Noumea Aquarium and a Bohemian Beer
This is the last of my decablogs for you, the tenth for which you already have the photos before I can start on our current adventure, which I have been looking forward to because it is all to do with life on Zoonie, so here we go..
A walk to the Aquarium along the level promenade was called for until the heavens opened and we dashed into the Barca Bar in the Baie des Citrons and nestled into the comfy sofas for a cup of coffee amidst the restful slightly tatty and very Bohemian surroundings; two cups of their delicious coffee as it turned out because the shower was a lengthy one.
This bar comes to life in the evenings with various bands spread out over the months but for us it provided refreshment and free internet while we waited for the rain to pass. We thought it quite likely we would return for a beer later on.
Just around the corner the aquarium sits on a headland with views in all directions from the elevated ground behind it where we had our picnic lunch, but the late morning was spent watching a myriad of marine animals and plants languishing in the well maintained tanks ranging from mini shore-side environments where fiddler crabs had a tedious time ducking into their little tunnels every time a new visitor passed by, to the deep water tank where, as you can see, not only familiar fish lived but also sharks, a ray and a giant grouper.
I included the picture and map of the export routes of the Beche (Spade) de Mer or sea slugs because I have shown you the animals on the bottom of the sea bed numerous times, but these pictures show what happens to them if they get into the commercial market. Fortunately for their future they are common in areas that are not fished commercially, where we snorkel, so they should continue to thrive in safe numbers.
For the same reason the writings about the nautilus are interesting because they also are protected and only taken locally for the aquarium use. They are so beautiful. Underneath their stripy exterior is the layer of pearly shell that was the base for 19th century decoration.
Apparently the social behaviour of the lobster is a very good basis on which to better understand human behaviour, so says Jordan Petersen, a Canadian Psycho-analyst and modern day philosopher whose well written but incomplete book ’12 Rules for Life’ is a pleasure to the human mind if you are interested in psycho and social analysis which I am. This particular lobster, perched away from the others as it was, was showing that healthy human trait of being comfortable in its own company!
The spiky crown of thorns is of the species that decimates coral reefs by literally eating the coral and the flowing Lion Fish can give a seriously powerful sting if touched.
In the really colourful aquarium the fish looked truly happy and content, if that is possible. They came forward through curiosity to see our peering faces and the cute little sand worms had that same watchful 360 degree curiosity from the safety of their burrows as meerkats, marine meerkats!
The Zebra Sharks and Zebra mantis shrimp were worthy of a click on your behalf I thought and then outside, last but not least and outside but not forgotten were a few turtles with a tank to themselves.
Fortunately the weather had dried up for our walk back, from the Barca Bar, but the wind was truly howling so until it calmed itself down we focussed on chores, shopping, washing and putting the 10 photo files onto the blog, care of the free internet at the marina bar, even when the bar was closed!!
Backtracking to Prony Bay
Doctor Sails, more personally known as Yves took just a couple of days to re-stitch every seam of the mainsail with two rows of white stitching you can see in the photo lying over the top of the original brown thread and the Guadeloupe repair, so then we only had to wait for a strong South Westerly to fade and we would leave Noumea after nine days of marina shore-life.
We were motoring in a blue hazy calm back down the black line on the chartplotter the way we had come in. One of us said “Let’s put her on auto pilot so we can relax” on the long passage across to Canal Woodin between Ouen Island and Mont Mao and the entrance to Prony Bay, part of the Grand Sud (Big South) as it is called which includes the communes of Yate (the estuary of the area where the Blue and White Rivers converge into the Yate Lake we visited with Francois) Mont Dore which is the area surrounding the ‘mountain’ in the dry forest we passed with Francois just outside Noumea and Ile des Pins, the southernmost island of the lagoon.
The bay was first explored by the ship ‘Prony’ under the command of Captain Jean Joseph de Brun you see looking very pensive while his portrait was being done, do you think by an artist or photographer? The Prony was a steam driven side wheeler with sails as you can see in the sketch.
However the little black display screen of the autopilot cockpit control failed to light up. Dead as a door nail and Rob checked connections and could not see what was wrong. We did discover that we can operate the auto pilot from the chartplotter down below, so we have not lost the facility altogether and we will use it this way on the passage to Australia and get it looked at there.
