New Caledonia

We’ve spent the last few weeks playing in New Caledonia. We’ve gotten to visit a few of the small islands in the South Lagoon plus visited the “Paris of the South Pacific”, Noumea. OK, that Paris thing was in the tourist brochure. Noumea is the capital of New Cal. It is certainly a French city, you can tell that by the ease of obtaining baguettes. The fuel dock in the marina has fresh baguettes for sale next to the cash register. Noumea isn’t as impressive a city as Papeete in French Polynesia. It has a little more of a working town feel.
New Cal itself is interesting because of its less than stellar colonial history. Most of the colonial powers have some ugly historical treatment of the indigenous folks in their history books. The thing that stands out for New Cal is that the local white French settlers, now locals, were killing Kanaks (the indigenous New Caledonians) as recently as the 1980’s. New Cal is an Overseas Territory of France. A twenty year treaty stopped the 1980’s killings. It leads to a scheduled independence vote that is to take place November 2018. Apparently the money is flowing.

New Cal’s original attraction to the French was as a prison colony, al la the Brits in Australia. The reason that New Cal got so much attention from the French in later years was due to the nickel deposits on the island. It currently has 11% of the worlds nickel reserves, the second largest reserve on the planet. This is a picture of a large nickel smelter taken from the anchorage in Noumea. That brown smoke coming from the stacks is not as bad as it could be, as it is being blown downwind by the trades away from the nice part of the city onto the poor part. No wonder asthma is a big deal here.

Back to a lighter note. The picture at the top of this blog is the 1865 cast iron lighthouse shipped from France that stands 184 feet and still operates today on Ille Amedee. If anyone cares, it shines two white flashes every 15 seconds out to ships as far as 20 miles away.
Ameede is a tourist island about 2 hours sail south of Noumea. In the early morning and late afternoon before the tourist ferries arrive it is empty, except for the yachts that hang on the free moorings. The moorings are in place so that the boats anchors don’t destroy the turtle grass. The island is home to dozens of turtles who clearly know that this is a protected sanctuary, as they are not skittish at all. This green turtle was grazing right next to our boat for hours. What looks like an ill-fitted tail is a remora fish that was hanging out to do some grooming for her. These green turtles breed and lay eggs on the Australian beaches 800 miles to the west.

Amedde also has an excess of sea snakes. You see these highly poisonous, but reportedly unable to bite humnas, snakes crawling among the tourist lounge chairs after hours. Strange.

A view of the central park in Noumea from the colonial style history museum porch.

I took Chris to the botanical gardens in Noumea for a treat. But first she had to be schooled in the basic rules of bird watching.

This is why you need to be checked out on the rules before you enter. The young man chest pumping on the left is named Kim Jong-un, the old guy to the right is D. Trump. Just think what plucking tail feathers might precipitate…


The top picture is a live ‘eggshell’ cowrie we saw on the reef in Lifou island. When alive they have a black membrane that comes out of the shell and surrounds most of the top. The lower pic is what they look like when they have gone to cowrie heaven.

After we cleared customs and immigration in Noumea, we stopped at a number of the small, pretty much deserted islands in the South Lagoon in a valiant effort to stalk some shells. We basically got skunked – even on the islands that looked so promising from sea.

We did see this large bird of pray, I believe a goshawk, noisily protecting it’s large, stick nest in the mid-day heat.
We are currently at the Ile des Pins (Isle of Pines) about 50 miles SE of Noumea. We plan to stay here till we see a decent weather window to make Bundaberg, Australia or until we get tired of looking at weather GRIBs and decide to go anyway.
Paul