Who is Elizabeth Clayton?

	Elizabeth Clayton with Simon Peter Navi Sujit and Tom

A ‘free spirit’ is the way I was described as a child. The last child in a family of 10 children – 8 brothers and a sister. My mother was very much an Australian having lived in the country all her life and my father was from England, from Eccles near Manchester. He liked to consider himself a Manxman however, haling from the Isle of Man just off the coast of England as he spent much of his time there as a young boy growing up. My father had a very privileged upbringing, his father being a well-respected Mayor and businessman, owner of cotton mills. My mother was a farm girl; she grew up having to look after her younger brothers and sisters, as her mother was very sickly and died at an early age.

My parents met on a farm they were both working on, after my father had decided that the English life was not for him and hopped a boat for ten quid which you could do in those days, and venture out to Australia where he was able to take an agricultural course and started on the road to establishing his own dairy and mixed crop farm.

Being the baby of ten children had its ups and downs. I loved growing up of a farm in the New South Wales countryside with animals and fresh milk to drink everyday with lots of cream. The dams overflowed their grassy banks when it rained and created waterfalls that we use to slide down again and again. Creating our own fun and games was never a problem on the farm.

Elizabeth and Sujit November 2005

My parents took in foster children, mainly siblings, two or three at a time so the family often grew to 16 or 18 at times. School was a hassle for all of us as we were just too far from any school, or so it seemed. The means of transport to school was riding a horse and that we had to do doubled up. It just didn’t seem fair that I had to ride the horse with my youngest brother in the saddle, and my screams when he went up and down the banks of the dirt road were totally ineffective. ‘Proper’ school didn’t start for me until I was around 9 years old. I could not read or write until then. We had moved from the farm into the town of Taree on the northern coast of NSW so school now was an easy option.

After some time spend in Taree, the family moved to Wollongong and it was from there, at the age of 13 that I left my home to go to Annesley Boarding School in Bowral, NSW. I loved boarding school and excelled there, but the early 60’s credit squeeze saw my having to leave and attend another school, Avondale College in Cooranbong, NSW. From there I was on my own financially. I studied hard and gained a scholarship to the University of NSW where I undertook studies in the behavioral sciences – psychology and sociology were the subjects that interested me the most.

I was destined to be an academic and end up teaching psychology and sociology in Colleges in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. As time went on, I had a desire to create my own business. My first business, other than the small entrepreneurial activities I pursued whilst at University to earn money, was in corporate communications. I was able to take on major international clients who wanted their voice to be heard in Canberra. This was exciting as it gave me a lifestyle I enjoyed, jetting here and there, meeting with these major clients and taking of some interesting projects for them. I was married by this time to Roger Buick and had a child Tiffany. We had decided on a peculiar alternative shape for our marriage lifestyle – we married because of our child, but never lived together in that traditional marriage sense. I remained in Canberra whilst Roger domiciled himself in Sydney. The marriage didn’t last that long but we remained good friends as we had always been. When Roger lost his life climbing Mt Everest in 1998 it was a tremendous blow to me and has continued to have an effect on me as the years pass particularly in having to deal with a very beautiful but determined daughter. He was far better at dealing with issues with her than I.

In 1987 I made a decision to move to Fiji and to become a manufacturer of furniture. I never really liked furniture or interior design so it was a most unlikely business for me to start up. My single desire was to change raw material into a finished product and so manufacturing furniture did exactly that. It was a chain of events that brought me to furniture, as my initial thoughts were to manufacture costume jewelry, as I had heard that this was the best percentage increase on raw material that one could get. The Swedish giant furniture retailer, IKEA was the company that I manufactured under license for. It was a very success business liaison for many years. When the local timber company, Tropik Wood decided to put there prices up some 70% which then was 70% above world market prices, IKEA and I made a joint decision to ‘pull the plug’ on things as the return on investment was corroded. I was happy to do this as I had by this time, some 13 years down the track, established a good local name for myself in furniture manufacturing and interior design, and was able to penetrate the local market very well. In 2001, after the most successful year of trading ever, I woke up one day, the 28th November to be exact, and decided to sell off my business or most of it… to do other things. At that time I didn’t have a definition for ‘other things’ but left my life open for whatever came up. I decided to stay in Fiji rather than move back to Australia. I liked the lifestyle in Fiji and I was somehow “called” to be here for a season more, at least. There was no other pull in any other direction so it was an easy decision to make.

In 2002 I was to become the President of the Rotary Club of Suva and through this experience I seemed to become more involved with the needs of the community. I always felt that I have a responsibility to take care of those who could not take responsibility for themselves so I found it easy to fit into the role of President of a Club that put service to the community as a high priority. As an employer, I had no problem hiring young blind men or others with disabilities but it was the neglected aged and young children that I put my emphasis on during my year as President of the Rotary Club.

When one touches base with people in real need then there is no passing them by, my conscious would not allow for that, it was the way I was bought up and it was the path my new found faith was leading me. It was healthy for me as a person to trim some of the ‘hard edges’ that I had developed as a result of having to take care of myself from a young age. Then to have a business life that moulds one into something one would rather not think about too much – ‘hard-nosed’, ‘ruthless’ comes to mind! It is said that God not only works ‘through’ you but ‘in’ you as well and this is what I have found to happen and I am most grateful. I feel I have become a very different person, I feel the change that has taken place in me and I don’t think it is just an aging process. I have always had drive and vision but now it is directed by a higher power than I am.

Taking on the commitments as I have is all about ‘sacrificial love’, there is no other way in which to describe it, as these commitments are easy to accomplish because one is not using one’s own strength to achieve results. I continue to be so encouraged by those around me who pick up on the vision or have a vision of their own, which they are committed to, and I understand now how people can do what they are doing, be it with working to stop the little girls being sold for prostitution in Cambodia, working in the overflowing aids orphanages in Africa or those that are fostering children found neglected in the USA. Fiji is my backyard and this is where I am being used.