Goodbye Thurston Garden
GOODBYE to a bit of the Gardens While many of you will be enjoying the fresh air, picnics and the facilities for healthy walks and exercise along our city waterfronts and in our parks for Fiji Day, you might reflect on saying goodbye to a piece of Thurston Gardens.
It’s not quite yet a done deal, but basically the slice of land next to the Fiji Museum that has been most recently used for parking and was before that well-used netball courts and before that lots of other things has been allocated to the Indian Government to build a High Commission.
So you might be thinking that the crowds who throng our other parks and recreation spaces don’t need such a comparatively modest piece of land. That’s probably because you don’t know the back story to the Gardens and the important role it has played and could play so much better, in preserving and passing on the knowledge of our simply amazing natural and cultural heritage of unique, useful and beautiful plants.
The iTaukiei history of the land follows the move of the indigenous Suva people from their old hill forts to build the town of Suva on the present site of Thurston Gardens, probably before 1820 under the reign of Tabukaucoro, Tui Suva and Vasu to Bau. There were a moat and rampart, no longer visible, and most of the houses were inside for protection. But there was some outside, including where the present residence of the Fiji President, known as Government House, stands.
Suva was sacked and burnt during Tabukaucoro’s time in a tribal war dated 1843 and it has been claimed that part of the site is a burial ground. Anyway, to make way for the transfer of the Fiji capital from Levuka, Ovalau to Suva in 1882, the indigenous inhabitants were moved to Suvavou, near Lami.
Botanical gardens that had been established near Waimanu Road in 1881 at the request of Governor John Bates Thurston were moved to the present location in 1913.
Drains were laid underground and an avenue of 101 royal palms and 39 tree ferns were planted while various notables funded the bandstand and other useful bits and pieces.
Since then the Gardens and the associated Museum have had their ups and downs and there is many a story to tell.
The depressing saga of the Master Plan to devise a workable, fundable and appropriate process to restore and improve the site started in 2013. A working group of serious professionals, influential business people and concerned citizens met and put in hundreds of hours over more than two years to produce a scheme to save and develop this valuable resource for the people of Fiji.
It was presented to a public meeting of key stakeholders in 2016 when the then President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau popped over from next door to give it an enthusiastic launching. The working group explained how they envisioned the Gardens becoming world-class, much in keeping with the wider precinct surrounding them including the restored Grand Pacific Hotel, Albert Park with its new stadium (and missing baka trees), Parliament and Government Buildings.
The stated mission is, amongst much else, to conserve, discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life. They are intended to link Fiji people with their natural and cultural heritage.
“In an age when our youth are becoming rapidly more disengaged from the natural environment, when we sense the imminent collapse of entire ecosystems and our list of threatened plant species here in Fiji mounts at an increasing rate, the presence of a revitalised Thurston Gardens is more important than ever,” the Master Plan says.
It envisages many charming, relaxing and enticingly interesting nooks and walkways to provide pleasure as well as learning. These include a floating garden collection of water lilies and other water plants on a pond; a grove of different types of Fiji bamboos; an endemic palm collection, many of which are critically endangered; a collection of food gardens featuring vegetables favoured by different communities; medicinal plants; perfumed plants; prehistoric plants; and a South Pacific orchid collection among them.
All the plants and trees will be identified on signs with pertinent information. Accessible-to-all walkways and welldesigned garden furniture as well as many casual places to sit, relax, talk and learn, especially for youngsters, are planned.
To source funding for these developments, the working group intend to establish a Friends of Thurston Gardens non-government organisation in partnership with Suva City Council. They have already received interest from 25 intending individual members, while a corporate membership is also likely. The Australian Association of Friends of Botanic Gardens has invited the planned TG Friends to become a member.
So what’s so sad about that? It’s because there has been virtually no response or support from the authorities and the only recent action appears to be the decision to rezone part of Thurston Gardens for special use – an embassy building. But there are some new brooms around who could perhaps make some sweeping decisions.
There is a small window of opportunity for those many hundreds of people who objected earlier to the building proposal to no avail, the many others who have grumbled about it but not yet officially protested and for those who have laboured so hard and long on the farsighted master plan, to submit an appeal addressed to the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Community Development by Tuesday 15 October 2019. Happy Fiji Day.