Back to Noumea for un grand manage

un grand manage

formfr PIM correspondent in Noumea Helen Rousseau returns to her old haunts after an absence of several years and turns in a lively account of her visit with something in it for almost everyone - from those interested in social and political developments in New Caledonia to potential tourist visitors.

French weddings are great

times for drinking champagne,

kissing everyone on both cheeks and wishing the de fenceless couple ‘lots of happi ness, lots of good health and lots, but lots of petits enfants\ Un grand manage in Noumea can also be a time for bringing a whole town together, from the Mayor

Roger Laroque and prominent

politicians Jean Leques and Pierre Maresca to nickel king

Philippe Pentecost, long-time

football personality Guy

Fouques and dynamic

entrepreneur Raymond Frere.

Weddings are also a great excuse for Sydney friends to hop on a Qantas Funjet for the two and a half hour flight which transports us almost to a different planet to stay with grand’mere and for that every one says a big merci beaucoup to the happy young couple Joelle and Patrick. ‘Have you noticed how folk in town don’t look so pleased?’ an old friend, a former Parisienne, greeted us. Well, we hadn’t come to sample the latest perfume from Paris

Gaz lacrymogene (teargas); nor

had we come to see the unfor tunate clash between police truncheons and students at Noumea High School and the subsequent protest rallies, over the sacking of a Melanesian re lief teacher and a replacement teacher to come from France.

As an old friend remarked in typical French style ‘lf there is no drama, you have to provoke it’.

Instead, we had come to watch the little offshore islands grow bigger and smaller as the tide went out and in on Anse Vata beach; to take rides on the blue ‘babycar’ bus whose

laughing Martiniquais driver

had painted joie de vivre on the sides; and to find suitable coco nut palms for an exuberant six and eight-year-old to climb.

We loved the clear blue skies, but maybe the locals

didn’t . . . For clear blue sky in Noumea means no nickel dust, which means less smoke and hence less nickel from the SEN factory on the northern outskirts of town. Not only are

the chimneys spouting fewer

fumes, but a well-known land mark has disappeared from Noumea sunset postcards - the familiar silhouette of the three old blast furnaces. Victims of rising costs and advanced tech nology, they have been dis mantled and sold as scrap.

Nickel production this year is expected to be around 42 000 tonnes of metal compared with over 70 000 tonnes in 1975.

While the nickel factory looks less sooty, the surround

ing hillsides suddenly look

much greener, with a cultivated greenness. The recession has turned men back to the soil and all around Noumea stretch

market gardens. They are

overlooked by lofty towers of apartment blocks some com

pletely deserted, hurriedly

built for a nickel boom which has collapsed. This has put a severe dampener on the real estate market.

As nickel exports dwindle, the locals are urged to curb the

territory’s import bill and ‘buy

Caledonian’. This campaign seems to be working: in three homes we were served venison, which cannot be obtained com mercially but comes from deer hunted on inland properties.

Who can say life is tough?

Salaries look high at close to SAIOOO tax-free per month for responsible clerical jobs in the government service. And someone has to pay for that, so goods in the shops look costly to outsiders, since they include

hefty import charges and sales

tax. Now Paris is keen to have income tax voted in next year.

In the meantime, there are still some bargains for tourists the long ‘wifebeater’ loaf of French bread, la baguette, costs 25 cents; a demie-jeanne of rough red from Spain is around

$l2 (the bottle is an

interestingly-shaped bonus);

locally-grown coffee retails at $2.70 per 500 gm; and Boursin cheese aux fines herbes costing $5 a packet in Sydney can be indulged in for only $3 in Noumea. On the other hand, a telephone call costs 50 cents and petrol is 40 cents a litre.

Caledonian prices do not seem to deter the Japanese tourists, whose popularity in Noumea shops can be judged by the number of welcoming signs written in Japanese script, even in Roman letters. If English-speaking visitors im agine the Caledonians have discovered something new in their lagoon, they can forget it the sign ‘sangoh’ on the shop shelf only means ‘coral’ in Japanese. Usually the Japanese are shopping for French labels T-shirts boldly signed Cour reges across the bosom, scarves with a Paris signature or bath towels with the PC motif from

Pierre Cardin, selling for $2O each in duty free shops.

The Japanese tourist traffic has grown to such an extent that visitors from Nippon now rank second, after Australians, with New Zealanders displaced to third position in visitor stat istics to New Caledonia. Es pecially popular are

honeymoon trips one

Noumea hotel invited its guests

to join in a Japanese wedding

(at $35) with a full day trip and feast in the Melanesian tribe at Goro, driving through the dra matic red-soil hillscapes of the Yate district, south of Noumea.

Visitors who have no time to travel inland or to offshore islands, get their main taste of the ‘French way of life’ around the hotels on Anse Vata beach.

Still a tranquil long stretch of

A new bank building towers over Noumea’s old town hall on the city’s famous Coconut Square.

ine white sand only seven 'ears ago, Anse Vata has been ransformed these days into a

msy lagoon filled with jet skis,

vindsurfers, Hobie Cat sailors

md reclining sun-worshippers,

nost of them topless.

The habitual procession of eisurely cars along the Anse

/ata promenade has been

oined by an increasing num >er of local boys and girls on notocyclettes and tourists on

)icycles, even tandem cycles,

fhese are hired from the new

Faison de Tourisme complex,

milt around what used to be he Lantana Hotel.

The Relais de Kanumera on he Isle of Pines has closed its

lotel rooms, although day trips

o the island are still organised, 'he Club Med. is trying to per uade the Melanesians to auth orise a Club Med. installation •n the island. Back at Anse the Chateau Royal Hotel, losed down since February, /as due to open as a Club Med. esort in early November. Be ind the South Pacific Com mission, the Hotel Isle de Tance is building an extra 40 ooms to bring their total to 00, while around by the Baie es Citrons beach the docambo Hotel has been efurbished and is under new owners. Closer downtown, the iew Paradise Park Motel offers omfortable accommodation

/ith swimming pool and free

ms to town from the handy üburb of the Vallee des Colons.

The most exciting new hotel iroject for Noumea is the ntemautile hotel-casino,

»eing promoted by Raymond

Tere’s SOCOTOUR which ias obtained several hectares »f municipal land situated on n undeveloped beachfront at he northern end of Nouville.

Vith its convict ruins and fine agoon, this former Isle of Nou s now linked by causeway to Noumea on the mainland. A lumber of large hotel groups in

Australia are keenly interested

n the Frere project which has imbitious prospects as a luxury sland resort.

Back in downtown Noumea, fiendly general advice to tour sts is available at the infor-

mation bureau which has just been transferred from in front of the Qantas agents and re opened in the old colonial town

hall building, overlooking

Noumea’s central square.

Completely dwarfing the old

wooden town hall is the 14storey glass and concrete struc ture of the Bank of Indochina and Suez, across the street. At the other end of the square the imposing new town hall occupies a whole block. Across the corner, the Maison Barrau

department store beams out the daily local news with illuminated messages revolv

ing over its shop front. Big

splashes of white paint on buildings around the square try to obscure signs calling for Independance Kanak. The locals watch and wait, knowing that the territory is in the experienced hands of a highlytrained elite of skilled public servants from the best schools in France, who are convinced of the important role France

has to play in the Pacific, Noumea radio and colour TV use satellite transmission to keep the Caledonians up to the minute with events in France, And French government officials urge them to ‘open up to the outside world, especially the Pacific’for‘New Caledonia will in her own special way

spread the French language

and way of life in the Pacific’.

Parking area on Noumea’s filled-in Baie de la Moselle.

Babycar’ buses stop outside Noumea’s new town hall.