The Voyage on 'Tofua' - chapter 1

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Ever since I was at school I knew I would travel. Growing up in New Zealand in the fifties and sixties the world had always seemed to me to be so far away. Towards the end of the sixties air travel was just beginning to become affordable, but the bulk of international travel was still by ship.
The world was slowly opening up and becoming accessible, but there was still a mystique about many places – Kathmandu, Kabul, Varanasi, Isfahan – the names rolled off the tongue letting the imagination run wild with dreamy painted domes, exquisite floral gardens, palaces with inlaid balconies and mysterious temples to pagan gods. It was an age for the romantic. I had been inspired, early on, by Peter Pinney’s book, Dust on My Shoes, a very readable account of a journey he made overland
through Europe and Asia just after the War. His story had ended tragically with the death of his Dutch travelling companion in the Chindwin River in Burma, but the book had given me a taste of the Overland route to which I was to become very familiar with in later decades.

The travel bug in me was also stirred by a teacher I had had for three years at the original Te Atatu Primary School in Auckland. Mr Bell, a Scotsman, had travelled extensively in the 40s & 50s, before taking up his teaching role in NZ. Nothing delighted us 10 to 12 year olds than to side track Mr Bell into long deliberations on his adventures in Africa, Asia or elsewhere. Perhaps we went too far one day as I can remember, in an uncharacteristic show of pique, he declared that not one of us ‘layouts’ would never set eyes on Lake Rudolf, now Lake Turkana, in Kenya. This challenge always stuck with me and I decided to prove him wrong. In the course of my travels I came close, visiting other areas in Africa that Mr Bell hadn’t seen, but I never did set eyes on Lake Rudolf – perhaps that is my tribute to George Bell – he was probably right, none of us has ever seen Lake Rudolf, although I guess here. After almost 50 years on I cannot speak for my fellow classmates.

My first foray away from New Zealand’s shores was by ship. The MV Tofua was a Union Steamship Co cargo/passenger ship of 5300 tons built in 1951. Affectionately known as the ‘banana-boat’, each month the Tofua completed a circuit of a number of the smaller Pacific Islands close to New Zealand, taking up provisions and cargo and in turn, collecting bananas, oranges, pineapples, copra, etc for the New Zealand and International markets. The monthly visit of the ‘Tofua’, for several of the islands we visited, was the islanders only regular contact with the outside world. This seemed an ideal
introduction to the great wide world, so along with my cousin, Keith, we decided to spend our Summer holidays of 1967 – 68 on a journey of, to us, discovery in the Pacific.

It was just a couple of days after Christmas 1967 when the Tofua pulled away from Queens Wharf with us on board. Coloured paper streamers, always a feature of departing passenger ships in those days, strained then snapped, adding to the detritus washing under the wharf in the turbulence of the ship’s twin propellers.
For three days the Tofua headed north to the tropics. My greatest memory of this voyage was the colour of the seas to the north of New Zealand, a rich deep indigo, like the Indian ink we used in the inkwells in Mr Bell’s classes. Long stretches of what appeared to be sand banks stretched across the placid sea. This, I was told, was plankton and there would be a lot of fat fish and shellfish around the Northland coast. Flying fish became more frequent and a tropic bird was seen. A raucous New Year’s Eve was celebrated on board, followed by a fine dinner the next day.


It was New Year’s Day 1968, when, in the early afternoon, the hazy outline of the Fijian island of Kadavu appeared on the horizon. My first sighting of a foreign land. Later in the afternoon we sailed along the island’s coast and to a dilettante traveller such as myself the distant sight of a palm-fringed shore interspersed with mainly white, red or green-roofed houses conjured up romantic images of beachcombers, of colonial administrators forgotten on a tropical shore - Joseph Conrad was alive and well in my imagination. That evening Keith and I walked the darkened streets of Suva.

The next morning when the stores opened in Cumming Street, I purchased my first SLR camera – a Ricoh which became an indispensible piece of equipment for many years in my future travels.

Our next port of call, across the International Dateline, was Apia, capital of Western Samoa. My family had historical connections with Apia as my great-grandfather on my mother’s side had been a well known trader in Apia in the late 19th & early 20th centuries. George Westbrook, described by the American writer Julian Dana as ‘Samoa’s greatest adventurer’ had come to Apia in 1890 with his wife and young family, after the Great Hurricane which had destroyed his trading post, and livelihood, on Uvea (Wallis Island), a French territory in the Pacific.
This was the same hurricane that had devastated American and German navy ships in Apia Harbour. George Westbrook set up a trading store in Apia, becoming a well known writer and outspoken critic of the New Zealand repression of the Mau political movement of the 1920s, until his death in 1939. At the time of my visit on the Tofua I knew little about my great grandfather, other than he had lived in Apia. Consequently I had no contacts and was unable to make any enquiries during our brief stay in Samoa.
The paradise that was Samoa in the ‘60s was confirmed by the pristine tropical pool we went swimming in near Apia, then negated somewhat by the overwater toilets that still existed along what was a beautiful coast. Thankfully times have now changed and this vector of pollution has now been removed from edge of the lagoon.

In Pago Pago, beneath the glowering Rainmaker Mountain, we watched as a belated Father Christmas (who arrived on our ship) visited a gathering of excited children in the main park in Fagatogo. Before leaving American Samoa we went for a dip in the pool of the famous Rainmaker Hotel.


