50 Fun Facts About Fiji

What is the capital city of Fiji?

Suva. Britain made it the colonial capital in 1882 because the first one, a port wedged between cliffs and sea, had no room left to grow.

Fiji is an archipelago of roughly how many islands?

330. Only about a third of them are inhabited, and roughly seven in ten Fijians live on just one island.

Which island, lying to the north of the largest, is the second-largest in Fiji?

Vanua Levu. Foreign traders first flocked to Fiji for the sandalwood at its Bua Bay in the early 1800s, and stripped the stands they could reach within little more than a decade.

Which royal handed Fiji its independence in 1970?

Prince Charles, then 21, stood in for the Queen. Independence fell on the 96th anniversary of the day the chiefs ceded the islands to Britain.

After the 1987 coups made Fiji a republic, which organisation did it fall out of for ten years?

The Commonwealth. Membership ended when the coup leader declared a republic, and Fiji was readmitted in 1997 after adopting a constitution that no longer favoured one community.

Which commodore seized power in Fiji's 2006 coup and later won elections as prime minister?

Frank Bainimarama ousted the elected government in December 2006 after it refused to drop a bill offering amnesty to the plotters of an earlier coup, then won the 2014 election with 59% of the vote.

Which form of rugby is regarded as Fiji's national sport?

Rugby sevens. Fiji's men won the Olympic title the first two times the sport was played at the Games, and the islands supply players to top leagues around the world.

Fiji won its first ever Olympic medal at which Games?

Rio 2016. Fiji had sent teams to the Olympics for 60 years without a medal, then its men beat Great Britain 43-7 in their final to become champions.

The traditional Fijian drink yaqona is made from the root of which plant?

Kava. The root is pounded, mixed with water and shared from a communal bowl; the bitter, non-alcoholic drink is served at important ceremonies and in everyday life alike.

The name Fiji is usually traced to a foreign pronunciation of which native name for the islands?

Viti. Fijians call their country Viti; the form 'Fiji' is usually put down to the Tongan pronunciation, 'Fisi', which Captain Cook's crews heard in Tonga and carried home.

Which Dutch explorer was the first known European to sight Fiji, in 1643?

Abel Tasman, sailing for the VOC, the Dutch trading company, in search of the Great Southern Continent, sighted Fiji's northern islands in 1643 after calling at Tasmania and New Zealand.

In 1789, which famous event left a captain charting Fiji's main islands from an open boat?

The mutiny on the Bounty in April 1789 left William Bligh adrift in an open launch; he passed between Fiji's two main islands, charting them on the way to Timor, and the strait is named Bligh Water.

Fiji became a British colony in 1874 after which chief made a final offer of cession?

Cakobau, the Bau chief whom Europeans had made king in 1871, could not keep order, so he and his fellow chiefs offered the islands to Britain without conditions.

Which disease, brought home from Sydney in 1875, killed tens of thousands of Fijians?

Measles. Fiji's former king and his sons carried it back from a visit to Sydney, no quarantine was imposed, and chiefs called to a great meeting took it home to every corner of the islands.

From 1879 to 1916, more than 60,000 indentured labourers were shipped to Fiji's plantations from where?

India. Most chose to stay when their contracts ended, and for four decades after the Second World War their descendants outnumbered indigenous Fijians.

A tabua, Fiji's most prized ceremonial gift, is the polished tooth of which animal?

Sperm whale. A tabua is handed over with a formal speech at weddings, funerals and other great occasions.

Fiji's flag places the shield from its coat of arms on a field of what colour?

Light blue. In 2015 the government announced a new flag without the Union Jack, then dropped the plan the next year, saying the money was better spent on cyclone recovery.

Fiji's currency is what?

The Fijian dollar replaced the Fijian pound in January 1969 at two dollars to the pound; its 2013 banknote and coin series dropped the Queen's portrait for native plants and animals.

Which Fijian island, nicknamed the Garden Island, is crossed by the 180° meridian?

Taveuni. A roadside sign lets visitors stand with a foot on each side of the 180° meridian, but the International Date Line itself is bent east so that all of Fiji keeps one calendar day.

Which 2000 survival film was shot on Fiji's uninhabited Monuriki islet?

Cast Away. Tom Hanks played a FedEx employee stranded on a desert island for four years, and the islet has drawn tourist boats since the film came out.

Fiji Water says its product comes from an artesian aquifer on which island?

Viti Levu. The water is shipped abroad, mainly to the United States, and what began as a 1996 start-up now ranks among Fiji's biggest export earners.

Which town on Ovalau was Fiji's first colonial capital and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013?

Levuka. Cliffs behind the port left it no room to grow, so the government moved away in 1882, and the 19th-century waterfront it left behind survives largely intact.

Fiji lies in which cultural region of Oceania?

Melanesia, the arc of islands running from New Guinea to Fiji. Fiji sits on its eastern edge, beside Polynesia, which is why Polynesian influence runs strongest in its easternmost islands.

What is a Fijian meke?

A storytelling dance. Performers act out legends and myths to chanting, clapping and the beat of slit drums, and villages stage one for big occasions such as a chief's visit.

The 2000 coup led by George Speight toppled Mahendra Chaudhry, who had been Fiji's first what?

Indo-Fijian prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the first from that community, took office in May 1999 after his Labour Party's election win and was held hostage for 56 days by Speight's gunmen in 2000.

The lieutenant colonel who carried out the 1987 coups and later became prime minister was who?

Sitiveni Rabuka, the lieutenant colonel behind both 1987 coups, won the 1992 election as prime minister and set up the Reeves Commission whose work produced the 1997 constitution; he returned to office in 2022.

