Madeleine Waterfall – Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 / GFDL
Capital: Nouméa
Population: 260,000+
Language: French (28 Kanak languages are also spoken)
1 – Balade
Balade, a small village on the north-east coast of Grande Terre, is where Cook anchored in September 1774 and named the land New Caledonia, Caledonia being the Latin name for Scotland, and where on 24 September 1853 Rear-Admiral Febvrier-Despointes took possession of it for Napoleon III.
Near Balade, Mahamat beach marks the first Catholic mass in New Caledonia, celebrated in 1843, while the church at Balade, the first on Grande Terre, has stained-glass windows telling the story of the early mission.
Cook’s crew at Balade in 1774 included John Marra, a gunner’s mate recorded on an earlier muster roll as being from Cork, whose unauthorised journal of the voyage, published in 1775, reached print before Cook’s own account, while a monument above the bay, raised in 1913, marks 60 years of French possession.
2 – Nouméa
Nouméa was founded in 1854 as Port-de-France on a deep harbour in the south of Grande Terre and renamed in 1866, and it grew on the labour of the penal colony, which received about 22,000 convicts between 1864 and 1897, then on nickel.
Nouméa’s Place des Cocotiers is the colonial heart of town, with the Port Moselle market nearby and the beaches of Anse Vata and Baie des Citrons a short ride away, while in 1942 the city became headquarters of US naval command in the South Pacific, under Admiral Halsey from October that year.
The Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouméa, a row of tall curved timber “cases” designed by Renzo Piano and opened in 1998, was a commitment of the 1988 Matignon Accords, named after the Kanak leader who signed them and was assassinated on Ouvéa on 4 May 1989.
3 – Île des Pins
Île des Pins, Kunié to its Kanak people, was named by Cook in 1774 for its tall columnar pines, and from 1872 France used it as a place of exile for about 3,000 deportees from the Paris Commune, as well as Kabyle insurgents from Algeria’s revolt of 1871.
Île des Pins is known for the natural seawater pool at Oro Bay, the white curves of Kuto and Kanuméra bays, pirogue trips across Upi Bay and the climb up Pic N’ga, at 262 m the island’s highest point.
Amnesties in 1879–80 sent the Communards home from Île des Pins, though the Kabyles were left out and had to wait for individual pardons, and at Ouro the deportees’ cemetery and a water tower built by convicts in 1874–75 lie among the trees.
4 – Ouvéa
Ouvéa, the northernmost of the Loyalty Islands, is a narrow atoll some 40 km long, under 40 m wide in places, and its lagoon is one of the six areas of the Lagoons of New Caledonia World Heritage site, inscribed in 2008.
Fayaoué beach runs some 25 km along Ouvéa’s lagoon, with the Lékiny cliffs to the south, and the island inspired Katsura Morimura’s 1966 book The Island Closest to Heaven, a phrase long attached to Ouvéa.
On 22 April 1988, Kanak militants attacked Ouvéa’s gendarmerie at Fayaoué, killing four gendarmes and taking others hostage to a cave near Gossanah, and the French assault of 5 May left 19 Kanak and two soldiers dead, amid later allegations that some militants were killed after surrendering, before the Matignon Accords followed on 26 June 1988.
