Caledonia Dreaming

There is a song called Caledonia written by a Scottish guy called Dougie. Not me. Obviously

It's maudlin, mawkish, sickly-sweet and sentimental. Very, very blokey. The sort of thing drunks put on a juke box when they're a long, long way from home. Ibiza, maybe. It's about loving a mythical Scotland that never existed. Which is why, years ago, it was used perfectly as the backing music for a no-less maudlin television advert for Tennents lager.

The chorus goes:

Oh and let me tell you that I love you

That I think about you all the time

Caledonia you're calling me and now I'm going home

For if I should become a stranger

You know that it would make me more than sad

Caledonia's been everything I've ever had

I don't like the song. But what do I know? It has entered the pantheon. Many of my fellow Scots love it and tear-up when they sing along (as Scots are wont to do).

There is, however, a flimsy connection between that Not-Caledonia (imagined Scotland) and New Caledonia. Captain Cook. Discovered everywhere apparently, although the people living in the places he 'discovered' probably thought they were getting along just fine without him. They were already self-actualising. A point made with fatal directness to Captain Cook in Hawaii on 14 February 1779.

And your point is what, Douglas.

Well, Captain Cook named the big island here 'New Caledonia' because it reminded him of the coastline of northwest Scotland. Dodgy recollection, I'd say, James. I have walked some tracks in Scotland. This place aint 'back home'.

But people, nations, empires tell their self-promoting stories. They're seldom wholly true.

Noumea ... or maybe if your Captain Cook ... Tobermory

How then do I -- like 'five minutes' off the plane -- 'discover' a contemporary understanding of a country still coming to terms with 250 years of rigidly enforced colonialism, the unresolved legacy of indentured labour and enslavement, economic exploitation and cultural repression? This remains, I think, a conundrum for our modern age in which othering everyone who is not an angry white man appears to be back in fashion.

Where does one begin? I need someone to blame.

So, let's start with Robert Louis Stevenson, stir in a ladle-full of (early) Marlon Brando, add more than a soupçon of French colonialism plus an entire nickel mine of international monopoly capitalism and a pinch of gallic disregard for Modernity: The quintessential indifference shrug of French shoulders: "Je m’en fous." Ideally with a half-smoked Gauloises drooping from your bottom lip.

They'll do for starters.

Spike finds shade in Noumea's civic park

First things first, after three pleasant days here. Wandering aimlessly around the centre ville de Nouméa -- back and forth along the azure foreshore from the many expensive catamarans -- past the almost wholly empty cruise ship quay -- to a view of the nickel-processing factory and the industrial docks with several working cranes. There is, at least, a genuine (if exploitative) economic reason for these cranes to still be breaking the New Caledonian skyline (unlike the one surviving crane in my hometown; symbol of its long-gone history).

Cranes at Noumea docks beyond the empty cruise hip berth

But my feeling is this. I like this place and its polite, friendly people.

They say bonjour when we pass on the street. They tolerate my half-arsed Duolingo French and give me time to make a Scottish mess of asking for une quiche au brocoli et aux lardons and an énorme slice of Mille-feuille.

I know, I know ... bacon bits. But we're not in Sydney's Inner West and Nouméa's shops close at four (unless there is a cruise liner in, which there wasn't). We needed to eat.

People are pleasantly surprised that we're not day-trippers off a cruise ship (which are starting to return after last year's civil unrest). The nice ladies in the patisserie even seemed impressed that we were staying in the charming 2.5 Star Gondwana hotel just round the corner in the 'Latin Quarter'. In wheelchair accessible Room 27 (one of three adapted rooms) on le Patio du Pacifique.

Our room with a view

It's here one can order a very Nouméan version of le petit déjeuner français. And in the afternoon, when it's too hot and humid to do much, come across an artist practicing.

Artist at work

So, what's mon bœuf? As no one actually says, comme ça.

I suppose it's the perennial tourist's tension between the idea and the reality. The chasm between my comparative affluence and the circumstances of the majority of the people who live on this tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. Population 275,000. That's about the same as Geelong in Victoria or Townsville in Queensland, if you know Australia. Or Aberdeen, if you know Scotland.

Greater Geelong has a GDP of maybe $14 Billion US. Aberdeen's figure is maybe $20 Billion US. For the whole of this beautiful island 'paradise' the GDP figure might have crept up to $10 Billion US. And a very large chunk of that is extracted as nickel and cobalt by multi-national mining companies who literally ship the wealth overseas.

More to life than extracting wealth

Forty-two per cent of the country's population are indigenous Kanak people. On average they earn two-thirds the wages of non-Kanak people. Unemployment of Kanak people is twice the level of non-Kanak people. Youth unemployment is three times higher. Poverty among Kanak people is 4 times the rate for non-Kanak people. And while 23% of the non-Kanak people have a degree, only 3% of Kanak people have a degree. Meanwhile 80% of the prison population are Kanak people. Twice their population share.

No wonder there's been 'trouble in paradise'.

Razor wire & barricades surround the High Commissioner's residence

There is a strong and growing independence movement. But this is Colonial France. The huge administrative compound of the French High Commission, the enormous parkland of the High Commissioner's residence (blocked off to pedestrians and luxuriating behind razor wire) signal strongly that the 'mother country' is reluctant to let go of its 175-year rule of an island whose human habitation goes back at least 3,000 years.

Which brings me back to Robert Louis Stevenson (author of Treasure Island, which every Scottish boy of my generation read; he's buried on Samoa) and Marlon Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty (released in 1962 when I was five years old).

I come from Glasgow. The idea of a Pacific Ocean island, blue lagoon waters, something like Tahiti (if not actually Tahiti) is about as exotic as anything one can imagine.

Pacific Blues

I know that Long John Silver & Jim Hawkins adventured in the Caribbean. I know too that Brando's Christin Fletcher was a croc of Hollywood horse manure and none of us dies happily in the loving arms of a Polynesian princess. But we still can dream of fantasy islands that one day we might visit and pretend.

Poster of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

I have finally made it to my first real Pacific Ocean Island. I just think it's long past time the colonial rulers ceded ownership, power and control to the peoples who've been here for three millennia. I love France. I'm getting to know and like New Caledonia. And both can exist in this modern world as sovereign nations in charge of their own destinies.

Anyone can see the truth. It's time to leave behind the ruins of a colonial past.

Noumea stairway to nowhere.