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Noumea Puts Out

Welcome Mat For

Us Tourists

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If Pan American Airways should care to include New Cale donia in its itineraries at any time, it seems assured of a warm welcome in that territory.

CERTAINLY, New Caledonia’s Tourist Bureau is all for such an arrangement, for recently, after Mr.

Rush Clark, Pan Am’s regional man ager for the South Pacific and New Guinea, spent three days in Noumea, the bureau announced that it “sincerely hoped that one day, in the not too distant future, this company may once again decide to include New Caledonia on its routes.”

The bureau said that Mr. Clark had found Noumea had developed into “a most welcoming and attractive city” since his last visit in 1962, and that he had encouraged tourism pro moters not to rest there if they wished New Caledonia to occupy the place it merits in the Pacific tourist market.

"Got Everything"

Another visitor to New Caledonia recently who gave the Tourist Bureau cause to hope that more tourists would be coming that way soon was Mr. Werner Weber, manager of the American Express office in Zurich, Switzerland.

After visiting the Isle of Pines, Ouvea in the Loyalty Group, the east coast of New Caledonia up to Hienghene, the Amedee Lighthouse outside Noumea, and Noumea’s famous aquarium, Mr. Weber ex pressed the view that New Caledonia had everything the tourist wanted, but that more hotel accommodation was needed.

Mr. Weber said that New Caledonia could replace Tahiti on world tours organised by his company, and he promised to get things moving in this direction on his return to Zurich.

Meanwhile, the French airline UTA is planning considerable develop ments in its services in the Pacific,

The naming of Norfolk Island's recently • opened Fletcher Christian flats was a matter of sentiment with the Christian Bailey brothers who own them, for they are direct descendants of the famous mutineer.

One of the brothers, Bernard, made a pilgrimage to the mutineer's birth place when he visited England three or four years ago, and he is seen here in front of the building. The building is at Cockermouth, Cumber land, and is still in use.

which, according to the Tourist Bureau, will necessitate a parallel in crease in the hotel potential of New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

The bureau says the developments will take place over the next four or five years.

It quotes UTA’s Noumea repre sentative, Mr. Marcel Duvernois, as saying that the airline will transform two of its regular DCS aircraft to turbo-fans to allow greater activity and larger freight intake, and that it will also buy a new DCS to bring its fleet of these aircraft to eight.

Mr. Duvernois recently returned to Noumea from Paris.

FOOTNOTE: A couple of weeks after Mr, Rush Clark raised hopes that PanAm might soon be bring ing US tourists to New Caledonia, the United States Civil Aeronautics Board granted PanAm permission not to call at Noumea on its Honolulu- Sydney flights. Mr. Clark explained to PIM in Sydney that as PanAm has rights to call at Noumea, it has to obtain permission annually not to exercise them if it does not wish to do so. According to a Press report from Washington, PanAm would lose £60,000 a year at present if it included Noumea on its Honolulu-Sydney itinerary.