SOUTHERN SEAS ISLANDS
1999: from new Caledonia beaches to the Austral Tasman Winter
(by Emanuela)

That's it. We're upside down. And we also feel, upside down. Not hard, after 24 hours on a plane, a dozen time zones passed, a night-time stopover (night time?) in the terribly hot and humid Singapore. Well, it's quite good that we're not collapsing, and not just because of our emotion.

Long corridors filled with the sound of didgeridoo, customs, we find our luggage and here we are: outside, breathing a new and different air, the chilly air of a mid-August clear, blue-sky afternoon, immense over the airport's parking lot. Sydney? Yes, please. Well, wait a minute, I'll have a cigarette, before. Right, no need to hurry. The cab driver mutters something in some kind of distorted Irish, throws away the fag end, and finally opens the car trunk for us.
The city looks quite familiar from the first moment, easy to understand: the river and wonderful ships on this side, hills and dream villas on the other side; further, the Ocean, the one with the big O.
Simon, of Flight Centre, takes our cause quite seriously and drowns inside his computer, finding for us tickets for the crazy sequence of flights that we asked him: Sydney - Nouméa - Auckland - Hobart - Sydney. I think he finds us nice, he says he's been three times in Italy, every time on Garda lake. Well, we're leaving for Southern Seas, right!?

*****

Dream waters, fishes which have been invented by some rainbow wizard, palms, palms and more palms, enormous, white, pieces of coral to be found on dessert beaches, entire beaches of thin white sand, infinite expanses of enormous shells and corals, peaceful dogs, spending their time scratching while contemplating the ocean, tropical climate: what else could Kanaks ask for?
Indigenous population, as black as can be who's been living for generations at the Tropic, as naturally talkative as can be somebody who'd been menacing castaways and invaders of eating them until a couple of generations ago, is now splitted between those who cohabit with the French invaders and tourists arriving by Boeing from Tokyo for the weekend, and all others. All others, that is people living on Loyalty Islands or in the Northern Province of the Grande Terre, the main island.

If, on one hand, the French, historically conquerors (can you say so, if two parts don't have the same weapons?) of paradise archipelagos, are hardly to be blamed, on the other hand it's almost commonplace to share the feeling of those who've always been living on, rather than owning, these islands, in an extraordinary symbiosis with the nature of the earth and the sea. But it couldn't be avoided: nickel has come on the scene. Grande Terre mountains are among the major sources of this quite rare metal. The extreme white of its sands, the shades of turquoise of its waters, the intense green of forests give up in front of a Dante's hell red when you are approaching the inner mountains, which are gutted a little at the time in more and more levels by scrapers and bulldozers. Giant layers of desert, slowly but constantly furrowed by metallic auto machines, spitting out black smoke over that red dust whose existence tourists cannot even suspect from out on the coast. Unless they noticed the nickel plant at the entrance of Nouméa.

Our Suzuki Jimny takes us up and down the Grande Terre, on our search for new beaches, high points where we can enjoy panoramas, a bakery where we can buy fragrant baguettes and delicious pains au chocolat, small tropical cows, lazily relaxing under a bunch of palms.
We cross the Northern mountains, in that Province which is periodically subject to rebel movements. We give a lift to a Kanak hitch-hiker. Not much of a conversation, he just needs to know we're not French. He gets down at the next village, close to the white-red-blue flag of the gendarmerie. We see people walking along the road, in the middle of the forest, in the middle of the mountains. A sudden, strong shower. They don't seem to care much. The sun comes back out later. Or maybe not, but who cares. We cross other people, everybody waving at us, we wave back. The Kanak way of waving has something rasta in it, a slow movement of the wrist, launching up two or three fingers, while your chin is slightly lifted, but not too much, and looks meet each other in the air. Sometimes you might even smile. Cars coming from the opposite direction light up their high-beams at us. Saying hallo to everybody becomes a habit even for us - it wouldn't be that easy back in Europe.
Two kids walk in our same direction. We decide to give them a lift, we've got place for them too. No conversation. Oh well, not everybody has the gift of eloquence. We're asking ourselves how far they're going: it's been a while since we picked them up. We need to wait some more time, until one of them mumbles something in some Kanak-French, so that we slow down at a crossroads with a couple of houses around it. They get down and say some Kanak thankful goodbye. At least, that's what we thought.

