THE BOYS IN NEW CALEDONIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 199, 16 April 1943, Page 4

THE BOYS IN NEW CALEDONIA

THE wife of a New Zealand soldier now in New Caledonia has permitted us to make some extracts from a recent bundle of letters. The key-note of all is: "Don’t worry about the boys in New Caledonia."

N the way here, I was doing a spot of picket duty outside the crews quarters during the morning, and among the men I chatted with was a chap from my birthplace, Liverpool. He has four brothers and sisters living in the States, and they all think it’s the greatest country in the world. He said that he found the French people (on this island), very friendly and anxious to learn English. %% * * UR first camp was situated in a pleasant valley not unlike one of our Waikato valleys. The grass was thick and green, but as far as I could see quite unlike our New Zealand mixture of Italian rye, cocksfoot, timothy, etc. There was also a profusion of Trees, a species of gum called, I believe, "niaouli." These are to be found all over the island and are regarded as the national tree, just as the kowhai is ours. T- Ttold me that the mosquitoes rest on these trees, and that the gum in the bark neutralises any germs they carry. We met our first native, who looked like a cross between a Melanesian and an Australian black. He told us that the district was mainly given over to farming, and that there was a butter and cheese factory close by. He said that there were coffee plantations to the north and the south, but none near. * * * FROM this camp we came north in trucks. The first 10 or 15 miles of the road ran through a pleasant valley, which was thickly wooded throughout with these niaouli trees. The bark is used by the natives for thatching the roofs of their houses. Most of the houses we saw along the wayside were built of what looked like plastered brick, and they were all roofed with bark. They all had luxuriant gardens and plantations" around them. , * * * N the whole, this place is remarkably free from insect pests. The flies are not as bad as I have often known them at home. Theré are myriad ants, but they seem contented to stay on the floor-so far — and anyway, I have nothing to tempt them. But the mosquitoes, la, they are "of a badness." (Admire my French?).. Food on the whole is much better than I expected. Although the officers h=ve a separate mess, we all eat the same food. We-have fresh or tinned fruit at least once a day, and though all our vegetables seem to be dehydrated or tinned, they are not so bad. Yesterday a native came in selling fruit, and we bought’ three dozen mandarins at 2d a dozen, or 6d the lot. For the same price we bought a bunch of bananas but the latter are not quite ripe. The mandarins, however, are delicious. * ¢* * HAD a wonderful outing yesterday. We set out about 11.30, and left the main road just outside the village, striking out up a side alley along one

of the prettiest lanes I have seen. We crossed a stone bridge erected in 1888, which in design and workmanship might easily have. been transported from any of a half-dozen European countries. After a couple of miles, we went into a farmhouse to see if we could get a cup of coffee. The house was like most of the French country places I have seen, that is, built of dingy, crumbling mud brick, but with a tin roof instead of the more usual thatch. They seemed quite willing to provide the coffee if we didn’t mind waiting about half an hour for the kettle to boil. We didn’t. We unpacked a 5lb. tin of pears, and our hosts joined in and helped us to clean it up. The coffee, when it came, was delicious. Grown on the: premises, freshly ground and with a spoonful of sugar and a slice of lime fresh from the tree, it was the finest I’ve ever tasted. When we left,*we gave them a tin of New Zealand butter. We saw a lot of coffee growing by the road as we went along, but mostly it was growing among trees; it does not thrive if it has no shelter from the sun. After another mile or so, we called in at another place to have a rest and a chat. This place was cleaner, but hardly less drab. These people seem to live with hardly any of the amenities we take fore granted as necessities. They have no radios, no electricity, not even stoves. They mostly have earthen floors, and if they rise to the dignity of wood, they never aspire to the luxury of rugs or lino. No telephone, no papers, neighbours few and far between, and transport very limited. : Yet they seem happy enough. * * * FTER we left there we had to ford a couple of rivers. We saw acres of guavas, but they grow much bigger than they do in New Zealand, and are probably quite a different variety. They make good eating. There were quite a few mandarin trees, but the fruit was not ripe enough to eat. We were! told that none of the fruit is greatly prized, and that most of it is allowed to rot. We reached our destination about four o'clock, and after a swim, found afternoon tea set out for us. Not like our idea of afternoon tea, but tea none the less, and most welcome. ; Papa is the youngest of six brothers, and has a family of 11. There were about 20 people there, but I never succeeded in finding out just exactly who was who. We shook hands gravely with the whole lot, for the French are very formal about handshaking. : This home is a cut above any other I have seen. The sleeping quarters are in the main house, and there is a separate building used as dining room and general sitting room. This latter is built like a summer-house, octagonal in shape, white-washed inside, and very airy and clean. All the cooking is done in yet another shed. They have no stove, the boiling and frying being done in camp ovens, The nearest approach to a stove is a long concrete bench divided into three.

