Rocked Like A Palm Tree

Famous Noumea Landmark Once Rocked Like A Palm Tree

By Lew Priday

An impressive introduction to the port of Noumea is the 180 ft. Amedee Lighthouse, standing on a small sandy cay at the narrow entrance to the Boulari Passage, on one of the world’s most dangerous barrier reefs.

A BEACON to navigators for nearly 100 years, it has with stood many a storm and witnessed many a shipwreck, and has been the means of saving countless lives.

The lighthouse, as I was reminded on a recent visit to Paris, was designed by a brilliant engineer named Rigolet, who helped to modernise the French capital. Rigolet also designed one of the most impos ing palaces in Alexandria, Egypt.

In Rigolet’s day the French led the world in lighthouse construction, and it was arranged that Parisians should be the first to admire the tall new beacon for Noumea. To this end the lighthouse was erected by the Navy on the heights of La Villette which dominate the French capital.

It towered there for some weeks before the order came to dismantle it and ship it piecemeal to New Caledonia on a ship named the Emile Peraire.

The Emile Peraire took four months to reach Noumea, which was then called Port-de-France, a name subsequently changed to avoid postal confusion with Fort-de-France, Martinique.

It took the Navy two more years to rebuild the lighthouse on Amedee Island, 12 miles from the town.

The lighthouse was officially opened one hot January day in 1865. , , . 4 New Caledonia had then only just been removed from the authority of the Governor of French Oceania, resident at Papeete, and made an independent colony, under naval

governors, with a base intended to rival that of Britain’s Pacific squadron in Sydney.

The Governor in 1865 was Captain (later Admiral) Guillain, and it was his lady, dressed in her choicest Parisian wardrobe, who per formed the opening ceremony.

A specially chartered ship brought them across the lagoon to the light house. All the worthies of the place were there, plus a few savage chiefs in trousers and military tunics who had been taught to salute the Tri color and stand stiff for the “Marseillaise”.

Cheers went up as Madame Guillain set going the revolving apparatus made to the design of in ventor Fresnel, a design which served the Pacific well in its day, but has since become outmoded.

Too Exhausting

Most of the ladies found it too exhausting to climb the innumerable steps to the top of the beacon in their voluminous skirts. So the speech-making, followed by a cham pagne d’honneur, took place on the ground below.

In those days, Napoleon 111 was showing considerable colonial enter prise, and it was decided to turn New Caledonia, France’s newest Pacific possession, into an important penitentiary colony.

About 25,000 convicts passed through the lighthouse reef to occupy He Nou and other penal centres before transportation ceased in 1897.

The 1870’s also brought about 4,000 political exiles (Communards). To

Noumea's lighthouse is on a sandy islet 12 miles from town at the entrance to the harbour.

i Amedee Lighthouse represented :tly the opposite of New York’s ue of Liberty. he lighthouse also meant ney’s end for hundreds of Aust an and New Zealand miners, and w Sydney barmaids, who flocked 4ew Caledonia during the nickel copper rush of the 1870’s, few years later the island was ;ht in a terrible slump, and most :he diggers were glad to return ic. When the 4,000 Communards ; granted an amnesty and wed to return to France in 1880, ;riod of stagnation set in. hat same year brought anxiety the Amedee Lighthouse, the ny’s pride. In one of the worst ones ever recorded, Noumea and agoon were blotted out for hours, fhen the air cleared, the towns 3le found that the coastline had •ed; everywhere wreckage strewed beaches; and 16 drowned sailors 5 washed ashore.

The lighthouse-keeper’s house, store and bakehouse were washed out to sea, and the lighthouse itself was surrounded by waves.

Although the lighthouse stood firm, the lighthouse-keeper, when rescued, said it had rocked to and fro beneath him like a palm tree.

Since then, the lighthouse has had to withstand ’ a stiff hurricane about once every 10 years, but none has been quite so severe as the one of 1880 A month after Pearl Harbour I

spent a week on sandy Amedee islet at the invitation of the lighthouse keeper. It was a pleasantly relaxed holiday, spent fishing, taking photo graphs, and doing the usual camp chores.

Each day I was drawn to the top not only to inspect the beacon, but to watch the ever-changing sea rolling a thousand unbroken miles to Aus tralia. Landwards I never ceased admiring the gorgeous sunrises, sunsets, and cloud effects over the rugged nickel-rich mountains.

[?] the entrance to Amadee Lighthouse [?] inscription recording its construction [?]aris during the reign of Napoleon III.