David Gilmour and Colin Powell

It was love at first sight for Canadian entrepreneur David Gilmour.
Back in 1971, while on a trip to Fiji, Gilmour discovered the 880-hectare island of Wakaya in the glistening waters of the South Pacific.

One million US dollars later, the 880 hectare uninhabited island was his, and in 1987 he and wife Jill decided to share their little slice of heaven with a small number of guests by constructing several luxurious thatched-roof cottages, built in the style of traditional Fijian bures.

Today the Wakaya Club, is ranked as one of the best luxury holiday destinations in the world having played host to Bill and Melinda Gates, Michelle Pfeiffer and her TV producer husband, David E Kelley, Jim Carrey, Celine Dion, Rupert Murdoch and Pierce Brosnan – to name just a few.

As you might expect, a holiday at The Wakaya Club – where the staff-guest ratio is 12 to each guest couple – is not for the budget conscious, with all-inclusive costs ranging from US$1,900 to US$7,600 per couple per night.
Deciding that the profits should be plowed back in Fiji the billionaire couple put 100 per cent of the resort’s profits towards the improvement and development of schools across 300 Fijian islands.
But trouble is brewing in Gilmour’s paradise as landowner and traditional chiefs’ battle over Fiji's 43 private islands

At least three Fijian tribal groups are mounting court cases against the ownership of Gilmour's famously exclusive Wakaya resort.

Also targetted is the 2190-hectare Mago Island which was purchased Hollywood supremo Mel Gibson who paid US$15 million for the title deed in December 2004.

Many, both locals and foreigners who own land in Fiji are worried that the demands by the natives for the return of their ancestral land will turn nasty as it did in 2000 when George Speight's coup spread from the capital, Suva, to the most remote corners of the South Pacific paradise.

One of the private islands attacked in 2000 was the Laucala Island resort, then owned by America's Forbes publishing family, before their protest was put down by the army.

Australian media reported that at the time of cession in 1874, rule of Fiji was ceded to Queen Victoria, while ownership of its lands remained with indigenous clans.

But about 10 per cent of land — including some of the South Pacific's most spectacular patches of dirt — had already been sold as freehold title. Fiji's chiefs had begun selling islands, usually to colonial traders or officials, around 1840.
"In some cases, entire populations of islands were ejected by the chiefs in exchange for a few rusty old muskets so that unscrupulous individuals could turn the islands into copra plantations," Port Douglas-based private island broker Cheyenne Morrison told the Melbourne Age.

In the century and a half since, the islands' value has grown exponentially, helped by their rarity, a blossoming tourism industry and the publicity attracted by a list of high-profile buyers: from publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes, to British Columbia’s Raymond Burr aka Perry Mason, Austria's "Red Bull billionaire" Dietrich Mateschitz, and now Gibson and Gilmour.
Land rights activist Francis Waqa Sokonobogi said in an interview published in Australia that some form of compensation is needed to stop the locals taking action.

"There are 5000 landless Fijians, according to the Ministry of Fijian Affairs, but probably more like 5000 families," Sokonobogi says.

 "These people are the fuel that feeds the coups. It just needs a Rabuka or a Speight to head it."
Sokonobogi's organisation, the Fiji Ownership Rights Association, was founded in 1990 when he received a phone call from a group who had "liberated" the five-star Turtle Island resort and held its American owner, Richard Evanson, hostage. They were phoning from jail.

Today, he's preparing a case for the displaced people of Wakaya, on whose ancestral land now sits Gilmour’s Wakaya resort where the slogan is "Where those who have it all go to get away from it all"

In a series of articles for Fiji's Daily Post newspaper, Sokonobogi has argued that the original sale of Wakaya around 1840 — for one shilling, according to the title deeds — was fraudulent, and that the protests of the Wakaya people were ignored.
He is fronting the United Nations Indigenous Working Group in Geneva, claiming Fijian chiefs contravened international conventions on human rights by selling the island.

In a culture that defines people by their place of origin, landless Fijians are derided as "colacola nibuku", or firewood carriers, Sokonobogi says.

"This is why it is very sad for the people of Wakaya, the kai Wakaya, that they are landless," said lawyer Tevita Fa, who is donating his services to the Wakaya case.

"And yet that same place is being held by some of the richest people in this world."
The fight is also gaining momentum in Suva where descendants of the capital's original inhabitants, who were relocated to make way for the Australian Polynesia Company in 1868, are taking their government to court on August 28, claiming more than a century in rent.

On Mel Gibson’s Mago Island, locals have said they are also raising money for a court challenge.

 "Our island was sold for 2000 coconut plants, and stories told by our forefathers are that they were forced to leave at gunpoint," tribal member Timoci Waqalevu told the Fiji Times.
Their claim was raised in parliament last year but to no avail, says the island broker Cheyenne Morrison.

"Two reasons: first, Mel Gibson is rich and powerful with well-established political connections. Second, it is freehold and owned, which means the Government, if they did revert the land back, would have to pay off Gibson. He paid $US15 million and that is a huge sum in Fiji, so it really came down to not being practical, despite what I view as the valid claims by the original occupants. It is a harsh world."

The Fijian Government says it cannot interfere with the sale of private property, but is drafting laws to for a land claims tribunal that would compensate some groups.

But the draws of the exotic Fijian islands continue unabated despite the signs of trouble on the horizon.
Today, moguls can pick up the 90-hectare Blue Lagoon Island, said to have inspired the book and film of the same name, for $US25 million or the 19-hectare Natewa Bay Island for $US8 million.

"Unlike Mago Island purchased by Mel Gibson," says the listing at website luxuryrealestate.com, "Blue Lagoon was never permanently inhabited, thus when it was declared freehold in the 1860s, no native population was displaced."

Gilmour, who has enjoyed phenomenal success throughout his entrepreneurial career, much of it with Peter Munk of Barrick Gold fame have not responded publicly to the demands of the tribal leaders.

Gilmour also owns Fiji Water found in a substantial artesian aquifer on the north side of Viti Levu, Fiji's main island. The water is one of the top selling bottled water brands in the world.