Next morning I awoke with a start. All was silent. The ships engines had stopped and every so often there would be a loud metallic clunk. Muffled shouts and talking could also be heard. Through the porthole I could see a low palm covered shore. We were anchored off the small island of Niue. In the 1960s the Tofua was the only regular contact Niue had with the outside world, a day when islanders brought their shell and seed jewelry to sell in the small market, the day the kids spent their pocket money on the small supply of ice cream the ship brought each month and supplies of tinned bully-beef were replenished.

Before going ashore we watched as a new Datsun Bluebird was unloaded by crane onto a barge for transport ashore. All cargo had to be transported ashore by barge as the small wharf on the island did not extend as far as the island’s barrier reef. A Niuean in an outrigger was fishing off the stern of the ship. He seemed to just speak the local Polynesian language until his fishing line became entangled on the coral below. Evidently Niuean does not have its own vocabulary of swear words!
We went ashore by launch. Bill, our cabin mate had gifts sent by a work mate in Auckland to family on Niue, and we were able to find them in the market at Alofi, the main town. It was my first experience of the hospitality of the Pacific Islanders, as we shared a snack of boiled taro, kumara and bully beef, sitting by a corrugated iron shed in the market. There were a few shell necklaces and bead bangles in the market and woven palm hats, but not a great deal else.
I heard later that the famous Samoan hotelier, Aggie Grey, who had joined the Tofua in Apia for one of her regular journeys to Auckland, had bought up most of the Islanders handicraft to on sell in her shops, much to the annoyance of other passengers. During the rest of the voyage we would often see Aggie sitting on deck. She would always smile and nod in acknowledgement when we passed.
We spent part of the afternoon swimming along the coast with some of the local Niuean children before re-embarking and setting off for the Tongan islands.

It was early morning when we reached the Tongan islands of Vava’u. I remember thinking how stunningly beautiful these islands looked from the ship as we made our way to the Port of Refuge, one of the most sheltered harbours in the Pacific, passing the Belfast registered Beaverbank here to collect copra, anchored in a remote bay. The small town of Neiafu, second largest in Tonga, is at the head of the harbour and it was at the small wharf here that the Tofua tied up.
We spent the morning ashore in this small Tongan port, visiting the Burns Philp store. The morning was marred by several heavy showers of rain, typical in the tropics at this time of the year. Around lunch time we returned to the ship just as an extremely heavy shower lashed the dock area, saturating the boxes of bananas being loaded for New Zealand. The ship was to leave around three in the afternoon and this was an obvious festive occasion for the Tongans. We noticed that many of the dock hands were still on board as the Tofua cast off. There was an hilarious interlude as a rather large Tongan woman and her two children, evidently late for the passage to Nuku’alofa arrived breathless on the wharf. As mooring lines had already been released, the captain kept the bow pressed against the wharf while, to the merriment of the crowd, the woman and her children were bundled, through a forward cargo door, safely on board. As the Tofua gaining speed, back away, we saw the reason why so many dock workers had stayed on board. These young men now began leaping and diving overboard and swimming back to the wharf, again to the cheering and clapping of those on the boat and their friends on the wharf. For the dock hands this appeared to be the highlight of the Tofua’s visit.
On the previous voyage the Tofua had witnessed a volcanic eruption at sea near the Ha’apai group, not far from the island the ship was named after. The crew had observed an isand of considerable size that had been created from volcanic ejecta. I had been rather excited about the prospect of seeing this ‘new’ island and the evening we left Vava’u, we were in the vicinity of the eruption. However we were to be disappointed. All we were able to see on the ship’s radar was a small smudge which we were told was a small ‘sand’ bar, all that remained of the large island of the last voyage. Evidentally most of the so-called island had consisted of light debris, pumice, scoria and such like that had been washed away in heavy seas in the previous month. It was early the next morning that we arrived at Nulu’alofa, the Tongan capital on the island of Tongatapu.

Keith and I were shown around the highlights of Tongatapu by a penfriend with whom I had corresponded for two or three years. We visited the Ha’amonga a Maui, the enigmatic trilithon built by the 11th Tu’i Tonga in the 13th century, now believed to have been constructed for determining the Winter solstice, deemed important to the early Polynesian for their seasonal agricultural plantings. We also visited the Mapu’a ‘a Vaca blowholes, spouting spectacularly along a rather grey stormy-looking coast, and the famous flying foxes of Kolovai. Our friends, Europeans, told us of the Tongan belief that when a white flying fox is seen, it means a high-ranking chief has died. They had seen one just a couple of weeks ago flying over a central park. Many other Tongans had also seen this fruit bat and shortly after, it was announced that a high-raking Tongan had, indeed, passed away. Our visit to Nuku’alofa had culminated in a visit to a local cinema to see the Bette Davis movie ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ – a rather incongruous ending to our visit to the Kingdom of Tonga!

The Tofua was now on the home run back to New Zealand and I remember vividly lying on deck in the sun as we steamed between Tonga and Fiji listening to Tongan radio playing the entire Beatles ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ album. This was the first time I had heard it in its entirety as it had only been released a few months earlier. The ship stopped once again in Suva where we went on an afternoon ‘Oolooloo’ Coral cruise before heading back to New Zealand.

The voyage on the ‘Tofua’ was an enjoyable introduction to international travel and I was now smitten by the travel bug. Other than a short visit to the Coral Coast on Fiji with my mother (her first trip outside New Zealand), I was off, just over two years later, on a journey that was to be far more adventurous. I was to travel across Asia, on my first Overland journey from Kathmandu through to London.