Fiji's 2013 constitution must be made available in English, iTaukei and which third language?

Hindi. A local form of the language grew up among the descendants of plantation workers, and the constitution makes it a compulsory subject in every primary school, alongside iTaukei.

The Fijian town of Lautoka is dominated by which industry?

Sugar cane. Lautoka is nicknamed Sugar City: a private railway and lorries haul cane from the small farms around it to a mill that has been crushing since 1903.

Fiji's national rugby union team is nicknamed what?

The Flying Fijians beat Australia 22-15 at the 2023 World Cup, their first win over the Wallabies since 1954, and it sent them into the quarter-finals at Australia's expense.

Iliesa Delana became Fiji's first Paralympic champion at London 2012 by clearing the bar in which event?

High jump. Delana, who lost a leg in a bus accident as a small child, cleared 1.74 m at his first attempt, and that settled it: the runner-up matched the height only at his second.

Sefanaia Sukanaivalu is the only Fijian awarded which medal for wartime bravery?

Victoria Cross. Badly wounded on Bougainville in 1944, he knew his men would keep risking their lives to reach him, so he raised himself into the enemy's fire to stop them.

Tomanivi, Fiji's highest peak, was formerly known by which name?

Mount Victoria. The colonial name has given way to the Fijian one for the 1,324 m summit, and the range it crowns splits the main island into a rain-soaked south-east and a dry north-west.

Roughly how many people live in Fiji?

About 900,000. The 2017 census counted 884,887, and growth is slow because tens of thousands of people have left since the coups of 1987.

Arthur Gordon, governor of Fiji from 1875, made it illegal for outsiders to buy what from Fijians?

Land. Gordon froze sales in the 1870s to shield village life, and the rule held: more than four-fifths of Fiji still belongs to indigenous landowning clans.

Fijian masi cloth, still used in ceremonies, is made from what?

Tree bark. Women beat strips of paper mulberry bark into cloth and decorate it with geometric designs; once everyday clothing, it is now kept for ceremonies and sold to visitors as wall hangings.

Tongan prince Enele Ma'afu and his warriors spread which church through eastern Fiji from the late 1840s?

Methodist. Missionaries had reached Lakeba in 1835, but Ma'afu's army of Christian Tongans carried the faith much further, and most indigenous Fijians are Methodist today.

Which wraparound garment, brought to Fiji by missionaries in the 1800s, is now regarded as its national dress?

Sulu. Early converts wore the cloth wrap to show they had become Christian; today a tailored version with pockets is standard business and formal wear for Fijian men.

The Sawau people of Fiji's Beqa island are renowned for which ceremonial feat?

Firewalking. The Sawau cross a bed of red-hot stones barefoot, a rite quite separate from the devotional fire walk performed at religious festivals elsewhere in Fiji.

The 1867 killing of missionary Thomas Baker by the Kai Colo took place at the headwaters of which river?

Sigatoka's upper valley in the Navosa highlands held Nabutautau, the village where Baker was killed and eaten in July 1867; the Kai Colo of that interior were only subdued in an 1876 campaign.

Fiji's main international airport and tourism hub, on the west of the largest island, is at which town?

Nadi. The airport stands on the island's dry western side, some 200 km from the far wetter capital, and island groups a short cruise away became some of Fiji's most visited.

Fiji's Vatukoula has been mined since the 1930s for which mineral?

Gold. The strike of the early 1930s grew into the Emperor mine, long Fiji's main gold producer and an employer of about two thousand people.

Tongan prince Enele Ma'afu built his power base in which Fijian island group, the nearest to Tonga?

Lau. Ma'afu arrived in the 1840s, was given the title Tui Lau by local chiefs in 1869 and made a bid to dominate all Fiji before joining the chiefs who ceded it to Britain.

The 1871 defeat of the Lovoni people of Ovalau by the Bau chief's government led to their being what?

Sold to settlers. Invited to a feast of reconciliation, the Lovoni were seized as they sat down to eat, then sold as plantation labour and scattered across the islands.

Which Fijian island group was the setting for the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon?

Yasawa. The film was shot on privately owned Nanuya Levu, and the once-remote chain, a short cruise from the international airport, became one of Fiji's most visited.

In 2016 Fiji became the first country in the world to formally approve which global climate deal?

The Paris Agreement. Fiji's parliament ratified it two months after the deal was struck, and in 2017 the country presided over that year's UN climate summit.

By what grim nickname was Fiji known during colonial times?

The Cannibal Isles. Early European accounts cast Fijians as fierce warriors and cannibals, though the same writers praised them as builders of the finest vessels in the Pacific.

Which Fijian chief and statesman was decorated for fighting with the French Foreign Legion in the First World War?

Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, an Oxford student when war broke out, joined the French Foreign Legion in 1915, was wounded and decorated, and came home to become the leading Fijian statesman of his day.

Who became Fiji's first Chief Minister when a cabinet system was set up in 1967?

Ratu Kamisese Mara led Fiji as prime minister from independence in 1970, lost the 1987 election, and was back in the post within months, reappointed after that year's coups.

In May 2009, Fiji became the first nation ever suspended from which regional body?

The Pacific Islands Forum suspended Fiji in May 2009 after the military government missed a deadline to hold elections; it was let back in only after the vote of 2014.

Which Fijian golfer ended Tiger Woods's five-year run as world number one?

Vijay Singh. Suspended from the Asian tour in 1985 over a disputed scorecard, he worked as a club professional in Borneo before fighting his way back, and was 41 when he reached the top.