A popular Australian song of the 1960s told the tale of a "pub with no beer." In the time-warped Fiji copra port of Savusavu, there is an hotel with no restaurant but it does have its own brewery.

Savusavu is on Vanua Levu, the second largest of Fiji's 300 and more islands. Fiji's first micro-brewery, producing Savusavu Draught, is on site at the Hot Springs Hotel and is served in the hotel bar, yacht clubs and other local watering holes.

The Hot Springs Hotel overlooks one of the South Pacific's grander harbours, so large that in World War Two the Americans considered basing their Seventh Fleet there and big enough to take some of the world's largest luxury liners with ease.

It also overlooks hot springs from which it takes its name, still used by local villagers in lieu of a kitchen. In earlier times, when Fijians ate other Fijians and anyone else unfortunate to be captured, history says it was used for a different type of cooking.

And it is cooking that has caused a major change at this comfortable older-style hostelry perched on a hill where each of its 48 rooms have a harbour and a mountain view. According to operators Tim and Lorna Eden, Savusavu is no longer a culinary desert.

"With so many quality inexpensive restaurants in town these days, we've decided to shut the restaurant down and make the bar and upper deck more attractive for watching spectacular sunsets, the yachts in the bay or just staying on an enjoying the ambience," Tim said. "We'll continue to cater for groups and functions and we're not completely closing the kitchen."

"We're Savusavu's premier B&B and we include an excellent tropical breakfast of fresh fruit and juice, tea, coffee, toast, muffins and genuine homemade jams, but a two-minute walk puts you in the Copra Shed Marina or town where there are many small inexpensive restaurants and cafes," he said. "Your favourite seafood dish, steaks, salads, curries, pizza are just minutes away."

Staying at Hot Springs Hotel meant visitors were not resort-bound and unable to experience Savusavu and beyond, he said.

Sport or gamefishing are high on the hotel's activities priorities as well as snorkelling, scuba diving, a day at the Koro Sun spa and massage retreat, birdwatching and rainforest treks, village tours, sea kayaking and extended sailing charters.

If marriage is on the cards, Hot Springs Hotel's own matrimonial package included the venue, the minister, flowers, the cake and a champagne dinner for two for F$875.

There are four scheduled Nadi-Savusavu and two Suva-Savusavu air services daily as well as regular roll on-roll off ferry services from Suva.

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