Kingdom of the Lizards
Drawn by the promise of footage of keas1 in the trailer, I watched a programme about the natural history of the islands around Australia. In the course of describing the arc of islands from the north of Australia to the south-east, they passed over New Caledonia, which perked up my attention while I was waiting for the keas. I always knew that it was a very small island, but it isn’t until you see it on a satellite photo relative to the huge bulk of Australia, and even the smaller swathe of New Zealand, that you realize what a tiny speck of land it is.
They presented New Caledonia as ‘Jurassic Land’, where the lizards are king. This is true in part (though there are hundreds of interesting species from all kinds of taxonomic groups thereâexcept for mammals), but it reminded me of all my lizard encounters during my stay there.
