Local work ethic
Afurther challenge has been getting workers to turn up. “I think I employ that entire island over there,” Walker says with a nonchalant wave towards a dot in the distance. “The second week or so after we started building a couple of years ago, I had all the local labourers here one day.
The next day only half of them turned up.
“When I queried the foreman he just shrugged and said they must not have felt like coming to work.”
Walker switched from paying as he went to paying on completion of each villa.
“They turned up for work again then,” he smiles, gunning the golf buggy towards his tomato patch and vegetable garden.
Like Laucala, the plan is to create a self-sustaining, health-focused, organic resort.
An early decision to invest in the local communities has at least eased the pain of conducting business in paradise.
Most of the big resorts and private islands in Fiji are urged to pour funds into community schools, libraries and the like, and the Walkers have done just that.
Sue has observed her husband of almost 50 years grapple with new modes of working.
“It’s been a very different experience.
He’s never had to turn up to a primary school before and stand there while 50 school kids sing and thank him,” she says, wide-eyed at the memory of the ceremony on neighbouring Dravuni island.
“He was pretty uncomfortable, he hates a fuss, but we were both almost in tears.”
Walker had to buy a 12-seater Twin Otter aeroplane to augment the five-seater chopper for ferrying guests and goods from Nadi.
And he bought two barges, purchased in Tahiti for more than $1 million apiece.
“I thought, ‘I need a couple of barges to bring stuff over from the mainland.
Where do I find barges? I know – I’ll read Trade-a-Boat.’
Of course, that’s not really work,” he qualifies, surprised anyone would consider it such.
“I enjoy that kind of thing. ” After a solid inspection of every nook of the resort, from the size of the walk-in robes in the hilltop residences’ secondary bedrooms to a full briefing on the production schedules of the timber yard, Walker is finally satisfied that we’ve got the picture.
He drops us at the restaurant to meet up with Sue then disappears in his buggy at breakneck speed back to his favourite spot on the island, the concrete plant, which belches smoke, dust and noise.
Sue doubts he’s sat in one of the pool loungers yet.
The family, however, love that he enjoys man-facials at the day spa.
He gets his hair cut at Kokomo, too; Rachel who works in the gardens does it for just $5.
Preparing to leave, there seems little point in asking whether Kokomo is, at the end of the day, simply the ultimate retirement plan.
Lang Walker, the Sutherland Shire boy made good, doesn’t speak that language.
And let’s not forget, his father Alec lived to 101.
If longevity is in the genes, he’s going to need a decent holiday project for some time to come.