Of Niue Transport

The Changing Pattern Of Niue Transport

The road transport situation is changing on Niue, New Zealand dependency 300 miles east of Tonga. The bicycle has for many years been the principal form of private trans port and it’s amazing to see the loads of taro and kumeras and coconuts and other food that a Niuean can bring back from the bush on a bicycle.

But over the last few years motor cycles have become very popular, mostly of the light two-stroke variety, and a whole family —father, mother and several children, plus baskets of food—can be carried on one of those. And now Niueans are starting to buy cars.

Two second-hand ones have recently arrived on the island, brought back by Niueans returning from New Zealand, and it looks as if more will arrive.

The public transport picture is changing, too. For years bicycles have carried children to school and in the mornings hordes of secondary-school children have converged on Alofi from distant villages, many of them cycling for 10 or 15 miles. Consequently they have often been tired and often wet before the school day even started.

This year pupils attending Halamahanga High School are being brought to school and taken home again on Administration trucks fitted up with seats and canopies. And these are to be replaced with buses, which are now on order.

The older people, of course, still talk of the days when there were no bicycles and they walked the 10 miles to school. But those days really are gone.

Mail day on Niue, with bicycles aplenty.