Cruising in Northern Caledonian Waters

To The Island Of Pott

By H. E. L. Friday

WOULD anyone in this war-torn world care to lease a Pacific island—the lovely island of Pott?

For health reasons, that adventurous Frenchman, Monsieur Albert Pagnotte, who many many years ago threw up a safe business job in Noumea to exploit Pott—the northernmost of the Belep Group to the north of New Caledonia —is retiring when he can find a suitable suc cessor to take over his farm and his cattle and his copra production, and the lease of the island from the New Caledonian Government. The proposition is neces sarily one that would appeal only to a man not afraid of his own company and that of the six or eight Javanese employ ees needed to work the place.

I a visit to the island (then gar risoned By US troops) last year, going via several of the islands to the north of the Caledonian mainland on the MV “Tama tea.”

The northern islands are seldom visited, though an official French party was up there in early 1940. They and the seas around them remind one of the Bay of. Islands region of .North Auckland Province, NZ, except that there are sev eral Great and Little Barrier islands and the North and South Dao rocks repeat the Hen and Chickens group of NZ twice over.

On the mainland, the Diahot, the Col ony’s largest river, runs out into the sea at Pam, where copner from two big mines, the Balade and the Meretrice, formerly were smelted under the direction of Capt. Warren, who later became one of

the first directors of Australia's Broken Hill Company, That was in the ’Bo’s, long after the brothers Guerin and others had arrived from the New Zealand goldfields to pros pect the northern creeks.

Off Pam is the biggish isle of Balabio, wljich produces copra, and cattle. It was leased to returned soldiers after the last war. A smaller isle is Yenguibane, where the massacre of a French naval crew contributed to the reasons for French annexation of New Caledonia, in 1853.

Then there is He Baaba, to which you can walk from the mainland at low tide.

This was one of the Colony’s first plan tations to be worked commercially As there were but few ships calling to carry copra away in those early days, the settlers installed presses and loaded coco nut oil into drums. The isle also pro duced coir (fibre) rope. It was then (in the 60’s or 70’s) owned by an English man named Henry, second only to Pad don in early history, who finally settled on the east coast of New Caledonia, where the natives tried to slaughter him and his family.

Henry leased his Baaba property to another British sailor named Morgan, who planted most of the existing coco nuts, the condition of the lease being that he was to plant so many trees a year The plantations were afterwards taken over by a French company, but later reverted to private ownership.

WEST of Baaba are the picturesque isles called Neba, with a village on the .inner side; then Paaba and four

or five tinier islets, of dark red colour; Yande, seven miles west of Paaba, which is over 1,000 feet high, bold and steep-to, facing the channel between the reef and the mainland.

Here our course was changed for the Beleps, the southernmost point of which lies 20 miles north-north-westward of the most northerly tip of New Caledonia.

The Group itself extends north and south for 23 miles.

The Dao islets are the southernmost of the Group; then, a high bare rock named Nienane, then the isle of Art, and finally, Pott.

The coastline of Art is pleasing.

Anchoring in lovely Uala Bay. two or three of us pulled ashore. This bay is three-quarters of a mile wide at the entrance, widening into a great circle inside. Here there is an abundance of coconut trees half hiding picturesque native dwellings, some of them of the old round style.

The main village is Baleo; its most out standing and dominating feature, the fine mission church on a knoll reached by a pebbly track, and backed by an amphi theatre of hills. We visited the priest, Father Puech, who has been tending this island flock for the past 39 years. We were touched by his kindly hospitality, and when we had to go, in spite of our protests, he insisted on lighting his lan tern and accompanying us down to the beach.

POTT is much smaller than Art. The harbour where M. Pagnotte has his farm is only a quarter-mile wide at the entrance, and gets the full force of the Westerlies, though it is sheltered from the Trades.

M. Pagnotte once described to me how he had lost his cutter in a cyclone there.

It lay at the bottom of the bay for three months before he located it and sent to Art for help to raise it.

M. Pagnotte was away at Poum, on the mainland, during our visit to Pott. I spent most of my time there with the American soldiers who had their camp on the flats by the creek back of Uonbuan Bay.

They took me in a jeep to the top of Ueta Lemukilik, the highest mountain, where you get a magnificent view in every direction across the Cook and French Reefs and northwards towards the Huon Group. The wind blew cease lessly up there, giving one a feeling of deafness; and the Coral Sea, stretching away towards the Solomons, rippled by that endless wind, looked limitless, for bidding and melancholy, in contrast to the smiling island below.

Another day, I crossed to the old deserted mission at Demuan. Scars on the hills I passed, looked as though pros pectors had been at work. I have been informed that mining rights here were sold by a Noumea citizen to the Japan ese shortly before the present war.

In the early days, Pott was run by Lynn, a Dane, whose history was told me by Dick Underwood, half-caste grandson of Capt. William Underwood, a contem porary of old Paddon, the sandalwood trader and whaler at Anatom, at the Isle of Pines.

Underwood and Lynn were partners in a. schooner named “Laura Lynn” engaged in beche-de-mer fishing and copra. The two of them discovered guano at the Chesterfields, a long way to the north.

Their guano lease there was subsequently sold to the Austral Guano Co. of Mel bourne. This company worked it for a number of years. Lynn and Underwood later discovered the Walpole Island depo sits south of the Isle of Pines, of which Conrad has written in one of his novels.

These they sold for about £2OO. These deposits were exploited by New Zealand.

We spent two or three days on this fine island of Pott. Our southward course for Noumea, and home, was through reef passages that are difficult in a bad light, past Cape Tonnere and Nehoue Bay, the Tiebaghi Dome, Ouaco and Cape Deverde, St. Vincent’s Bay and finally to the familiar outline of He Nou.

The Rev. H. Thompson, of the Anglican Mission, has arrived in Sydney and is at present acting as deputationist on behalf of Melanesia.

The Gilbert and Ellice Islands Adminis tration has issued local Commendations fo~ Special War Service to: Frank High land, of Tarawa; Fiatau Penitala Teo, of Funafuti: Muliava, First Class Constable, of Vaitupu; Rota, of Arorae; Tabuna wati, of Bern; Tato, First Class Constable, of Tarawa; Toma, Third Class Constable, of Little Makin.