For days, they monitored the latest news – which brought alarming reports of six dead and hundreds injured – while struggling to get help from Australian consular staff.

More than 3,000 people are estimated to have been stranded by a week of unrest that has shuttered the Pacific archipelago’s main international airport.

The violence is the latest outburst of political tensions that have simmered for years and pitted the island’s largely pro-independence indigenous Kanak communities — who have long chafed against rule by Paris – against French inhabitants opposed to breaking ties with their motherland.

Protests began last Monday involving mostly young people, in response to the tabling of a vote 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers) away in the French parliament proposing changes to New Caledonia’s constitution that would give greater voting rights to French residents living on the islands. On Tuesday, legislators voted overwhelmingly in favor of the change.