Mereani grew up in a village on the main island of Fiji. It was much less isolated from the capital than other Fijian villages, but when Mereani was growing up, there wasn't much of the technology and mod cons we might expect today and her family mainly lived from farming.

After finishing school, Mereani got a job in a traditional Fijian dancing group at a tourist hotel, and it was through this that she would eventually meet her future Tasmanian husband and eventually move to a climate that was quite a bit colder than she had expected.  Although she's more or less adapted to the cold and Aussie English, she stills holds on to some of her Fijian values including those around family and the collective mentality that people have in Fijian villages.