Achille Ballière

Ballière attended the National School of Fine Arts with his sights set on a career in architecture.

He boarded the Orne in January 1873 for the Isle of Pines, an island in New Caledonia to which simple deportees had been assigned.

Ballière was authorised to go to Nouméa on 19 October 1874, where he found a vacancy for a bookkeeper at a lumber company.

On 20 March 1874 he escaped from Nouméa with other deportees, François Jourde and Charles Bastien, as well as a some from fortified compounds, Henri Rochefort, Olivier Pain and Paschal Grousset.

He arrived in Australia and left his companions, preferring to wait for the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition where his theater project for Nouméa was to be presented.