Vive le soleil ... Noumea's Port Moselle, with St Joseph Cathedral in the foreground.Credit: Getty Images
If France could be improved, it would be a tropical island. Andrew Bock knows a place that already fits the bill.
It's all in the pout. To speak French well, one must exercise the kissing muscles. In fact, one has to use every part of the mouth, much as one does when dining at a good French restaurant.
Say "oo" and blow a kiss to the wind. Say "on" and send a nasal sound vibrating pleasantly through the palate. Say "r" and produce a soft, sexy "grrr" at the back of the throat.
Immersion in the melody of spoken French can be enjoyed less than three hours from Sydney, on a tropical island surrounded by one of the most beautiful lagoons in the world. The capital of New Caledonia, Noumea, is a banquet of foie gras and frangipani, petanque and palm trees, marinas and mangoes, champagne and geckos, kisses on both cheeks, windsurfing, sailing and sunbaking on coral beaches. There are boulangeries, patisseries, creperies, boucheries and charcuteries everywhere. There are chocolatiers, even though chocolate melts quickly outdoors in the subtropical heat.
In Noumea, a coffee is a short black and nobody gets takeaway. People drive on the right and cycle with baguettes in their baskets even in 30-degree heat. Supermarkets sell home-made pates, full-flavoured cheeses from every French province and entire aisles are stocked with French wine and champagne. Even French visitors are impressed by how much champagne New Caledonians drink.
The city has some of the best French restaurants in the southern hemisphere and the balmy night air is syncopated by music in bars and nightclubs overlooking the lagoon.
New Caledonia might have been called New South France if Captain Cook hadn't "discovered" it in 1774 and given it the Roman name for the highlands of Scotland. Indeed, if Napoleon III hadn't finally gazumped the British in 1853 and annexed the island to establish a French penal colony, New Caledonia might have become part of the Commonwealth.
New Caledonians, with dependable French patriotism, are just as quick to point out that if early French explorers such as Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Bruni d'Entrecasteaux and Jean Francois de Laperouse had been a little more adroit, Australia might have been French.
New Caledonia has an outdated reputation for being expensive. Airfares are slightly inflated but the strong Australian dollar and a range of accommodation means New Caledonia is no more expensive than Australia.
Not much English is spoken in "Nouvelle-Caledonie" outside the travel industry and it's a great place for Australians to learn French. So between champagnes and dinner parties, I enrolled in a French-language course.
The most popular French language school, CREIPAC, occupies a site overlooking the lagoon and surrounded by lawns shaded by frangipani, palm and flame trees. There's a good restaurant with a bar nearby on the lagoon. It's hard to imagine a more attractive place to study.
Early-morning weekday classes leave students plenty of time to explore Noumea and the islands and practise their new-found French, and CREIPAC can organise home-stays for a more intensive immersion.
Cruise ships brought about 180,000 day-trippers to Noumea last year but fewer than 8000 Australian tourists came to New Caledonia by plane in the same period. About 600 of them enrolled in one- and two-week French courses at CREIPAC.
The school's restored 1890s buildings were once part of the colony's main convict penitentiary. New Caledonia began receiving French convict ships in 1864, just when most states in Australia had abolished transportation. The rural descendants of French convicts and early free settlers still own much of the west-coast farmland. Known as Caldoches, they farm cattle, ride horses and many drive around in big new utes bearing R.M. Williams stickers. The indigenous Melanesians of New Caledonia, the Kanaks, have their own languages but speak French, too. Although the Kanak French accent is slightly pithier than the classic accent in France, the New Caledonian accent generally is neutral, partly because the population is continually refreshed with French migrants and workers.
It took most of a fortnight course for me to mend my broken French but by the end I could understand and be understood when I spoke. Travelling and shopping became easier; at supermarkets I could read labels and on the streets I could understand directions. As my accent improved I heard more and even began to enjoy the lyrics of French songs. During my last week I managed to join an obligatory conversation about love, appropriately enough, describing cultural attitudes to love and how real love transcends them all.
The best place to practise conversation in Noumea is undoubtedly around a dining table, provided it doesn't interfere with other pleasures. Gabriel Levionnois is the founder of one of Noumea's better restaurants, Au Petit Cafe, and a yachtie who opens only four days a week, so he can enjoy lagoon life on long weekends. "Our philosophy was to establish a top restaurant and also have a social life, a life beyond the restaurant," Au Petit's chef, David Cano, says. "And why not in a country this magnificent? We love the sea, we love diving and fishing and we want to enjoy it all."
