Under the frangipani tree

The Australian soap Neighbours maintains its popularity overseas. Busloads of UK tourists bound for Vermont South attest to this. The soap’s popularity lies in its reflection of the domestic and the mundane. It provides a safe means for overseas viewers to explore the exotic: the trials of the Ramsay Street clan are not so different from their own. Soon, thanks to author Célestine Hitiura Vaite, Tahiti may have its own busloads of tourists, searching for the petrol station in Faa´a PK55, location and setting for the domestic, everyday dramas of Breadfruit, Frangipani and Tiare.

Like her heroine Matarena, Vaite was born in Faa´a in 1966 and lived behind a petrol station, with her mother and three siblings. Matarena carves out a career as a radio star while wrestling with child-rearing and various domestic dramas; Vaite has forged a remarkable literary career while rearing four children; her trilogy has been published around the world. She wrote the first novel, Breadfruit (2000) after moving to Australia and pining for Tahiti.