POPULATION ESTIMATE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 62, 6 April 1943, Page 7

POPULATION ESTIMATE

FOR NEW CALEDONIA Allied soldiers arriving in New Caledonia for the first time all sc'cm to ask the same question: "What jJJ the island's population? The answer is that there are rather more than 20,000 whites, of whom many are children (for large families arc the rule), nearly 80,(100 native Melanesians (including Loyalty Islanders), and 11,000 Javanese and. Indo-Chinn ese mining, agricultural land domes.tiic workers under contract. The total civilian population is about 61,000. New Caledonia is not a country fitted out on an extravagantly up-to-date scalc. For example, there arc only 1153 wireless sets. Of these 895 are in Noumea and only 258 in the rest of the 250' miles' long country, although the .listener's tax is by no means heavy. The island has only 5(>(l miles of roadways, of them constructed since 1929. The number of foreign residents in New Caledonia on January 1, 1912, was 807, whereas a year before it was over MOO. The reason for this is that 112(j Japanese residents were interned, on December 8 .last after the attack on Pearl Harbour. At Lliat time Japanese formed over 7S per ;'cni. of the foreign population. Of the French colony's present, foreign ■ population 10-1. are women and 208 me.n. British residents now predominate. but 19 other nationalities are represented.