Birth of Buresala Jetty
DURING the seventies we used to spend a great deal of our school holidays in Viro on Ovalau and at night fishing and looking for mud crabs was a favourite event. However, the best place to hunt for the
qari crabs was at the Buresala mangrove that was about two miles away and had to be done secretly but at times the tabu
cagi kerosene lamp that was used gave away our position and then the gun shot would echo in the thick lush virgin forest to scare us off the property of the grand old lady locally known as Mrs Clay.
There was also an unused jetty at that time there and possibly a wreck of a naval ship some metres in the mangrove. The antiquated house where the late Mrs Clay lived in was the first building of the Seventhday Adventist (SDA) that was known as Buresala Training School, the first educational institution designed to train workers that the Seventh-day Adventist church operated in Fiji (and, in fact, the South Pacific Islands region). In 1904 the church wanted to establish a permanent school in Viti Levu but could not find any suitable sites.
The church heard about 300 acres of land that was owned by one Morris in Buresala on Ovalau and showed keen interest. The same year two SDA church pastors arrived in the mission yacht the Adi Suva and maybe was the first vessel that ever arrived and was anchored in Buresala. They negotiated and finally purchased the property and immediately the school started to take shape initially with the Fijian bures built by the people of Bureta Village.
The other infrastructures such as the jetty was constructed for the school’s many vessels that arrived from the other parts of Fiji and the Pacific. By the 1930s Buresala continued to be fully fledged important training centre, but important changes had been taking place in Fiji and in the educational work of the church and finally ceased operation in 1939 when Fulton College in Tailevu was established and the Buresala property sold again.
From 1940s the Buresala jetty was seldom used except for the merchant ships that stopped over night during their journey to the other parts of Fiji as night traveling was not encouraged due to the infant stage of navigation technologies.
This then became a popular picnic spot for the people of Levuka which had a cave like stone structure where many beer drinking parties happened.