Over the last few months, reports from Nouvelle-Caledonie have been catching my eye. They've not been cheery. First roadblocks and demonstrations, then violent confrontations with riot police, involving barricades, burning tyres, running battles, and tear gas. The protests are driven by diverging views about control of the nickel industry. Nouvelle-Caledonie is one of the world's largest nickel producers, and demand is only expected to grow, so there's a highly significant resource at stake here, with equally important implications for the environment. Where there's money, there's politics, and sure enough, the nickel question is very much tied up with Nouvelle-Caledonie's political profile, which is quite complex.

Internally, there is a gap between the north and the south (the north is majority Kanak, and poorer).

In terms of international status, Nouvelle-Caledonie is currently a French Pacific dependency (a TOM, or "Territoire d'Outre Mer"). In two referendums on self-determination (in 2018 and 2020), a majority voted for that situation to continue. But the gap narrowed over those two years. Next year may well see another vote, and the result may well be different.

If a future state is to be viable, how the nickel industry is managed matters a lot: "Kanak nationalists have learnt many lessons from mining operations elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, Nauru and other independent nations in the region, with their tragic history of environmental damage, tax avoidance and unequal distribution of royalties. Facing off against the French state and transnational mining corporations, they have long sought to add value to the islands’ main resources, nickel ore and other strategic minerals, rather than simply ship them offshore unprocessed."

Recent rounds of protests have focused on Vale, one of the nickel mining companies in Nouvelle-Caledonie, which has been trying to sell its operations there. There are differing views as to who should be the lucky buyer.

Just two days ago there were more demonstrations by the different sides.

Anyway, this rather long introduction is purely to explain why Nouvelle-Caledonie has popped up in Vintage Travel.

We visited for a week in August 2006 (earlier that year there had also been nickel-related clashes). Our destination was Grande Terre, the largest of the islands. 

I have diary entries for this trip, but first I'm going to play the memory game. What still sticks with me, 15 years later, without any prompting?

We lived in New Zealand at the time, and this destination, about a three-hour flight away, was our fifth "Pacific island" (after Tonga, the Cook Islands, Samoa, and Fiji). This was a unique trip, though. For the first time, we hired a car, from the comfort of which we enjoyed Nouvelle-Caledonie's mountainous and beautiful scenery (often moody and rain-soaked when we were there).







And for the first time, we were able to camp. This is (or was) a very informal business. I remember asking the members of a travel forum whether it was necessary to book ahead, and receiving a reply along the lines of "when you see the camp sites you'll know that they're not geared up for people booking ahead". And it was true. The places were very, very simple. But wonderful.

At the first site, we had to evict the family's dogs from the front porch of the tent before we could climb out in the morning. (We were dog TV, and a bunch of canines flocked round us whenever we did anything.)









In another place, we joined a French dentist and his visiting brother round the fire they had built on the beach on that slightly chilly evening with its full moon. The next day they'd gone, so we built our own fire.









One time, the campsite we'd read about turned out to be closed, so we camped at the unattended and totally empty municipal place. I was a little anxious, but I needn't have been.

The other thing about Nouvelle-Caledonie was that it was the first French place we'd been in since leaving Europe. It is not entirely fair on the rich indigenous culture to say this, but the French angle made it very special for me. France was once a really big part of our lives, and although New Zealand offered masses of interesting places, and was a good jumping-off point for many more, I did find myself missing Europe from time to time. (I always remember the TV series about British migrants to Australia. One of them was asked: "What do you miss about England?"; he came straight back with his answer: "France." I knew what he meant. France, that wonderfully different country that you could just pop to... You couldn't "just pop" anywhere from New Zealand.)

Anyway, I remember overdosing on Frenchness in Nouvelle-Caledonie, eating (excellent) baguettes and petits pains aux raisins, drinking Bordeaux and Cotes du Rhones, licking the windows (as they say in French) of the numerous boucheries-charcuteries, and shopping in the supermarket for the food we'd loved when camping in France (tins of choucroute, couscous, cassoulet, tabbouleh, gratin dauphinois, Mont Blanc...; and cheese, cheese, cheese...)

I remember the joy of little conversations in French, and of finding a great second-hand book shop in Noumea.

And I remember that the roadside signposting was hopelessly Gallic...

So much for what has lived on in my memory.

My diary reminds me of waterfalls, overgrown mine workings, and beautiful mountain vistas. It also reminds me of vestiges of convict-built roadways and wharves (Nouvelle-Caledonie became a penal colony in 1863, and while 1897 saw the decision to stop sending convicts there, it did not officially lose that designation until 1931.)

It reminds me of the sounds of camping: the faint scraping of the coconut trees; the roar of breakers on the reef; the chirp of crickets; the ripple of water on the beach as an occasional big wave pushed the lagoon into undulations.

It reminds me of the Kanak women's clothes. Almost uniformly, they wore baggy dresses, falling from a yoke, front and back, almost nightdress-style. I didn't remember these from other parts of the Pacific. The "robe mission" was introduced by missionaries, in an attempt to promote modesty and propriety, but was "appropriated by Kanak women and incorporated into their customary and daily life as a versatile outfit... The robe mission is one of those exogenous elements that have been indigenised, showing local capacity to appropriate what comes from other contexts..."

And it reminds me of a few more details of our itinerary.

On the way to our first campsite, in the southeast of the island, we visited the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre, named after the president of the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist Liberation Front, who was assassinated in 1989.







Then we retraced our steps, and spent a night in a hotel in Noumea, the capital (a pleasant city, with occasional remnants of colonial architecture, and plenty of trees).





After which, we headed northwest. During that journey, we stopped to view the "Arab cemetery", where lie the "deported and transported". We also visited the NZ war cemetery, the resting place of men lost in the war against Japan. Such young men, many of them: 20, 23, 26... It was a very peaceful, beautiful locality, backed by mountains, and enlivened by shrubs and trees.







Just before Hienghene, the black limestone cliffs started. Huge, jagged-peaked blocks of rock. Like rock with lace frills on top. Lingerie rock.

I had completely forgotten, despite our recent obsession with river ferries, that we crossed the river Ouaieme on the "bac", which took cars and passengers, and was the last of its kind in Nouvelle-Caledonie, the operator told me. It was a very simple design, with two big engines on either side of a raft-like arrangement. One went forward, one in reverse, to cope with the backwards and forwards rhythm of the service. The scenery it traverses is stunning, with huge mountains plunging directly into the sea. (And it seems it's still going, although in this case too its days are numbered because of a bridge project.)



We headed south again via a different route across the island, still scenic but much less convoluted. We marvelled again at how downright mountainous this place is. The vegetation seemed to change very quickly. Our mountain routes up till then had been either lush and tropical, or piney and northern-looking. The hills north of Bourail looked dry and tawny by contrast.

From Bourail, we set off for Thio, which is where the big nickel mines start. There was indeed evidence of mountain scarring, but much less than we'd anticipated, and the town itself was rather nice. We spent some time in the mining museum.

After a bare week (so little annual leave in those days), we were heading home for NZ. There were horrendous queues at the airport, and extra-tight security, but it wasn't until we got home that we realized there had been a new terror scare, with plans to blow up aircraft using stuff conveyed in ordinary carry-on items like deodorant, shampoo, baby food, etc. I write in my diary: "What kind of era are we living in? How safe can air travel ever really be? We have to live with restriction after restriction after restriction. But it won't stop me going. A life lived on the ground in New Zealand is not a life, so far as I'm concerned."

Oh, I so had no idea back then...