Carolyn had told us about the municipal round white with a blue stripe buoys we can pick up in some of the coves in Prony Bay to protect the seabed in the area, especially the sea grass. They are free to use and maintained regularly by the marine authority. So our first stop was in Anse Majic, Magic Cove, in the East Bay of the estuary, and it really was magic. Once secure we sat back in the cockpit and listened to the abundance of birdsong, clearly numerous different species singing their hearts out.
I have been using a brochure entitled ‘Bilan Environmental’ or environment spreadsheet which illustrates the results of a ten year study of the environment in the Grand Sud. The environmental organisation’s website is www.oeil.nc/10ans and its name ‘Oeil, Observatoire de l’environnement’. It is of course written in French so I am enjoying the challenge of translation.
The brochure states the birdlife is stable and being monitored but in the vast area of the Vale NC Nickel mine it is mediocre because of the noise of the mining activity, the dusty air and the shrinking areas of natural habitat. I guess the bird population moves to tolerable areas and this is one of them.
The water to begin with was cloudy, still settling down after the windy days. But on the second day it was clear enough to take photos of the buoy and its two sinkers, concrete cubes linked together you can see on the bottom, the newer one added recently reassuring us it would hold in a strong wind provided the link between the two held. It is always risky picking up buoys as often one has no idea how sound and secure is the sinker and tackle. A golden rule for us is only pick up big buoys (!) that reflect the proportion in size of what is below.
We Follow the Yellow Marked Way – To the Lighthouse
The weather could not have been kinder as I packed the rucksack with food and water and Rob inflated the dinghy. The chartplotter and our pilot showed a wharf just inshore from Zoonie’s mooring. All we could see was a pile of rocks but as a little tinny arrived earlier and was moored on a water bottle buoy nearby we took it as the place to go ashore.
Other folk have used it as a camp or at least as spot to cook supper. The track was clear enough and the sign gave us a good idea of where we were going. It always helps to know that. Our numbered route would be 8, 7, 5, 4, 3 where the first round roofed lookout would be just infront of the old telegraph office ruin, 2 the Cap N’Dua Phare or Lighthouse, 1 The road sign on our way down, 4 the divide in the track to the lighthouse, 5 the rocky roundabout where we turned right onto a different path for the descent, 6, 7, and 8!
Birds accompanied us as we trudged along the winding rusty (literally) red iron path. They perched in the spindly trees of the scrubland close by singing away, telling us we were heading in the right direction. (As indeed they are singing at the moment, 5.00am on the 18th Sept, our 10th Anniversary, here at anchor in Baie de Carrenage as I type.)
My little environmental brochure, my ‘Oeil’ I mentioned before and as I will call it from now, does not cover this area perhaps because it is a nature reserve and tended and monitored anyway.
This is the dry season with summer approaching so you can see why the fire risk sign is set on Tres Eleve (apologies for the lack of accents) or very raised risk and judging by the grey heat burned ferns lying close to the ground just two tinder dry branches rubbing together in the wind would seem risk enough of ignition. I was taken by the very careful and painstaking way the path had been cleared and edged with stone in places, not only a back breaking task but also gloves would have had to be worn as many of the rocks were sharp. I wondered who had done this and if the path had a previous use. The original builders, keepers and telegraph office staff would have come up by foot before the advent of 4 x 4 vehicles in the last twenty years or so. Or did the indigenous Kanaks come to this glorious spot throughout their history?
Francois had told us about the plant that reproduced by extending its long stamen skywards, away from the hot ground that would burn the flowers. The stamens of white flowers and then black fruit can be seen on this single plant. Then the pretty red flowers on the next plant and finally the succulent water retaining leaves that flower around their edges, again well away from the baking ground.
The climb was not long or far from Zoonie back in Anse Majic and we arrived at the round house lookout after an hour and sat in awe at the fact we could see waves breaking on the barrier reef and Isle des Pins nearly 60km away. To our right our route to the bay was in sight through the Canal Woodin (did someone say “There’s a lot of ‘wood in’ there”? It seems likely) and to our left our route through Havannah Pass and out of Goro Bay the morning after we first arrived was being traversed by other yachts. Throughout our blue seaward vista, near and far, were the many reefs clearly visible from our elevated spot and we could see the route two cats were taking out to the distant Iles des Pins.
