For details see PMB Doc .199

Issues for March 1937 - March 1960. Following issues only: No.369 (March 1937): No.547 (Oct. 1952): No.583 (Jan. 1956): No.633 (March 1960)

These papers were found in a suitcase in Victoria, Australia in 2013. The suitcase was labelled with the name of Mr Leonard Charles Norman Bentley. After Leonard’s death, his son, Mr Wilfred Waring Bentley, packed up Leonard’s house and transported many of his belongings to Australia, including the suitcase in which these papers were found. The papers were discovered by Elizabeth Howarth (nee Bentley) after the death of her father, Wilfred Waring Bentley. Though the suitcase had Leonard Bentley’s name on it, there were personal items in the suitcase that indicate it had been packed by Wilfred Waring Bentley.

The Bentley family arrived in Fiji in 1867 when Henry Bentley left Australia to join the cotton boom. In 1871, he left agriculture to work in the government of King Cakobau. He held various posts including chief police magistrate, superintendent of police and controller of general labour. After annexation, he served as sub-agent-general of immigration.

Captain Robert Crawford Miller Bentley was one of Henry’s eleven children. He was five years old when the family arrived in Fiji and at age 13 he was articled to barrister and solicitor Mr W. Scott. In 1883, he was appointed associate to the Chief Justice and later as clerk to the Attorney-General, before moving on to acting-registrar of the Supreme Court and curator of intestate estates. His later posts were as sub-collector of customs and post-master at Levuka. He was the commanding officer of D Company of Levuka in a volunteer defence force under the governorship of Sir George O’Brien.

Robert’s son, Leonard Bentley, worked in the commercial sector, first with Burns Philp and later with Pearce and Co. He was also involved in Levuka Town Council, Chamber of Commerce, Levuka Cricket Club and Levuka Regatta Committee. He was also active in the Anglican Diocese of Polynesia and the Holy Trinity Cathedral chapter. He married Margaret Annie Allport Waring who appears in some of the photos in this collection. Margaret was awarded an MBE for her services to the community including her involvement with the Colonial War Memorial Hospital (aka CWM Hospital). Their son, Wilfred Waring Bentley, who brought these papers to Australia, also worked for Pearce and Co.

Many of the papers in this collection appear to be official government correspondence, mostly to or from James Harding during the years 1873-1874. Many of the letters relate to the Ba campaign that was fought throughout 1873, in which Harding played a significant role. There had long been friction around Ba between the Kai Colo of the interior, coastal Fijians and European planters. There was also tension between some of the planters and the Fijian government. A group of rebellious planters, led by Colonel Whyte and J. de Courcy Ireland, were preparing to travel to Levuka with the goal of deposing government, when the Burns family and many of their staff, were murdered by Kai Colo people on the Vunisamaloa plantation. The government responded by sending Fijian troops under the command of Major W.H. Fitzgerald to set up a defensive outpost at the headwater of the River Ba. The settlers were angered by the arrival of this force, believing it incapable of defeating the Kai Colo and putting their own lives and plantations in more danger. They took up arms against Fitzgerald, who was forced to withdraw until he was joined by Captain James Harding, then head of police, with approximately 50 more Fijian troops.

Fitzgerald and Harding lead an attack on the Kai Colo at Na Korowaiwai, killing approximately 170 people. On their return to the coast, there was a skirmish between the armed settlers and Harding’s men. The situation was diffused when White and de Courcy Ireland were detained and the group of armed settlers disbanded. Major Fitzgerald and Major H.C. Thurston then lead a campaign to wipe out the Kai Colo, which came to a head at the village of Na Culi, where many Kai Colo were killed and many were taken prisoner. Having captured Na Culi, the campaign was paused when Harding and H.C. Thurston accused Major Fitzgerald of cowardice and had him court martialed. There are papers relating to the charges against Fitzgerald in this collection.

The letters also describe plantation disputes including land acquisition, evictions and murder, the collection of taxation and other matters. Most letters are between James Harding and government officials G.G. Whalley, G.A. Woods, J.B. Thurston, H.C. Thurston, M.H. Fraser, John Langford, Thomas Mackenzie, and planters such as A. Eastgate, David Hannah, J. de Courcy Ireland and others. There are also a number of letters in Fijian language, including from Josaia Sorowali. There is also a hand drawn map of action near Na Culi on 19 July 1873.

