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A week’s holiday in Noumea during “the emergency”

PIM reader DIANE AYOUB had a week’s holiday in Noumea during the first week of the state of emergency in January. Her verdict? It was “a holiday she would not have wanted to miss”, and some Australian journalists “were both misrepresen ting and over-reacting to the situation.”

The hour’s drive from Tontouta Airport to our hotels was a quiet one, interrupted only by the impromptu commentary of the guy behind me who was mak ing his third trip to Noumea.

The route by-passed the city where the rioting had occurred, sheltering us from what might have been a disturbing initial impression. As we drew near the hotels, what most struck me was the number of cars on the road and the purposefulness with which they were travelling.

And then the penny dropped.

In a little more than an hour the curfew would come into force on the island for the first time.

Impatient to stretch my legs, immediately after I’d checked in I took a stroll along the beach on to which my hotel faced.

Returning to change for a swim, I indicated my room number to the guy at the reception desk.

As he handed me my key, telephone pressed to his ear, he said with some surprise “This is for you, it’s your mother”.

Chance meetings and unex pected coincidences were to continue to be a special aspect of the week I spent in Noumea.

Having related the day’s events to Mum and allaying her fears for my safety, it was still with some despair that she asked: “But why did you go?”

From the anxiety she was ex periencing, it was clear that the press in Australia were giving a far more graphic picture of the situation than anything I had (or was to be) exposed to. This was to be further validated by phone calls from parents of fellow Australians, and was met with disapproval by many

people to whom I spoke, who felt that Australian journalists were both misrepresenting the facts and over-reacting to the situation.

In effect, being in Noumea for the first week of the emergency was a unique ex perience, and while it was far removed from what I had im agined a week previously, it was a holiday I would not have wanted to miss. I went equipped with a page full of shops, restaurants, discos, do’s and don’ts given me by a friend who had made several trips to Noumea. Owing to the circumstances, many of those suggestions were left unex plored, and with the limitations and restrictions within which one had to operate, there were some rewarding compensa tions. What was most cogent was the opportunity to be with people and share experiences in a manner not normally afforded in an overseas trip. It seemed that circumstances born out of one people’s separateness served to bring others closer together. So that, being “confined to quarters”, though at times frustrating, was for me an opportunity to feel a sense of belonging and to really enjoy the company of the people in my immediate en vironment.

In the choice of hotel I considered myself fortunate to have been staying at the Noumea Beach. Apart from being one of the few which did not have gendarmes resident, there was a camaraderie amongst the staff which affected and served its guests

well. Having to remain at the hotel until morning, once their shift was complete, they would join the tourists and we would occupy our evenings in talk and games, with the highlight being a night of song and dance in honor of two guests who were returning to Australia next day.

Ironically, it was the tourists

who paid most respect to the rules of the emergency while inhabitants seemed determined to defy them. Nowhere was this more obvious than at the wharf beside the road leading out of the city, where, each night, upwards of 100 people would park their cars and gather to protest silently against what they saw as the violation of their freedom.

Diane Ayoub

Moss Vale NSW Australia