zealand in one swoop.

The base at Laucala Bay was fast becoming surplus to requirement, and finally closed in 1967, with its buildings handed over for the founding of the University of the South Pacific.

Reunion

Jay Soko sat in a sagging armchair by the entrance to the Returned Soldiers and Servicemen Association, a worn nondescript concrete building hidden in the back blocks of the industrial zone at Walu Bay. In a striking red bula shirt, he delicately twisted the wires of a busted microphone chord in the hope of a repair.

Mr Soko had spent twenty years in the Fiji military, from the 1960s to the 1980s, just after the Rabuka coup of 1987. In his younger years he was a guardsman at Laucala Bay. The Fiji military, still an arm of a British ruled groups of islands, was enlisted to maintain the camp's security.

He spoke of exercising together, working together, and the sports competitions they had together.

"They were all our friends," he said. "We had some very good relationships with the airmen. They enjoyed life here. I know most of them really missed their trip to Fiji."

50 years later, some of those friends were back on a whirlwind three-day tour.

They came by bus to the club by the sawmill, its shrill squeal laying a piercing falsetto to the low rumble of backed-up traffic, trying to get into the port at the end of the grove. Harbour ferries towered above, pumping exhaust into the grey, drizzly, humid Suva air.

Up the dark stairwell they climbed, before entering the spacious clubroom. Its faded walls adorned with wooden shields, sagging flags and tapa cloths.

Old fading portraits lined four walls. Pictures of battle in black and white; veterans in their heyday, with chiselled jaws, pressed collars and haircuts you could set your watch to, as Abraham Simpson once said. At the centre was Queen Elizabeth, circa 1970, and the flag of the United Nations, the great funder of Fiji's active and ever-present military.

For much of the morning about half-a-dozen members had set up the club, preparing for the New Zealanders' arrival. They'd wheeled out savouries, scones, spring rolls, and custard tarts, laying out teabags, instant coffee, fruit juice and steel urns of hot water.

The frenzy stopped when the horde of veterans arrived. For the next hour they chatted, laughed and embraced. Gathered in chairs smattered around the club, the reminiscing began, scones were wolfed and out came the kava at 10am.

"It's just like old times," said Mr Soko. "It's been great to welcome them back."

That sentiment of kinship is what New Zealand's defence minister, Ron Mark, hoped to emphasise on the trip.

The commemoration came at the start of New Zealand's so-called 'Pacific Reset,' the name given to the foreign policy of the newly installed Ardern-Peters government.

It also comes as New Zealand looks to mend the thorny political relationship with the government of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, the former military commander who took control in the coup of 2006 - the country's third.

After the coup and the abrogation of the constitution in 2009, many military ties were suspended. But that led the Bainimarama government to pursue its so-called 'Look North' policy, searching for new friends in China, India, Russia and anyone else who would pay attention, or who wanted a foothold in the Pacific. Cooperation with Beijing increased, and a couple of years ago, container loads of Russian arms arrived in Suva.

But not everyone has been satisfied. Since the freeze, concerns have been raised about a decline in the training and discipline of Fiji's sizeable armed forces. At the soldier-to-soldier level, too, personnel lamented the lack of access and relationship with Australia and New Zealand.

Since the 2014 elections, though, both Wellington and Suva have sought to mend the relationship, despite some criticism and cynicism. Exercises and cooperation have resumed to near pre-2006 levels, and New Zealand's navy sent a patrol boat to monitor Fiji's water, after the Fiji navy lost two of its own.

But the main impetus was when Cyclone Winston struck in February 2016, causing massive devastation. Within hours, it was New Zealand and Australia who arrived with aid.

Just recently, Mr Mark announced that the navy would again deploy two patrol boats at alternate times later this year, and that New Zealand military advisors had been placed within the Fiji military.

"I'd like to think that we're on track back to a 10 out of 10, I get a strong sense that we're at eight," Mr Mark said in an interview at his hotel ahead of the commemoration, as dark clouds brewed on the horizon above the greying bay, fishing boats bobbing in the distance.

"The only reason I said eight is just rebuilding that confidence factor in each other," he said. "There is recognition that this is a new government, with a new approach and a new direction for the whole Pacific of which New Zealand is just a part.

"What I see is the high value, and the direct people-to-people relationships and the personal relationships amongst military people … What I see is that they value, deeply personally, their personal relationships with individual New Zealanders and you can't change that," Mr Mark said.

"One thing I do know already is that there's a deep sense of appreciation and - more recent times aside - a love for what New Zealand has done over the years."

The Unveiling

The Laucala Bay campus of the University of the South Pacific still had an air of its military past, from the guard box at the entrance, the barbed wire perimeter, to the weatherboard and concrete huts fanned across vast grounds. The converted mess halls and the bar, now called "WOT EVA."

At its centre, a towering structure stood draped tightly in black plastic. The crowd would gather that evening on the grass around it, beneath the palm trees in the setting Fiji sun - or at least that was the plan.

Instead, the sky growled with fury as the thunder cracked across the sky. The veterans, in what could be considered a sprint, rushed for shelter as they streamed off the bus. The heavens opened, and the rain poured, pelting the memorial and marquees with its fury.

Another boom of thunder came, this one the biggest yet. Airmen jumped, startled, while children burst into laughter.

The plan suddenly changed, and everyone now found themselves crammed into a nearby lecture theatre. Into the seats they spilled, up the slope and along the panelled walls. In the aisles there was little room to breathe, let alone sit. At the rear corner, by the door, the brass band crammed. Welcome to Laucala Bay 101, a rare sight at a university: a Friday afternoon lecture with full attendance.

The unveiling - just metres outside - was far from planned, instead broadcast to the front of the class via livestream.

Mr Mark had predicted an emotional event: "There will be tears," he said. "There will be cause for deep reflection of those who were not able to be here today."

From the lectern at the front came the speeches from dignitaries. Mr Bainimarama's speech was full of praise and his own memories.

"Those of us a certain age - and I am one of them - can still see in our mind's eye the mighty Sunderlands that used to lumber over Suva as they came into land at Laucala Bay," he said. "We still remember the roar of their engines and the splash they made as they hit the water, landing gracefully as any bird."

"In those days before television and the internet, it was a favoured weekend pastime for countless families to come down and watch the take offs and landings."

Wreaths were laid at the front of the lecture theatre, while the military men saluted the projector screen. And then, finally, the moment came to reveal the sculpture the veterans had travelled all this way to see. But it would not come easy.

In the pouring rain, broadcast live, five people fought and tugged at the plastic cover, tightly wrapped and weighed down by rain. It would not budge. Others rushed to help, some with large poles. They twisted and they tugged, they shook the plastic and they pushed it. They prodded it with a stick. The lecture theatre watched on awkwardly, some laughing.

Finally, after just over a minute, the black plastic gave way, but only to give a peek, before being swept by a breeze and wrapped around the wings and tail. More tugging ensued. Then, finally, it showed itself.

There it stood, in the glory of spotlights. The replica Sunderland - made from parts of an old Sunderland -stood atop a plinth, with large albatross wings extending from the side. The ceremony over, the veterans walked outside into the rain. It was pouring, but they didn't care. Up they stared at the grand sculpture by Savusavu artist Shane Bower, and marvelled in its splendour.

"It was well worth it," said Mr Starkie, reflecting on the trip. "You always want to come back."