N. Cal. Tourism

Not Islands

Minded

N. Cal. Tourism Needs a Boost

NEW CALEDONIA is disappointed

at its tourist figures for 1955.

In that year 590 overseas viitors spent more than 24 hours in the Colony and the majority of these were businessmen and could not come into the category of tourist. (However these figures were better than in 1954, when only 450 foreign visitors entered the Colony—and somewhat less than in 1953 when 660 visitors called).

New Caledonia says that its tourist traffic is “extremely feeble,” and several projects are being examined with a view to improving the situation.

New Caledonia has much to offer the tourist but unfortunately the logical tourist target for NC is Australia, which by and large is just not Islands minded.

The great annual Australian post-war tourist exodus is to the UK and the Continent and when most of these people have got this cut of their systems they may be prepared to think about the Pacific.

At the present time the average Australian thinks that if he has

spent a couple of weeks on an island on the Great Barrier Reef he has seen everything a Pacifiic Island can offer.

The relatively high cost of a few weeks holiday in any of the islands of the Pacific —New Caledonia, Fiji or anywhere else— is regarded by most Australian annual-holiday makers as too

expensive. On the other hand, the rush Pacific Islands cruise organised by the big oversea shipping companies.

If The engagement has been an nounced of Miss Suzanne Liddle t Mr. Julian Pickrel, patrol officer, c Mendi, Southern Highlands, Papua