The East coast comes down through the forest, at a short distance from the beach. Here and there, at random points in the middle of the forest, wooden banks expose several kinds of merchandise: bananas; coconuts; non-identified fruits; enormous shells and corals. You don't see anybody around. You just need to stop and wait. Alyseum through the leafs. Some stream gurgles in direction of the sea. And here, surprise: children come out of the pitch-black forest. They look at you, you look at them, smiles from both sides, let's start the business. What you see is what they're selling, sometimes there's some more. Wood or soapstone statues, Kanak gods looking at you from over enormous lips and a crushed nose. Short contracting, many smiles, Pacific Ocean Francs come out easily from your pockets. A fair exchange.
Once again we stop our car: a passage through the vegetation allows us to easily reach the beach, about a hundred meters from the road. A real paradise, nobody in sight, not even anything looking like a tourist. No coral barrier in front of us, the Ocean roars directly onto the white beach, today quite angrily underneath fast grey clouds. The beach is made just of shells, big and small ones, sometimes huge. I extract from the beach a bivalve shell weighing a few kilos, hidden among thousands of other shells. Mother of pearl, pinkish tones, tiger colours, cone shells you might see in a museum... we're in the paradise of the shell hunt. Immersed in our exploration, we fail to notice a woman looking at us. Emerged from the vegetation, she squatted at the border of the beach hugging her, maybe two-year-old, little daughter. They're looking at us, the woman might be fifteen or thirty underneath incredibly voluminous, almost blonde hair. The girl, wide-open eyed and deeply silent, has her same wild hair, of a much blonder shade.

Again, unpaved road for us. Concrete squares thrown over a water stream, red road under the forest, on our left side still filter the white of the sand and some pearl-grey glittering of the waters. The road starts to go up, we pass a few houses, the sun is now set. After the hilltop, we meet a few people walking up from the other side, we wave hallo. It's dark, dark as you can think dark can be, no stars in the sky.
Skreeetch. Suddenly we hit the breaks, the dust gathers close to the headlights. At the bottom of the hill the road ends sharply. In front of us: water. Until where? You couldn't tell. How deep? Deep. Sea? River? About half a kilometer in front of us, on a hill, a couple of lights can be spotted. Maybe it's the bed and breakfast that we're looking for, the only place to spend the night within a hundred kilometers, apart from the Club Med which should lie ever further. A sign at the roadside clearly indicates a car going down in the water. We stopped about two meters before.
A Kanak joke. What now? Our map speaks clearly: going back to the first gas station is too long a road for us, "bac" in front of us. What's a bac, by the way? A Kanak joke translated in a French word.
The sound of a power generator in the distance, maybe from the other side of this water expanse. Whatever it is, a bac is the water stretching in front of us. We'd thought about one more water corse, or a torrent, or a river opening wide into the sea, a bridge. Looking closely, on our map the road goes on. But where? Carlo throws away his cigarette. We get out what remains of our baguette. But - chew chew . those people we met must have been coming out from somewhere. And they haven't given us - chew chew - any particular signal. End of our baguette. A sip of water.
Tomp-tomp-tomp. The sound of that engine seems louder now. It's not a boat, who knows what the hell it is, let's try to shoot our high beams over the water. Pitch black. Tomp-tomp-tomp. A Kanak candid camera, for sure. The night starts to be humid, I put on a shirt. And here Caronte is coming. Inside the cloud of insects in front of the car lights the shape of a barge is slowly delineated, together with the silhouette of a short, stuggy man standing on it. That's what this damn steel cable is for, starting from the riverside, stretching over the water. It's a ferry, a large metal barge tied to this damn steel cable.
Our friend must have noticed our headlights over the water and has come pick us up. We feel and instinctive sense of friendship toward this man, whose face we can't even see. He accepts a cigarette, and for a short while we think we guess his look, lowered over the lit match. The time of getting us and Jimny onto his barge, he leaves again in the opposite direction.
We're crossing the enormous mouth of a river. The water is black, the sky is black, we keep Jimny's headlights on to feel less lost. The steel cable is long, water continuing to flow at the sides of the barge. Caronte does not accept any payment. We get down and here, again we are, on another strip of unpaved road, climbing up rapidly the cape, curve after curve. The lights we'd seen before pass over us, we're still in search of our destination for tonight.