and with three small separate fires. There is a huge clay-brick oven for baking. They light the fire inside the oven until they get sufficient heat, and then rake out the ashes and put in the bread, which cooks in about threequarters of an hour. There were no mosquitoes there, and apparently no blowflies, for the meat was just left hanging from a rafter. There were hundreds of house flies, but they did not seem to worry anyone. A tame grey heron wandered round the kitchen, and -appeared to be very friendly. The bread is excellent, but I have yet to meet a French household which understands the art of cutting thin bread. Without exception, as far as I have seen, it is served in thick slices, and usually without butter. Just before tea, the whole crowd of us went along to the coconut grove to get coconuts. One of the visitors climbed up the tree more quickly than I could climb a ladder, and he simply rained down coconuts. We had a regular orgy of drinking. Each nut holds a good pint of juice, and in a full-sized nut it~ is very pleasantly flavoured and most thirst-quenching. I got through one and-a-half. I was amazed at the fondness of the dogs for the meat of the nuts. They ate literally dozens of them, and scooped them out as clean as a whistle. We paid a visit to an old Arab who works (?) on the place. He is 83 years old, and the skin hangs from him in immense pouches. He squatted at the doorway of his hut, which had a smoky fire burning in the centre of the floor. He told N- that he was sent out here as a convict in 1880 for taking part in a rising in Algeria. His nails were fully an inch long. It appears that he is one of the few survivors of those who were still prisoners when the convict settle"ment ceased to exist as such, His main ambition is to go to Nouméa to die. His name is Amede, possibly the French form of Ahmed. (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) We sat down for tea about 8 o'clock. There was a snowy cloth on the table, and starched napkins in glasses in front of every place. The table was strewn with huge red and crimson asters. About half-way through the meal someone started throwing these about, and there ensued a real battle of flowers. Nineteen of us sat down to the meal, and there were several waiting on us and preparing food in the kitchen, so you can gather that our hosts Were hospitable. I noticed that even here, where our friends were most obviously fairly well off and quite cultured, everything was extremely

-plain, almost to the point of being drab. There were no pictures anywhere, no furniture that was not strictly "utile," and forks and spoons were of some kind of lead-aluminium compound. However, there was nothing plain about the meal, which was served in a series of courses. We started off with a huge platter of some kind of meat loaf cut in slices and buttered. Each course, I should tell you, was served on an enormous platter which circulated right round the table, always starting with us. We were probably regarded as the guests of honour. Well, the meat-loaf was. followed by braised pigeon, the pigeon by

wild boar, and the boar by a huge platter of small- pieces of liver, which seemed to be cooked in sugar and vinegar. For all these courses we used the same plate. This was now replaced with a clean one, and we finished the meal with pineapple and bananas, We did not stay very long after that, as\it was getting late, and we had a long walk in front of us. Until we did go, we sat out on the veranda of the sleeping quarters while the youngsters danced to a very ancient and tinny gramophone. It was almost like sacrilege to hear strident American swingsters imploring someone to be "Nobody’s baby but theirs" in such peaceful and exotic surroundings.