It is unknown how or when these documents came into the Bentley family. Henry Bentley was employed in law enforcement during the years in which much of this correspondence was written but it is unknown if he knew Harding, or if he had contact with these papers in any way. His son Robert Bentley also held government positions, though post-Cession. There are also papers related to the Waring family in this collection, though less is known about this side of the family. There are two letters addressed to Henry T. Waring Esquire, including an offer of the post of government arbitrator in the acquisition of Makogai and Makodraga islands and from the employees of Messrs Henry Cave & Co of Levuka. A Henry Thomas Waring worked as a plantation manager for Colonial Sugar Refining Company on the Rewa River in the Nausori area and was later a customs officer in Levuka.

Also included in these papers is a collection of verses, Government Gazettes, photos of the Waring family, other photographs and Turpin’s Almanac 1873. There are also envelopes addressed to Mrs LC Bentley (Margaret Bentley), hospital Christmas cards from 1955 and a newspaper article on Mr Leonard Charles Bentley.

These slides were taken by John Baker while he was undertaking fieldwork for a PhD at the Australian National University (ANU) on the relationship between shipping transport costs and patterns of spatial development in Fiji and Tonga. John and his wife Liz (Elizabeth) lived in Suva and Nuku’alofa and were fortunate to travel extensively by ship around Fiji, as well as visiting the Vava’u Group in Tonga. The collection mostly includes ships and other vessels (including Japanese fishing boats, punts and whaleboats), as well as shipping infrastructure. It also includes landscapes, street scenes and personalities encountered.

In Fiji, shipping infrastructure includes Queen’s Wharf, Suva Wharf and the CSR (Colonial Sugar Refinery) wharf/jetty in Lautoka. Cargo is loaded and unloaded, including sugar, cars, timber and copra. Businesses include Pacific Fishing Co. and Morris Hedstrom. People photographed are Barry Shaw, Bill Erich, Dorothy Toussaint, Ian Fairbairn and Heidi Fairbairn and their son John Fairbairn, Liz Baker and John Baker, as well as the ANU House caretakers Manuele and Asenat. Places photographed are Sigatoka, Walu Bay, Deuba, Mualevu village and Lomoloma at Vanua Balavu / Mbalavu Island, Munia Island, Cikobia Island, Korotoga, Levuka, Yacata Island, Kanacea Island, Nayau Island, Naivaka Village, Bua coast of Vanua Levu Island, Nadura, Macuata coast, Undu Point, Somosomo, Taveuni, Taveuni coastline at Naikelemusu, Rewa Delta and Laucala Bay, Suva. There are general views of sugar cane / sugarcane fields and other agriculture (including rice, copra and use of bullocks), coral reefs, Suva housing, including new and informal housing, as well as the ANU house at 30 Beach Road.

In Tonga, photographs include shipping and other vessels (including steel barges, cutters, landing craft, sailing boats and others), as well as shipping infrastructure at Faua Harbour, Touliki Harbour, Neiafu wharf and Queen Salote Wharf at Nuku’alofa. Ships carrying passengers and cargo. Places photographed are Makaha'a Island, Pangaimotu Island, Tokulu Island in Ha'apai Island Group, Ha'afeva Island, Pangai village on Ha'apai Island, Vava’u Island (including abandoned airstrip), Onetale Bay and Neiafu town. People photographed are Liz Baker, Bill Toussaint and Elizabeth Toussaint. Scenes include coral blocks for Langi tombs, lakes, horses, vanilla gardens, Wesleyan church and Burns Philp store, amongst others.

Selection of slides for digitisation was made by John Baker.

The Oceania Marist Province Archives Series (OMPA) is the result of a special project during which records of the Catholic Church in islands of the Western Pacific were copied by Father Theo B. Cook, SM in collaboration with the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau. (Cook was born Theodorus Bernardus Wilhelmus Kok but chose to go by the name Cook in Australia: Povey, 2010). The OMPA series covers the Diocese of Tonga (OMPA 1-25), Diocese of Samoa and Tokelau (OMPA 26-74), Marist Fathers, Rome (OMPA 80-100), Diocese of Wallis and Futuna (OMPA 101-126), Diocese of Port Vila (OMPA 127-178), Archdiocese of Noumea (OMPA 179-360) and the Oceania Marist Province Archives (OMPA 361-400).

Detailed indexes were prepared for the six diocese and those records copied in Rome. These can be found at http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/pambu/collections/microfilm.php or compiled in The Catholic Church in the Western Pacific: a guide to records on microfilm (Robert Langdon, ed.), Canberra, 1986.