*****

The domestic airport of Nouméa is much different from the international airport. It's just a concrete block, a bar and few things you can buy, crowded by dark ladies covered in wide and colourful dresses, with so many flower patterns on them as only at the tropics you can imagine. Little children stick their hands to the window, looking at our small airplane, ready at the parking, man overloaded with packets. We're embarking, with our reduced luggage - we've abandoned about half of it at our Nouméa shelter, our faithful Lantana, under the reception desk. The Air Calin hostess distributes embarkation cards, while we can spot packets of any shape and dimension, even plants and tv sets, entering the stow.
After about an hour of propeller flight and a good sandwich we break out in a relieving laugh: the pilot has punctured the white low clouds, actually finding the red airport strip in the middle of Lifou forest. We're beyound the world's borders. Our small airplane is quickly manoeuvred and parked, we get down in a quite scattered way, launching in the search of our luggage, now gathered with no possible criteria together with all other, on the other side of a large counter.
Families and friends of those who've flewn with us are all here, maybe the entire island is here, serious and extremely black faces searching among the colourful and flying dresses of the women and the mess made by children. Who knows if somebody has really come pick us up. The Kanak guy of the Loyalty Islands office in Nouméa, the serious and kind employee with his thirty-centimeter high hair cloud on his head, has promised so. Here we see nobody with some sign with our names on it, but it'd probably be ridiculous. We're the only white people here. He's going to find us.
It's certainly this guy coming to us, wearing a serious face like all men around us. Yes, it's him. A vigorous hand shake, he helps us with our luggage, we get out. He opens his Alfa 80. Alfa 80? Red car, partially smashed, its engine is easily starter like a Swiss clock. Except its suspensions, it seems most of the remaining mechanical parts has arrived here. We talk about nothing in particular while moving between forests and isolated houses with nice gardens and almost fluorescent flowers. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on a lonely rock in the middle of the ocean, covered with green, we're nicely discussing about cocker with the proprietor of a red Alfa 80, whose grandfather would have probably found us yummy...

Paradise is here. We couldn't ask for more. Probably, we won't be able to find anything like this anywhere for our entire life. But now, for a few days, it's ours. We're on it, in the middle of it, underneath it. A bungalow below the trees, just before the beach. All this white, so white, dazzling white beach is just for us. Just soft, white coral sand underneath our feet. You can feel touched, when in front of such and impossibly transparent, crystal clear water, of such aquamarine shades you can only imagine when looking at glass pieces against sunlight.
At about one hundred meters from this deliciously relaxing strand, the Pacific Ocean roughly breaks against the coral barrier, raising high spray roaring dreadfully. If you close your eyes you can guess the physical clash between the powerful masses of salty water against the hard crust of corals emerging from marine depths. Open them up again and you'll be blinded by the white of the sand, the colours of the plants, the transparent waters, the black rocks emerging here and there. It's all ours.
And of our friend, the real beach owner: the flea-covered black dog who loves to contemplate the water horizons, silently running who knows where, funnily sniffing the sand and fallen coconuts, sometimes following some little white crab just emerged from its hole in the sand. Jet-black hair covered with white dust, this dog who loves to scratch in the tree shadows on this infinite beach is a real character. Sooner or later he dives again in the water and then rolls in sand again.

