The author describes the transition from villlage life in the remote outer island of Moce to urban life in Suva, the capital city of Fiji. By passing on the traditions of Indigenous navigation and canoe-building, his family and community members ensure the perpetuation of traditional knowledge among Fiji's younger generations.

This chapter considers post-independence writing from the urban South Pacific, focusing on the capital of Fiji, Suva, and its association with the birth of Oceanian modernism in the 1970s. Elaborating first on the ‘swamp to city’ narrative surrounding the construction of the capital on reclaimed land, it examines the amphibious themes that appear in narratives of gendered walking by writers including the Fijian environmental activist Vanessa Griffen and Indo-Fijian writer Subramani, alongside fiction and essays by the Fijian/Tongan writer Epeli Hau‘ofa. Drawing on the critical framework structuring previous chapters, the chapter shows how each of these writers interrogates colonial narratives in the Pacific port city by linking the reappearance of its terraqueous past to issues of ecological precarity and the colonial legacies that have exacerbated them.