Join the Celebration of Pioneers Festival by Fiji Senior Citizen Association of Qld Inc. The festival will be an extravaganza with stalls, stage shows and children rides. Fiji Senior Citizens Association of Queensland Inc invites all the diverse communities to join the celebration with a slogan ‘Let us honour them, Let us remember them and Let us thank them’

This event is being celebrated to remember those Indian men and women who were brought to Fiji as indentured labourers for the plantation and for the Government from 1879 to 1916. Over 60,500 labourers were transported to the Fiji Islands over a period of 37 years where they had to sign a 5 years contract (Girmit) to work in Fiji.

Despite many hardships and atrocities committed on the Girmitiyas (Pioneers of indenture labour in Fiji) by overseas Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) of Australia and lack of education and other facilities, they made great sacrifices and with hard work they made significant contributions towards education, maintaining their culture and traditions, building schools, Temples, Mosque, etc., for their future generations in Fiji. It is for such a vision that today’s third generations are professionals and skilled people in Fiji and who are spread around the world.

The celebration will be a token of appreciation to all the pioneers for their sacrifices and achievements which they made towards building a bright future for their generations to come, at the same time working with the local and other communities in building Fiji a multicultural society and have now become a big community of contributors to multicultural country Australia.

This festival is about recognising and acknowledging their contributions and commemorating them for their work for their community and the state.