Sydney, July 10: Nicole Kidman and family take over the island resort (the elite Wakaya Club). Pierce Brosnan has stayed so often they call him Bula Bond.
It`s rumoured that on an earlier visit by Kidman she missed ex-husband Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz by two days. Many of the stars are less recognisable – their galaxies are banking, big business, politics and information technology. Everyone trots around in low-key beachwear and socialising is at a minimum. This is where celebrities go to drop out of sight, not to bray and display.
The Wakaya Club has become one of the favoured redoubts of the jet set for several reasons.
It is discreet and secure, the high tariff ensures exclusivity and its marketing department promotes heavily to the US market. For North Americans, Fiji must seem fantastically foreign – as exotic as, say, the Bahamas would be for Australian travellers. But Wakaya is more than just Fiji: it is a satellite removed, a self-contained colony of elite living in what looks and feels like the middle of Robinson Crusoe territory.
Not that Crusoe ever had access to a mosquito-netted four-poster or bulging wet bar.
This is castaway stuff at a resounding five-star level – nine sunset-facing bures set in deep green gardens dripping with flowers the size of saucers, an open-sided dining pavilion built in the style of a paramount chief`s abode, pale beaches, regulation groves of palms bending like ballerinas, a centrepiece flame tree scattering a confetti of orange petals. A peregrine falcon hovers over the ocean and musk parrots squawk and swirl in a great ruby flash over this one-time coconut plantation.
Many Fijian top-end resorts offer similar glimpses of paradise, but it is Wakaya`s layering of small luxuries that sets it apart.
Everything is included and there`s never a chit to sign: marine activities are part of the deal (with two scuba-tank dives per day on almost a dozen reef sites bearing names as suggestive as Neptune`s Garden), laundry is collected daily (not that the standard tropical uniform of swimmers and sarongs requires much starching), and provided without asking are woven slippers, straw hats, sunblock, toothbrush and paste, basic toiletries – all the items one could forget to pack.
The food and drinks are provided in unstinting quantities. There is French champagne by the barrow load, but equally in evidence are bottles of much-feted Fiji Water – the company belongs to Wakaya`s owner, David Gilmour, who also was co-founder of the Southern Pacific Hotel Corporation in the 1960s. So maybe it is the alchemy of this pure artesian water in its pretty waterfall-patterned bottle, the primeval vegetation and clear aquamarine sea that makes guests far too blissed out to prance and posture.
The spatula-shaped Wakaya is one of a handful of islands in the Lomaiviti Group in the Koro Sea, east of the main island of Viti Levu. It is reached by Air Wakaya – via its "fleet" of one twin-engine light plane.
The flight takes 45 minutes from Nadi airport, over water that changes density from lapis lazuli in the depths to the palest turquoise as it washes over near-submerged coral reefs.
The landing at Wakaya "international airport" is a bump and jump along the island`s grass-and-gravel strip: a four-wheel drive awaits for a short transfer to the resort at Wakaya`s northwest tip – past deer, feral pigs, goats and horses roaming in pristine forest laced with flowering vines.
The fallow deer were introduced in the 1880s when the island was owned by a Captain Houghton. A century earlier, mutiny-fleeing William Bligh spotted Wakaya from his open boat but opted not to land when two large war canoes were sighted.
Gilmour faced no resistance when he flew over the then uninhabited island in 1971 – he promptly bought it and opened the Wakaya Club in 1990.
The 890ha reef-cuffed island is dotted with holiday homes that have been built on 2ha parcels released by Gilmour from the Wakaya estate: building is strictly limited to one residence per year and construction is supervised by the resort`s long-time general manager Rob Miller, a West Australian Tom Selleck look-alike.
The oversized thatched bures, each named for a Fijian flower and placed a discreet distance apart, are airconditioned and fan-cooled, high-ceilinged with woven walls, seagrass matting, rattan furniture, Fijian tapa cloth hangings and local artefacts.
Each has a separate sitting area with casual lounge furniture and bamboo bar of the sort that demands an instant mai tai and flower behind the ear; there`s a king-sized four-poster, Hollywood-glam bathroom with his-and-hers vanity areas and deep tub plus an outdoor shower in a private lava-rock alcove. In front of each bure a beachside double hammock swings between palms seemingly planted a perfect hoist apart. There are no TVs or telephones in the bures but an internet room near the reception lobby has high-speed access and there`s a giant screen in the recreation room – decorated with artefacts that attest Wakaya was inhabited well over a millennium before Gilmour`s arrival.
There is a nine-hole golf course, gym pavilion, tennis and croquet courts – all equipment provided. The staff ratio is about 12 to each couple, but the attention is never servile, handled more as if via magic telepathy. Meals are announced by the pounding of a traditional lali or log drum, but no one blinks if you arrive late or disorderly.
Bureau Report