Rob is entering the substantially built Telegraph Office that opened for business in 1891 keeping Iles des Pins connected by telegraph at first and then telephone from 1895 until the whole modus operandi was moved in 1911 to an office in Noumea and this exposed office was left to ruin. I wonder how the staff felt leaving this wild, spectacular place of work.
Inside the round roofed lookout were colourful posters about the whales that I will use later, sadly they were almost entirely written in French but the photographs in the next blog speak for themselves.
After a few minutes and without my French dictionary my enthusiasm as a translator was on the wane, so we climbed up the path to the lighthouse built in the 1890’s when the dangers lurking beneath the waters around New Caledonia were already well known. Despite that we had effectively come to a wilderness, in part anyway.
My COD (Concise Oxford Dictionary) defines wilderness as an uncultivated, uninhabited and inhospitable region, a neglected or abandoned area. There are no towns, villages or shops here, the flora is mostly growing where it seeded naturally, there is no cultivation for food here and there are certainly many once used and now neglected and abandoned areas, especially in the numerous small scale mining operations which are now concentrated at the Vale NC site to the East of North Bay, Baie Nord and there is plenty about that in my ‘Oeil’.
Clinging to the lighthouse were a team of three dedicated whale watchers joined by two more, us, but we were disappointed as there were no humpbacks to watch while we were there. We would learn more about the whales later.
With vistas like the one we had that day we wished we could bottle it in our minds for posterity, but the photos and memories are an acceptable alternative.
For the first part of our return journey we walked along an access road, literally a chemin de fer (Fr. Railway) a way of iron, the red rust colour being just that, iron in the soil exposed to air and water that has rusted, but this Chemin was for tyres and feet instead of metal wheels. At the roundabout we took a right for the alternative route back and marvelled at the prettiness of the scrubland countryside. Not far from our starting point we came across a paper bark eucalyptus, the type used to cover the wooden lathes of a new Kanak home.
We looked down on our home in the blue of the cove beneath us and as always looked forward to being back on board.
That afternoon we snorkelled near Zoonie and we were surprised to see so few fish. There were a few shoals of very young fish and a handful of reasonable sized ones but no diversity or abundance. They have been heavily fished with hooks, lances, spears and poison in the past and my ‘Oeil’ reveals that in nearby bays the ecological state of the marine species is merely Mediocre, one up from Mauvais or Bad, the report suggests that it is because these areas are under influence of the Vale NC mining complex. Hopefully cooperation between the agencies and the big mining business will work together since New Caledonia obviously needs the revenue from its ore and mineral industry.
Where have all the Whales Gone?
We were mystified as to why we had not seen any whales the day before while looking over the Southern Lagoon from Cap N’Dua Lighthouse, after all usually as many as 800 mother humpbacks with their young using the lagoon for its warmth and safety for the baby whales each year. We pondered this mystery as we emerged on another beautiful calm, sunny day from Baie Est, the East Bay of Prony Bay.
To our right the audacious concrete covered conveyor belt stretches across the countryside bringing the nickel export product from the processing plant to Prony Port and the waiting ships. The whole site of the Vale NC nickel mine, factory, living area and residue park are being carefully monitored from the aspects of ecological degradation and chemical contamination and the results are mixed and the study ongoing.
Ahead of us lay the shores of islets and the mainland opposite with columnar pines and a broad spectrum of colour on the palette of sky, land and sea.
Suddenly there is movement in the water ahead, dark fins just cutting the surface, lanquid in their movements until they spot us and then we are joined by a herd of seven spotty tummied Indo-Pacific Bottlenosed Dolphins who play and explore Zoonie’s hull before losing interest and moving away, I don’t think we were going fast enough for them!
A little further on a huge yellow and black striped sea snake was sidewinding its way across the water from Ilot Casy to the mainland, a distance of about 4km. “I’m glad he didn’t emerge from around the outboard this morning,” Rob commented remembering the baby sea snake that had been asleep under the fuel tank of the outboard in Fiji last year until Rob started the motor!