The Tropical night suddenly surprises us, with an explosive and fast sunset. Just the time to let yourself be completely absorbed into the dazzling between the waves and it's over, the ball is dissolved, vanished, strained into an ever darker Ocean, like ice-cream on asphalt in Summer. The air becomes purple, the last thin clouds dye into pink and orange shades, the shadow already covers the entire earth. Another instant and the firmament gets hold of the scene, ever more intensely, more and more filled of little luminous points, even more fluorescent than the instant before. The Milky Way becomes evident, is lit up, si reflects on the white beach. You can even see our dog friend there, at the end of the beach, close to the water. Who knows what it's doing.

*****

Detaching from the land of New Caledonia tears something apart inside of you, straight into the heart. Only the turquoise blue of ten thousand meter height, running toward the sunset, and the idea of putting my feet on the other corner of the planet can distract me from that.
We're in New Zealand. Easy. Landed, passed customs controls thanks to a piece of slyness despite the kilos of shells and corals we're carrying, well closed in our luggage, everything is user-friendly, more than a Switzerland speaking English. Taxi, yes, please.

The hotel that Simon has booked for us is simply spectacular, with a view on Auckland docks. At night its a wonder of lights and white shapes slowly fluctuating in the water; during the day it's just an appetizer of what the entire town offers, between water and high tech, the preparation of America's Cup and the vision from the Sky Tower top, everything from a surface made of what remains of black volcanoes and shiny green grass. Whatever you wish for, a burger or a frappuccino, comes served with kiwi phlegm and exclusive accent. The tee-shirt warns you: "If the world was flat we would be the ones living on the edge".

*****

A new flight in Melbourne, just the time to have our minds get used to a more humid climate. Hobart: we're in Tasmania. Tasmania. Our head are turning faster and faster, our crazy movements in the Southern Seas make us bounce from one world to another. Tasmania. Rainy and fresh, no doubt. The end of Tasmanian winter is filled with Ocean humidity, Antarctic air, Scottish-looking clouds. Maybe that's the reason why the Crown has had an interest in such a faraway territory.

I'm driving our "pedal" Nubira" toward the center of Hobart, risking just one incident on a left turn. Nothing special. The Tasmanian capital has a Britannic and Northern look to its bones. Our bed & breakfast, with double taps and a minuscule mirror to shave in the shower comes out from an episode of George & Mildred.
We have a delicious dinner made of pumpkin soup and Australian meat in a tavern down at the harbour. In front of us are anchored a Polar expedition ship, a couple of historical sailers, a number of fishing boats. My head is still turning, I barely remember where I am. It's no Jap-tour effect, rather the result of a number of déjà-vu covering the images of such a Britannic town. The capital of that little triangle of land South of the "Upper Island" - Australia - Tasmanian sarcasm. Faces reminding you of the origin of their ancestors, who'd been carried here in detention, or what remained of lives that were not worth living elsewhere. Here they'd found a place to live, somebody their luck. Certainly they've all found a place which is isolated from everything, although it's part of Australia, cricket, rugby and all the rest. Policeman with his star on his chest, an enormous black moustache covering his face and a large hat lowered over his mirror sunglasses: he's busy scribbling down on the ticket book.

Going around Tasmania is really fun. Sweet, green hills, as sweet and green as England's, sheep puffy with wool scattered everywhere, thick vegetation that hides opossum, kangaroos and Tasman devils. We stop at some farm for a real tea time - tea and home-made pastries! - before taking a narrow street going towards the sea. On the top of a hill covered with colourful bush, we're hit by a powerful and humid wind carrying fast low clouds, moving the fog hiding the surrounding hills.