PLENTY OF SPORT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 11 March 1943, Page 5

PLENTY OF SPORT

TROOPS IN ISLANDS NEW CALEDONIAN HOSTS Noumea, Feb. 23. Swimming is the most popular recreation with New Zealand troops during hours of leisure in New Caledonia. The men frequent both rivers and beaches. Some of the niaouli (gum tree) surrounded rivers are so mosqui-to-infested that quick changing is necessary, so beaches are preferred. One beach in particular has become very popular with local residents because a New Zealand band plays there on Sundays. The band’s excellent performances have been praised in Noumea’s daily paper. But the same writer warns the Maorilanders against swimming too far out on account of dangerous ocean currents.

Troops on week-end leave have facilities for recreation other than organised sport. Besides bathing there is fishing, hiking or riding in the Chaine Centrale, where, preferably with local guides, deer hunting attracts small parties. In certain areas the French shoot wild cattle; and there are wild boars in the hills, tusked like those of the King Country. On the high country the French also catch wild horses. The troops go hunting these with French families, whose hospitality is on a par with that of Australian and New Zealand bush settlements. The local people obligingly provide horses for their guests; A New Zealander, highly pleased with such an excursion, said: “When three or four of us set out with our hosts and a pack of dogs it looked something like a meet of the Pakuranga Hunt, though perhaps not quite so stylish. These New Caledonians know their country like a book.”