PMBPhoto 101 is a collection of 176 selected photographs of Fiji subjects taken over two weeks in August 2009. Friends living in Suva – Judith Robinson and Chris Gregory, Brij and Padma Lal and Ian and Valerie Campbell – organised several people to meet and places to visit on Viti Levu and Bau. The photos were selected from a collection of 414 photos. They complement the photos in PMBPhoto70 taken at the same time by Bill Gammage.
The subjects include places of Fiji historical and political interest such as Nukulau Island, and in Suva town, Parliament House, Government House, the Government buildings complex foundation stone, the list of Governors of Fiji 1874 to 1938 and 1938 to 1970, the Supreme Court of Fiji, buildings constructed in colonial times including the old picture theatre, the Sacred Heart Cathedral, Suva town market, the Grand Pacific Hotel, and Albert Park, and more recently the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption. A banner “We Need Rainbows Not Rambos” reflects the feelings of some people at the time. More contemporary subjects of general interest in Suva include a McDonalds fast food outlet, an artefact shop, the view across Nabukalou Creek, Pure Fiji cosmetics, and the University of the South Pacific.
Suva’s hinterland provided the following subjects: the Colo-I-Suva Forest Park and Quarry, and Nausori. Of historical and particular personal interest are the photos of the Methodist Church at Dilkusha and its attached kindergarten. Jan’s stepmother spent several months at the Dilkusha Methodist Mission after she left school in 1922. Other subjects include Takalana Resort with its lovo pit (earth oven), pineapple and other flowers and Moon Reef. For photos of dolphins see PMBPhoto70.
The Hindi wedding in Suva of Savita and Mahen is a major subject. It took place over an evening and three days, and was full of interest, colour and activity. The selection includes 50 photos.
Other major subjects are Bau, Bukuyu and Mt Tomanivi (Mt Victoria). There are 25 photos in the selection of Bau, where we were the guests of Ratu Jope Seniloli and his wife, Adi Seru Seniloli. The photos show some traditional customs as well as some of the sites of this historic island. Spending a night with Freddy and Tupou Gusulevu and family in rural Bukuyu in the Nausori Highlands was also enjoyable, and provided many subjects including kava and turmeric farming, as well as rural improvements such as local hydro electricity and football fields. The 27 photos in this selection include subjects seen on the way to and from Bukuyu including views from the Latamai Scenic View at the Tongan Hill Fort and the parabolic sand dunes at Sigatoka. Eleven photos are of subjects near Mt Tomanivi as well as the mountain itself, including Navai village and the Monasavu dam construction site.
Women are often the subject of these photographs. They are photographed working in shops, markets, as security guards, in their homes, and as participants in and guests at the wedding.

Alfred William Martin (1844-1928) was born in Clarence Plains, Tasmania, first son of William Martin (1805/6-1878), a convict transported to Tasmania, and Hannah Braim (1825/6-1860). Alfred William Martin was educated at Kettering Grammar School in Northamptonshire while his parents were revisiting England. Returning to Tasmania, Martin became a seaman, despite his good education, firstly on the ship Gem sailing out of Hobart and then, while still in his teens, on a whaler, Southern Cross, Capt. Mansfield, sailing out of Hobart to whaling grounds off New Zealand, NSW, and the New Hebrides. He then sailed on the Thomas Brown, Capt T.H. Brown, a freighter working between Melbourne and Adelaide. Subsequently Martin sailed a schooner, Jeannie Darling, 80 tons, owner Darling formerly a boat builder in Hobart, carrying timber and other goods between Melbourne and Schnapper Point (Mornington).

In Melbourne Martin joined the crew of a Brigantine, El Zéfiro (300 tons, Callao), Capt Manuel Diaz Garcias of Peru, smuggling opium to the China trade via Gilolo Island, Surigao and Manila; smoking bêche-de-mer at Ponape; trading in the Marshalls, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji; trading for sandalwood in the New Hebrides; sailing onwards through the Banks Islands, Santa Cruz, San Christobal, Malaita, Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and back to Manila via the Moluccas and Celebes. El Zéfiro then sailed for Bougainville, reinforced with Bougainville warriors carried out a blackbirding raid in Aoba (Ambae) in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), then sailed on to South America, touching at the Marquesas and Galapagos Islands, selling the New Hebridean slaves at Mollendo in Peru.

Alfred William Martin gave the manuscript to his granddaughter, Clara Ella Simm (b.1897), who he had brought up as a child after her father, William Simm (1855-1901), died in a flu epidemic in Launceston. When Dr Macnicol received the manuscript from his mother, via his sister, it was in a bundle tied with string. Dr Macnicol passed the manuscript to a conservator who repaired torn and fragmented pages. Dr Macnicol top-numbered the pages consecutively in pencil and transcribed the manuscript. He passed the transcript to Rafael Pintos-Lopez of Michelago, near Canberra, who submitted the transcript to Professor Brij Lal for assessment.