We tied to a buoy in Baie de la Somme which is so named after the ship of the same name that arrived here on October 9th 1869 to load timber and transport it to the head of the bay. It struck the Recife de l’Aiguille just off the bay and now marked by a red and black pillar buoy, and was stuck there for 50 years until the Guichen helped to refloat it.
It is a beautiful wide bay with a handful of buoys at one side under the outcrop of Pine studded land, a resident dark hulled schooner with a couple and a vocal dog aboard in the middle and a river mouth to the other side where the fallout of mud and sand has left a raised bank marked, conveniently, with thin wooden posts or withies.
We hadn’t been there long when a big white cat came around the headland and the skipper called across in good English,
“These are private buoys for the whale watching boats. You can stay tonight but we will need that buoy tomorrow. You are OK for one night.”
“Did you see any whales today?” I asked and he shook his head, a look of regret on his handsome face. He then motored away to pick up another cone shaped buoy before taking his punters ashore.
So how does it work when you take a group of keen whale-watchers offshore for the day and there are no whales? In fact there were six whale watching cats that used the buoys and operated from July when the whales arrive to raise their new young and to breed, to mid- September when the mothers and their by now capable and sufficiently mature calves return to the Antarctic to feed on the abundance of cold water Krill. I didn’t know until I read the sign that krill is made up of ten different kinds of crustaceans. You learn something each day in this game.
These catamarans are expensive to maintain especially to the standard required to carry paying passengers. The owners have two months only to make their money and this year will have a bad effect on their business. They must be otherwise employed for the rest of the year.
Baba and Nora, our Turkish friends from the yacht Tutkum went ashore to Prony Village, the historic penal colony, around the same time as us and spoke to a lady named Captain Woodin at the temporary whale watching base camp that has been monitoring the visiting whales for a number of years. Usually on a single day surveillance covering 90km by boat in the south lagoon they could expect to see 20 to 50 humpbacks. The next day they would see some of the same and other new arrivals as well. This year they have seen as few as one in a day and never more than 5 each day.
The season is closing now for this year and who knows how many next year will bring. Can the whale-watching boats be just too much for the mothers’ tolerance? There are strict rules about watching these giant cetaceans, do the boats keep to those rules?
The air temperature is 4 – 5 degrees cooler here now than is usual at this time of year, so the water is cooler too, maybe too cool for the babies, so have the mothers taken them further north into the tropics? More alarming is have the mothers failed to breed, are the males still producing live sperm? The drop in numbers is so alarming that I would think the agencies and ecologists will be motivated to find out what has happened and if I discover the answer I will let you know.
We relaxed on our buoy for the evening and planned our trip to the old village the next day, wondering who else might turn up in ‘our’ bay.
A Convict’s Life was not a Happy One
Prony Village Penal Colony
The first prisoners to arrive at the colony were hand-picked by the logging supervisor for their skills in masonry, building and carpentry and they came firstly as transportees and latterly from the penal colony in French Guiana on the north east coast of South America where there was a history of abuse of authority. What little remains of their work, their wall building, is a historic testimony to their skills.
The process of a penal colony was meant to a) reform the prisoners who b) provided a free labour supply for the growing colony in the process of colonialism. When growth of nearby Noumea became rapid the demand for the wood the prisoners were lugging from the forests to the jetty to be used for house building also increased, so many more prisoners, amongst them repeat offenders arrived who were not so skilled and disciplined, providing a fertile basis for the brutality of the more psychopathic officers.
Rob is facing the wrong way in the photo, as the diagram illustrates the prisoners would be facing away from the rope that tied their hands behind their back and hauled them just off the ground, so their shoulders would be taking their strain and their tied hands aching and hurting after being crushed in the press.
In 1880 a judicial inquiry was launched in to what was perceived at the time as abusive behaviour, but unsurprisingly no charges were brought and it was eventually shelved. Considerable pressure has to be brought to bear by public disquiet, organised protest and individuals within government and the judicial system to bring about an inquiry, so it is a measure of the divided opinion at that time on how to treat prisoners that is most revealing. Also, on the more humane side of prisoner care, at the end of the camps life as a penal colony some of the men were given land on which they could have made a subsistence living had they chosen or been able to, but few remained in the area, seeking perhaps human society after their time in the wilderness.
