Neither Stern Nor Wild

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 189, 5 February 1943, Page 8

Neither Stern Nor Wild

(Written for "The Listener" by

A.M.

R.

O many of my friends are now turning to New Caledonia as a sort of second home in the Pacific that I wangled an unofficial interview the other night with my Fighting French friend René. René was born and bred in the island, and despite our talking mainly in the interstices of Resuscitation Practice, had plenty of information to give. Here is the picture I gained. New Caledonia (said he) despite Cook’s name, is neither stern nor wild. Despite its latitude it is not tropical. Despite its Melanesian aborigines it is not "native." And despite its geography it is not a "tropic island’-not in the romantic sense, that is, of a palmfringed, reef-ringed, lotus paradise where it is always full-moon. "Authentically Pacific" Indeed New Caledonia is much more like the American Wild West-in spots -and in other spots like some place in the East. Though it is coral-ringed (there is a barrier reef nearly all round it at one to ten miles distance), its western coast of real North-Auckland mangrove swamps, its absence of indigenous beasts and noxious vermin, -its gullies of giant tree-ferns, and its fuzzyheaded Kanakas (so called) are all authentically Pacific. It is not a small island by any means-250 miles long by about 30 wide-and its backbone of mountains often rises into the clouds. Like our own South Island of similar form but greater bulk it has accordingly a dry side and a wet side-though

New Caledonia’s steep wet side is on the East. Two-thirds of the total surface is rock, crystalline, serpentine rock, with the result that the only vegetation over most of the area is gnarled, deeprooted trees and wiry shrubs. When the wind blows a fine red dust. blows with 16 "A ‘desert island’ then?" I said to René. "And this is what the Minister of Defence, announcing the stationing of our men there, is pleased to call ‘a healthy, pleasant climate’!" René spang to the defence of his birth-land. "Your Minister is right," he expostulated. "And the proof?" "Fifty-three thousand inhabitants, a third of them white, and a real town of twelve thousand or so in little Nouméa. May to December is really cool and pleasant. And even in the cyclone season-that is your summer, Christmas to Easter-the average temperature is only 72 degrees by your thermometer, the fahrenheit. It is just 65 degrees in winter." In short, said René, New Caledonia was "White Man's Country-as you say it." In the grassy mountain areas there were great cattle stations-"like in Australia.’ And in fertile lowland areas corn, coffee, and copra were grown, and lemons, run wild, had become a pest. "Give every French family a Javanese servant-and: where would you find a better life?" Javanese and Japanese I misheard him and said "Japanese?" in some surprise. No, said René, there were about a thousand Japanese (he (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) thought) in New Caledonia. And there had been many Japanese attempts, in the guise of French companies, to get control of the nickel and chromite mines. But the houseservants were the graceful, delicate Javanese, who preferred such tasks to the hard work of the mines. There were Annamese and Tonkinese there, too, from French IndoChina as was, along with local natives and the neighbouring Loyalty Islanders, in various stages of Frenchification. So that, since they mostly retained their home-land _ garb, Nouméa had quite a touch

of Far-Eastern cosmopolitanism. The mines, René told me, were mostly not mines at all, but open quarries where the be-skirted Eastern labourers worked in‘stetsons against the fiery sun, though fanned often at some thousands of feet above the surrounding blue ocean by Pacific breezes. The island had been, before Canada forged into full production, the world’s main source of nickel. And chromite, iron, and cobalt in prodigal quantities made it a prize indeed-in war or. peace. Once Filmland’s Grayeyard We talked of life on the island. Would our men feel in a civilised land? Well, René admitted that Nouméa was once the world’s graveyard of films, which was a pity, because mosquitoes,

breeding among the mangroves, drove picnickers off the beach once evening came, and the three local picture houses were, indeed, the only night-life of the place. The "Caledonians" were not Continental French, but had been made a good deal like other Australasian colonials by distance and a similarity of conditions. They rode, knew the rough mountains, and shot deer. Their future lay not with Europe, but with their Pacific neighbours. "And I," said-René, "believe they'll get along fine with your fellows from here. I wish I was home again myself."