It's the stereotypical surfer's dream: buy yourself a bit of land, turn it into a self-sustaining piece of heaven. In malarial jungles, on isolated atolls, among barren coastal deserts- that elusive goal to find perfection and snatch a hunk for one's self has led more than one surfer into ruination as he (or she) pursues this fantasy.

This is the story of Australians Navrin Fox and Woody Jack, two men who, with the help of Fijian boatman Ratu Jona Joseva, purchased a small plot of land on Malolo Island in 2015 with the goal of piecing together their own slice of paradise.

What came next was not the lackadaisical holiday destination they had in mind. Instead, they found themselves at odds with Chinese resort developer, Freesoul Real Estate. The resort developer had plans to build a high-end vacation destination, but in order to do so they'd need to go through Fox, Jack, and Jona.

Stab caught up with Navrin Fox to learn more about what he's been dealing with over the last few years.

Stab: How did you initially come into possession of the property?

Nav: I've got another friend [Woody] who lives in the same town as myself, here in Yamba. He went to Fiji on a trip a couple weeks before me and we sort of crossed paths in the airway. We didn't see each other, but I got over a there and was like, 'Oh wow, this is so cool. The waves are pumping, the sun's out. What's not to like about Fiji?'

And I thought, 'You know, it looks like there could be some land around...' and ended up talking to the boat driver, who was driving me around, and he was like, 'Yeah, I can get you land.'

So I got his number and his details and sort of left it at that.

When I got back home I started talking to Woody, now my partner in the land, and he was, like, 'Mate, I was talking to the same guy about the same thing.'

So we decided to do it together. We spoke to Jona, our boat driver, about getting some land. Things over there don't move real quick so it took a while, but in the end, we ended up getting one acre on Malolo Island, looking straight out at Tavarua and Namotu. Beautiful, idyllic, untouched subtropical rainforest. It was magnificent.



We put the money down and for Jona's efforts, we made him a one-third, equal share, partner. He's one of the only Fijian guys on the island to actually own a piece of land on that side.

Having a local on board with a project like this is kind of necessary, right?

Yeah. We didn't think about it like that, but it's been invaluable. It's also really cool in other ways as well. We've kind of become a part of their family, we've all become quite close. There are benefits for sure, having a local involved. But we just thought it was a good idea to have him involved for his efforts.

How does land ownership work in Fiji, for foreigners?

There's freehold land, and then there's 99-year leased land. We've got a 99-year lease on our land. We've leased that land through the native land title department. We pay a lease fee every year, and that money goes back to the traditional landowners.

It's getting harder and harder to find freehold land, but to be honest, we were just looking at this thing like a dream. Going, 'How cool would it be to have this land in Fiji? It's only a three-hour flight from our capital city.'

What was the long term plan with the land?

The long term plan was to just put a couple of bures [Fijian for a wood and straw hut] on there and just get friends and family over, initially. To use it as a place for holidays, but also for, you know, design seminars, yoga... Just a place to get away.

The land, before it was ripped apart by the Chinese was, like I said, subtropical rain forest, totally untouched. We were looking at building, do you know Foster Huntington? Those types of treehouses. The land was perfect for that. Little huts everywhere. And we've got a piece of land up on the hill that gets really good sun, so we could put solar up there and not have generators. We were just going to do something small, really minimal.

And then we were going to, eventually, gear it up. Maybe do a little bit of AirBnb, just so it pays for itself and Jona can get business out of it as well. Because he's family.

We were trying to manage it so it'd be really low impact on the land but it still brought in enough money for Jona, and for us guys to get over there to enjoy it.

How did you find out about the project Freesoul was running through your property?

Jona rang us up and said, 'Hey, you know the Chinese have bought next to us.'



And we were like, 'Cool.' They're entitled to buy land next to us. We weren't too concerned at the start. Everyone's entitled to a dream.

So we didn't pay too much attention to it, in the beginning.

And then, really quickly, things just started to escalate out of control. Because we've got the only natural access to the land. There's a cutaway in the mangroves, that's half of our boundary. So the Chinese bought land with no access. Because they've got a mangrove forest in front of their land.

Once they started cutting down a lot of trees on our property, without our permission, and trespassing, and dumping all their building material on our land, we got pretty concerned very quickly.

We went over there and tried to talk to them and that's when they told us to go away and don't worry about it.

So they bought property that was landlocked and tried to force an easement across the property that you guys have?

Yeah. There's a lot more in it. At the very start we have having a hard time getting our title, and it just so happened that the Chinese... I don't know if I should go into that, because we're in the courts.

There's been some weird stuff going down. Like our lease was, all of a sudden, about to get canceled, because we hadn't built anything in two years. But we couldn't get our title from the government department. They were going to cancel our lease, but we never got served a lease notice. It got mailed to our land but never got delivered. And it never got emailed to us, so we had to take them to court for that. It got thrown out of court pretty quick.

We never got notified, and we always paid our lease on time, so it's just weird stuff going on. Really it's just the Chinese trying to get our lease canceled so they can just take our land.

What's Freesoul's relationship with the locals? How far do they live from the project?

In a straight line, they're about a kilometer away. But it's over really steep hills.

The locals, they're not happy at all. There's a right way and a wrong way of doing things. In Fiji they've got really good laws, and good environmental steps in place, to make sure the developers do the right thing in that country. Freesoul have done everything humanly possible to go out of their way to do everything wrong. Even their own Environmental Impact Assessment told them, 'Don't dig into the reef. You're gonna wreck the flow of the water and it can kill the reef and it can kill the mangroves.'

So they went straight in there and ripped up the reef, with no approvals, and just went for it. They've got no silt management systems in place, the toilets go straight into the water. And you're talking about a lot of workers.

And that's where the local ladies go to catch their crabs, before they go into the mainland and sell them to tourists. That's their livelihood. And the seagrass is all dying because the silt from the dug-up reef is suffocating it. Same with the mangroves.

It's a fragile ecosystem. I look at the mangroves like they're the lungs of the reef. So, really, the Chinese have just come in and suffocated the place.