We had walked over the small hill through the woods and part of which contained the prisoners’ cemetery, which touched briefly on the original logging track. The cemetery was overgrown and there were no signs of headstones or the like. Countless anonymous men lay in the ground with just the occasional line of stones to mark their passing.
We were in fact arriving at the camp from the prisoners’ side and judging by the lack of ruined buildings they lived in temporary shelters that have not stood the test of time. One of our pilot books in 1989 describes the camp as overgrown but the main area has been cleared and carefully maintained with devotion to the effect it is a pretty area of shade and diffused sunlight and is far from being deserted. The sounds of machines, a generator and voices filled the air along with the ever present bird song.
A man in a modern wooden hut with an open dining area welcomed us and said we were free to roam. He was just clearing up as if a meal had been prepared and eaten and the diners returned to their tasks. We came to the stream that divides the prisoners’ side from the officers’ area and once provided the camp with fresh drinking water. The first long building was one of the first built to store supplies and then there were the lodgings for the accountants and the prison guards. The generator whirred away in the one being cradled by the giant banyan and the prison guards house was now lived in and a man was welding some metal with sparks flying around his industry.
There was a well-defined track infront of them leading away from the main path and I strolled along it. On the left a bamboo grove thrived and on the right the land rose to another level plateau, once a building of some sort would have sat there. At the top of the path a beautiful new wooden bungalow with open windows and doors. Were these somebody’s second homes I wondered? It was built on levelled ground fronted with an original stone wall dating back 150 years to the start of the camp development. Curiosity was killing this cat but there was no-one around to ask.
The old powder magazine up the stone flight of steps was restored by the Association for the village’s preservation back in 1991-4 but nothing was left except a level area, an indentation in the ground which could have been the crypt and a tiny wooden chapel on wooden legs full with posies mark where the chapel once stood, at the far end of the camp from the prisoners.
The whale captain’s base was on the shore side of the main track; again all windows were open and it was obviously still in use despite the season of whale monitoring from July to mid-September being nearly at an end.
When I attach the photos I will put the ‘then’ photos of the logging supervisor’s house and the view of the camp in 1872 next to the photos I took of the same to give you contrast, but whether the mailasail site will keep them in that order or revert back to number order we shall see.
The supervisors house must have been an amazing place to live, originally build behind the banyan tree, anyone could see even then which would win, the tree or the house! But what about the women, the wives and children of the officers, supervisor, governor, cooks etc, do any journals or diaries of their lives still exist in an attic or museum I wonder? Maybe a museum in Noumea will reveal something.
A detour on our way back through the village showed us the iron miners’ family homes built from 1956 to 1968 and many of them are fully maintained and numbered. I suspect the Association lets them out to visitors, tourists and locals, professionals and volunteers for the village’s present role as a base for hikers stretching their legs towards the Bleue River Reserve to name but one destination, history research, archaeology digs, whale surveying, water sports activities and so on.
The series of old wide jetties, one you can see infront of the supervisor’s banyan house are all gone now of course. There are just a few small mooring buoys for local boats and an empty bay of peace and quiet that would once have reverberated and echoed to the sound of wood saws and the rumbling of convict pulled log sleds called schlittes, men shouting commands and the ships horns of arriving loggers.
A lone turtle was feeding in the shallow water of the bay as we walked along the beach and found our way back to the tender around the pretty headland. A look back and click of the camera shows a beautiful place with a new lease of life and different values given to the sanctity of nature and humanity.
A Cruisers Life is not all Play!
‘Though you could be forgiven for thinking it is.
Back on Zoonie and attached to our second buoy we were soon disturbed by a returning whaling cat and its agitated skipper.
“Please move from the buoy now as I have to moor and there is another cat coming next to me with an injured man on board and I have to take him to the shore.” We had no idea this smaller buoy was part of the same fleet so we moved off straightaway and anchored near the muddy bank that creeps from the river mouth into the bay, ready to watch the comings and goings with great interest.