Untitled incomplete manuscript written by Alfred William Martin of Tasmania, written possibly in the 1890s relating his Pacific voyages and adventures in the 1860s, Ms. (gaps), re-paginated, pp.1-202; together with transcript of the manuscript made by Dr Peter Macnicol, Ts., pp.1-251.
See Finding aids for details.

For details see PMB Doc .199

Issues for June - December 1935

This collection of 52 photographs records a visit to Fiji and Tonga in January/February 1975 by Bill and Jan Gammage. The visit was to see friends and look around.
Of Fiji, there are 28 photos. The subjects include: Nadi, Man Friday Hotel near Korolevu on the south coast of Viti Levu, Suva, and Levuka on the Ovalau Islands.
Of Tonga, 24 photos were taken. The subjects include in and around Kolovai, Sione and Ruth Latukefu's home, Nuku'alofa on the north coast including the Royal Palace, Orahaei Beach near caves and a boat connected to the Minerva Reefs incident, the blowholes and the Triithon.

This collection of 54 photographs records a visit to Fiji in August 2009 by Bill Gammage. The visit was to see friends and look around. The photos were taken in Suva and around Viti Levu. PMBPhoto_101 complements these photos.
Subjects include Suva, Suva hinterland, Bau, Takalana Bay and Moon Reef, Tongan hill fort and views, Nausori Highlands and Bukuyu Village. The Sigatoka Sand Dunes and Mt Victoria (Mt Tomanivi) are also subjects.

This collection of slides and photographs was taken by Robert Norton on his first research trip to Fiji, which took place during the 1966 Legislative Council elections campaigning.

The general Legislative Council elections were held in late 1966, just over a year after the first constitutional conference in London, and five years after the British government announced its plan to prepare Fiji for self-government.

The indigenous Fijian leaders were initially very anxious about this objective, viewing it as a threat to the protection they believed the Fijians had enjoyed under the colonial government’s policies, based in part, on the government’s interpretation of the Deed of Cession by which nearly 100 years before the leading chiefs had entrusted the islands to the British crown.

The Fiji Indians who in the 1960s were 51% of the population, and generally more advanced economically than the Fijians (43% of the population), looked favourably on the prospect of an end to colonial rule and their principal leaders called for a common franchise to replace communal (ethnic) political representation. The very influential but tiny European minority, concerned to preserve their longstanding privileged political representation, stood with the Fijians against radical constitutional change.

The 1966 elections were the first in which broadly-based political parties competed for a substantial power in the colonial parliament. The 1965 constitutional conference had changed the parliament (legislative council) from a council dominated by colonial officials appointed by the governor, to one dominated by elected representatives: 14 Indigenous Fijians, (2 elected by the Great Council of Chiefs), 12 Indians, 10 General electors (Europeans, Part-Europeans, Pacific islanders other than Fijians, and Chinese). The new constitution completed the expansion of the vote to a universal franchise, begun in 1963. Only four seats were reserved for colonial officials.

Most of the electorates remained ethnically defined, and all the seats remained ethnically reserved.

But overlaying the many communal electorates, were now three very large Cross Voting electorates covering the entire colony. They were multi-ethnic, made up from the communal electorates, and each had three reserved seats: Fijian, Indian, and General. The electors were entitled to four votes - one in their communal electorate, and three in their cross-voting electorate. Voting was not compulsory, and to cast a valid vote an elector need tick only the communal seat ballot paper if they wished. Communal seats numbered 9 Fijian, 9 Indian, and 7 General; there were 3 Fijian, 3 Indian, and 3 General cross-voting seats. Indigenous Fijians enjoyed additional representation by the two Council of Chiefs members of the parliament.

The intention of introducing the cross-voting electorates was to give people experience in supporting candidates of different ethnic identities from their own - a step, the British said, toward an eventual common franchise without reserved seats. It was hoped that political parties would each field candidates of different ethnicity, and that these would campaign together - the communal candidates assisting the campaigning of their cross-voting partners.

Some of the slides and photos illustrate this joint campaigning in western Viti Levu, by Fijian, Indian, and General candidates of the Alliance Party. All the pictures were taken on Viti Levu, Fiji’s major island.

The Alliance Party, whose main component body was the indigenous Fijian Association, won 22 seats (12 Fijian, 3 Indian, 7 General). The Federation Party (later the National Federation Party) secured only the 9 communal Indian seats; the party fielded only one non-Indian candidate, Fijian cane farmer Penaia Rokovuni (photos 48-54). Three General candidates were elected as independents.

References

Robert Norton 'Race and Politics in Fiji', University of Queensland Press, 1977, revised edition 1990

Roderick Alley 'The Emergence of Party Politics'. In 'Politics in Fiji' edited by Brij Lal, Allen & Unwin, 1986. Pp28-51