Savouring is one of the things New Caledonians do best. The friend I stay with often comes home from work to cook a simple lunch. Businesses often shut for an hour and a half in the middle of the day. Along and beside the Promenade Pierre Vernier, Noumeans jog, cycle, windsurf, kitesurf, sail and paraglide before and after work. At Baie des Citrons, just two kilometres south of central Noumea, I join early-morning swimmers doing lazy laps over coral reefs.
At Anse Vata, the next bay around, men play petanque beneath palm trees, and windsurfers skim the lagoon like dragonflies. I count 75 kitesurfers and 50 windsurfers one Saturday.
One in two households in the south province owns a boat and if Noumeans are not on the beach they're visiting one of the offshore islands and islets. The lagoon surrounding the main island of New Caledonia invites sailing. Or diving and snorkelling with dugongs, manta rays, clown fish and turtles. Or fishing for trevally and billfish. Immersion in Noumean culture means immersion in the lagoon.
On the three larger islands, Ouvea, Lifou and Mare, and in the north of the country, Kanak culture is more prevalent than French; an estimated 45 per cent of the overall population is Kanak, belonging to 341 tribes. A spectacular road between Kone and Poindimie in the mid-north of the main island passes traditional villages perched on ridges overlooking valleys and gorges. Stands of eucalypts, casuarinas and araucarias (conifers native to South America and Australia), are reminders the archipelago was once part of Gondwana.
It's becoming more common for Kanaks to leave their villages to look for work in the capital. The younger Kanaks bring with them a love of post-Jamaican reggae and neo-tribal fashion. Their music sings of freedom and a Kanaky state. The first of a possible three referendums will be held between 2014 and 2018, to decide whether the country remains an autonomous "collectivity" of France or gains full independence as a nation.
One of Noumeans' favourite holiday spots is the Isle of Pines, a 20-minute flight or a two-day sail south of the capital. Here the Kunie people farm an endemic snail species for New Caledonian restaurants. Snorkelling at La Piscine Naturelle, I see a banded sea snake and a psychedelic variety of fish. In Kuto Bay, 15 yachts from Noumea moor lazily on the mirror-finish lagoon. A flame tree drops red flowers on the sand. The slender spires of araucaria trees line distant shores like green minarets.
When a huge cruise ship arrives at Kuto Bay next morning, ferrying 2000 Australian day-trippers, I imagine how the islanders might have felt when they first saw European ships, and why some shops in Noumea don't open when ships come in. When a throng of thong-wearing Australians approaches me asking for directions, I feel a guilty pleasure when I pretend not to understand and reply in French.
Andrew Bock studied French courtesy of CREIPAC.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Air Caledonie has a fare to Noumea from Sydney (3hr) for about $745 low-season return, including tax. Melbourne passengers pay about $1000 and fly Qantas to Sydney to connect; see aircalin.com.
Staying there
Tera hotels are in four of the best locations: on the lagoon at Noumea; Isle of Pines; Poindimie and Port Boise. One bedroom suites in Noumea start at 22,600 CFP francs ($239) with breakfast. Garden bungalows at Oure Tera on the Isle of Pines cost from 32,900 CPF francs a night; see www.tera-hotels-resorts.com.
Nataiwatch Guest House on the Isle of Pines has simple twin share bungalows from 10,900 CFP francs a night. Camping also available. nataiwatch.com.
Motel le Bambou, at Val Plaisance, Noumea, has double rooms for 7500 CFP francs a night. motel-bambou.com.
There are affordable "gites", somewhere between B&Bs and homestays, all over New Caledonia; see gitesnouvellecaledonie.nc. Stays are offered by a growing number of Kanaks; and camping grounds for travellers are available.
While there
CREIPAC's one- and two-week courses are held on weekday mornings. A one-week course costs 26,500 CFP francs; two weeks costs 48,000 CFP francs. The school arranges home stays with families for about $50 a night, including breakfast and dinner. There are four courses scheduled a year; classes for groups of eight or more can be arranged at other times, too. See www.creipac.nc.
Charter a bare boat or with a skipper from Dream Yacht Charters; from $430 a day, see dreamyachtcharter.com.
Windsurf with Laurent Gauzere at Anse Vata for 1500 CFP francs an hour, phone +687 788 667.
Gamefish with Etienne Picquel at Bourail or Poindimie. Bookings via oceanbluefishing.com in Sydney on 8572 4777.
When to go
April to November is drier and sunnier, with lower humidity. The December to March hot, wet season can bring cyclones. January is also busier with New Caledonian holidaymakers.
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