Retired Australian geologist Tuapoualetuisafua Warren Jopling, who made Savai'i his home, passed away peacefully at his home in Safua last Thursday a month after celebrating his 94th birthday. 

Tuapou, who became a citizen of Samoa in 2017, was a well-known local figure on Savai'i which he called home for the last 40 years. 

A geologist by profession, Tuapou had been a resident of Safua since 1983. After travelling to over 117 countries in the world, he decided upon his arrival on the big island decided that he would settle there. 

A statement released by his adopted family in Safua stated that he had undertaken over 3,500 geological tours of Savai'i, as well as sponsored and supported numerous families and children while sharing his knowledge with others. 

His legacy included the sponsorship of a lot of Savai'i children when he paid for their school fees, and provided them with lunch, and school uniforms on top of helping them with their studies. 

Today there are a couple of "Warrens" and "Joplings" in Savai'i who were named after the well-known retired Australian geologist, a gesture by the families to remember his benevolence. 

During his time in Samoa, Tuapou got to be known as "Savai'i's ultimate tour guide". Since 1990 he guided tourists and international student groups around the island he knew and liked so much. He also started running tours to help out the Jackson family with running their hotel business, Safua Hotel. 

His career as a geologist and petroleumologist read like an epic adventure novel that one would find hard to put down. His odyssey which culminated with the discovery of Savai’i started off with a curiosity and then a fascination for gemstones that led him to study geology. 

It wasn’t enough just to enjoy the outer beauty of the precious stones, Tuapou had to know them deeper to its last mineral makeup.

But it was his career as a petroleumologist that led him to oil fields all over the world from Canada to Brazil and eventually to Indonesia where he spent 17 years working on oil exploration before the remote islands of Samoa registered on his radar.

“They wanted me to be based in Jakarta but it is the last place on earth where I would rather be so I had reservations about this,”  Tuapou said in an interview with this newspaper back in 2017. 

“While I was in Indonesia, I had read an article about Samoa. I didn’t know a great deal about Samoa, I’ve never heard of Savai’i. I collected stamps in my early days so I knew where Samoa was and this article gave a very glowing account of Samoa. It also mentioned the Safua Hotel in Lalomalava.”

The article was enough to stir Jopling’s curiosity and in October 1982, he travelled to Upolu and then to Savai’i where he sought out the Safua Hotel which was owned by the matriarch of the Jackson family at the time, Va’asilifiti Moelagi Jackson.

 “It was the way of life that drew me to Savai’i. All through Brazil, I worked in very primitive areas where material things had no value at all.

“It was all about people. Also in Indonesia, I spent 17 years in a rural area and there were wonderful great people. When I came to Savai’i I loved not only the living in the hotel, but the people. People are people regardless of religion or race.

“It was wonderful and Moelagi had a very young family. While I was at the Safua Hotel, I met Ken Newton, the owner of C.C.K. 

“They were setting up a coffee plantation in a place called Vaiaata in the hills of eastern Savai’i. They asked me if I would be interested and I made an immediate decision – yes.”

Enamoured by Savai’i and spurred on by the same enthusiasm he had for examining precious gemstones, Jopling returned to Indonesia to pack his things and return to the island that had captivated his soul and sparked his obsession.

He started writing a book about the geology of the Samoa archipelago and in 2014, he wrote a long report on the geology of Samoa as a tourist guide. He then decided to write another paper about the different sites of Savai'i which were published in the Samoa Observer in about 13-14 editions in 2014. 

His family in Safua will bid farewell to him and celebrate his life with the many friends he had made in Samoa on Friday at the Malietoa Tanumafili II Chapel in Tuasivi, Savai' and will then be laid to rest at his home in Safua.