Rob busied himself shucking the two coconuts he had found and grating the firm, fresh white flesh with Ken’s grater until the smaller cat with an elderly couple on board arrived and tied up alongside the whale watcher. The man’s hand was bandaged around the thumb and index finger, he obviously needed medical attention. A few minutes later our ‘friend’ was ferrying the couple ashore.
Then the dog from the schooner started to bark his need or desire to go ashore and his mistress sped off in the dinghy with her lookout standing at the front. A few metres from the sandy/mud bank he leaped for the shore and started to chase the little waves breaking along the shore as if they were rabbits, barking as he went. He didn’t stop for ages, a self-exercising dog full with joie de vivre.
Then Baba and Nora arrived and picked up a little buoy near the pines. We went to visit them the next morning and Nora was in a state of distress because they same guy who had moved us off his buoy the day before had approached them to do the same and miscalculated his speed and the wind, ramming hard into the brand new dinghy that Baba had hauled up on a halyard the night before. There had been a loud ‘crunch’, a lot of aggression and no apology. We discussed the use of Nora’s ‘offshore language’ and decided it was quite justified even in this harbour location. I’d have been pretty mad too.
We convinced them that where we were was good holding in sand and mud, so instead of abandoning the bay completely they dropped their hook near us. Later Baba came for a chat after their trip to Prony Village and that’s when he told us about the whale survey.
Before we left Noumea we decided this little cruise would also be our time to clean Zoonie’s cupboards out for three reasons. First to combine cleaning and sorting them with checking for bugs that could make our clearing in to Australia a long and expensive affair. Second because it is Springtime and third because they could do with it. You would not think that an internal job like cleaning out the galley cupboards would also facilitate re-bedding four stanchions that hold the guide wires around Zoonie and have been leaking in heavy seas and rain causing mildew to form in the cupboards and rust on anything metal. They are bolted through the side-decks into the cupboards underneath so by emptying the contents I had access to the bolts on the inside and could hold the nuts still while Rob screwed the bolts down from outside having re-bedded the stanchion base onto disgusting sticky black stuff that oozed all over my fingers until I found some medical gloves I had used while acting as Rob’s nurse when he was on antibiotics through his PIC line. Job done.
One by one all the cupboards and storage spaces were emptied and cleaned and the paint touched up in places and not a bug was found, nor any revealing little piles of freshly chewed and spat out wood, such as borers make.
Rob busied himself with changing the engine and gear box oil and all filters, discovering in the process that the gear box dip stick had snapped off its threaded part (hopefully we will be able to replace it is Aussie, it doesn’t leak when the engine is running) and finally he checked the belt tensions. All done for another 250 hours; I wonder where we will be then!
After lunch one day we moved on up to the Baie de Carenage along with Baba and Nora on Tutkum, Marina and Diego on Mecce Troy (Italian. Catch me if you can) and Wetherley from the UK many years ago and now resident in Opua, NZ.
You may know the term careen, it means to turn a ship on its side to repair and clean it. This bay is ideal as there are no coral heads and the rocky reefs are clearly avoidable. Where the Carenage River and the Blue River meet just upriver from us is a vast muddy/sandy area where a number of ships could be beached at the same time. Zoonie’s internal carenage continued interspersed with explorations of this colourful and fascinating area.
The first of which I took by myself, before sunrise and at a completely still time of day, rowing the tender up towards where the rivers meet, the old carenage bank to the right behind the tree leaves on pic number 20436. Above me the perfect cobalt blue of the sky was broken by a helicopter trailing one of the counter-balance frames they use when a wind turbine has to be lowered and looked at. Two bladed turbines are used here as they can be easily lowered before cyclones and for maintenance and repair. We woke up one morning to see a turbine sliding down gently and under perfect control to the ground. It was back up and working the next day.
Mangroves hugged the rocky shore and the tidal range is clearly marked by the red muddy deposit. In the shot of the submerged branch you can see how smooth and silty the bottom is, an ideal short term resting place for a wooden hull in days past. A pile of what looked like rocks from a distance turned out to be the old thermal water baths where work weary folk could relax and clean up. They are built on a rocky reef around the rising warm water and nearby the dinghy floated over another reef with warm water bubbles and rock oysters and little black fish were living and thriving in the warmth.