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Flowered with Hospitality

IT is a stretch to pretend I am sleeping in Perry Mason's bed but there are tangible connections with actor Raymond Burr at Fiji Orchid.

This most delightful new enclave of six contemporary bures is set in 2.5ha of flower-laden gardens on an estate once owned by Burr.

Burr loved Fiji, not just for its agreeable climate and friendly locals but the sense of isolation and privacy he was able to find there. Like other gay actors working in the homophobic Hollywood studio system of the 1950s and '60s he was forced to live a duplicitous life. Stories were planted of glamorous girlfriends and at least one mysteriously vanished wife but it was all smoke-and-mirrors hype. It was to distant and exotic Fiji that Burr escaped to really be himself.

The former plantation on which Fiji Orchid has been built is about 15 minutes by car north from Nadi airport, en route to Lautoka. The original property, consisting of a couple of simple South Seas-style houses, was used by Burr as a stopover between the airport and remote Naitauba, a 1600ha private island in the Lau group off the northeast coast of Viti Levu that he purchased in 1965.

He lived there for about two months each year with his partner Robert Benevides, initially in the termite-ridden house built by the former owners, an elderly German couple. There was a two-way radio for communication and about 175 residents.

According to Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr by Michael Seth Starr (2008), the actor had electricity installed on the island, financed a medical clinic and a church, established a community newspaper and invested in copra production and a macadamia plantation.

Seth Starr, whose book refers to Burr as "lord-master" of the island, quotes him as saying, "There's an entire village in the middle of the island ... the people expect respect and they give it ... we import flour, salt and pepper: everything else we grow ourselves, and by using breadfruit and taro we could get along without flour."

Cindy Adams, a reporter for US-based TV Guide, was one of the few journalists permitted to visit Naitauba and in a 1970 feature she described his little domain as a "feudal set-up".

"Burr," she wrote, is "lord of the manor ... he blesses the children, he receives the elders. He is King Raymond the First." Adams reported that the hefty Burr rose at 5am and "donned his royal raiment" of sneakers and a sports shirt "so loose it resembles a muu-muu".

Fiji Orchid owner Jenny Leewai Burke also runs the popular Nukubati Island resort off the north coast of Fiji's second largest island, Vanua Levu. She understands the benefits of a bolthole close to the international airport and, as Burr did, she catches her breath here amid the shady solitude of the orchids and fruit trees before and after flights.

Her brother, Gordon Leewai, a former Fijian soccer star and government official, is the resident manager at Fiji Orchid but Jenny's personal touch is evident in the design and the details and Nukubati regular guests are already using this Nadi bolthole for short sojourns as they venture to and from Vanua Levu.

Burr's Naitauba is now home to an ashram and visitors are discouraged. In the actor's day, however, he extended hospitality to his close friends, many of whom apparently complained about the long journey from the US. Aside from the tiring international plane trip, there was a flight by light aircraft to a neighbour island and then a crossing via reefs and riptides by tiny boat to Naitauba. Burr refused to put in an airstrip, doubtless fearing an invasion of high-flying paparazzi.

But those guests who made it found a paradise of 12 beaches, limestone caves and hundreds of orchids planted by Burr. He was a keen grower of the flower and, with Benevides, hybridised an estimated 1500 new varieties at his Sea God nurseries in Hawaii, Fiji and the Azores. He sold the island in 1983.

Burr would have approved, I believe, of Fiji Orchid's simple but comfortable surrounds. His old white house -- long, low and open to tropical breezes -- now houses the dining terrace, lounge and bar, with a couple of day rooms for transit guests along fan-cooled corridors. Jenny and Gordon are of Fijian and Chinese heritage and they've decorated with an abundance of Asian furniture in the main house, from classic marble-topped tables to jade-coloured urns and rattan-backed planter's chairs.

The bures, however, are almost space-age in design. No thatch or tapa cloth here; their white-pointed roofs look like transplanted alpine peaks. And inside is snowy cold, too, thanks to super-efficient airconditioning. Hunkered down at well-spaced intervals, the bures seem to be in retreat from the glare of the sun; there are plain wooden floors, a creamy colour scheme, good bathrooms and mosquito-canopied beds. The ceiling is the underside of the textile membrane of the roof, so there's a snug tent-like effect.

At mealtime, guests lounge in white cane chairs on the tiled terrace of the tiny Raymond's Restaurant. All tables overlook bursts of purple bougainvillea, flourishing heliconia, potted ferns and, of course, wild orchids, sprouting from tree trunks and stumps.

Always there are flowers: garnishing drinks, strewn like bright lollies on the white-covered beds and perched behind the ear of head butler Solomoni. There are mangoes overhanging the large and lovely pool and trees laden with lemons, limes, custard apples, pawpaws and guava. Jenny says six gardeners tend this rich-soiled domain in the foothills of the volcanic Nausori Highlands; there are more than 1000 varieties of plants, which makes Fiji Orchid a veritable Eden in which to stroll, circled by yellow butterflies and screeching swirls of scarlet and green collared lorikeets.

The food is billed as home style but it is exceptionally good. There's slipper lobster from the Yasawas, simply grilled with butter and lemon; raw fish marinated with lime and coconut milk is served in a flawless shell. Salad leaves and spinach are estate-grown; a spiced pawpaw soup for lunch hums with flavour and a tiffin-style spread of curries comes partnered with a superb tamarind chutney.

A small day spa is about to open during my late 2008 visit but, massages aside, there is enough contentment to be had here just chilled out on the wide veranda of the main house gazing at those buoyant gardens, Fiji Bitter in hand. It is easy to imagine a trial-worn Perry Mason thus occupied, relaxed in his capacious muu-muu shirt and free from the prying eyes of Hollywood.

Susan Kurosawa was a guest of Air Pacific and the Fiji Visitors Bureau.

Checklist
Due to its proximity to Nadi airport, Fiji Orchid offers day rooms; from $F350 ($290) a double for maximum seven-hour stay. Bures are $F550 a night a double, including airport transfers. Add 17.5 per cent government tax. Be sure to visit the nearby Garden of the Sleeping Giant, the 20ha nursery started by Burr in 1977. More: www.fijiorchid.com. 
www.airpacific.com 
www.bulafiji.com

The Fiji Orchid - Fiji Tel: 679 664 0099 USA: 888 345 4669 EMail: info@fijiorchid.com

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