Day 2 : Getting oriented

A sunny warm day greeted me after a somewhat restless night .. Strange bed and all that !  I breakfasted on the balcony, looking south east to the ocean and New Zealand a few hundred km away.  I had the company of some feral chooks pecking their way across the lawn.

Unattended animals seem an important feature of life here.  They are all protected and have unfettered run of the countryside.  The chooks are everywhere .. And I don't know if anyone benefits from their egg laying.  Cattle are more evident.  Their owners pay a $150 licence per beast per year to let the, graze wild.  Beef only as dairy was abandoned some years ago when the government required pasteurisation of milk for consumption, and that was uneconomical.  Long life from NZ is all the go.  The local butcher buys and slaughters the beasts.

Food is quite expensive here.  I paid $32 for steak and veg tonite at the Leagues Club .. Much more at a restaurant.  Milk was $4 for a litre, a schooner of XXXX Gold was $6 and petrol is over $2 a litre.  Freight costs inevitably inflate prices.  

My first stop on a planned drive-around was St Barnabas Anglican Chapel.  It's is a beautiful stone and timber structure, with the roof timbers shaped like the keel of a ship upside down, and totally slotted, not a nail used.  While there I was greeted by a local who invited me over to to meet the resident priest (from Sydney).  He told me of the Melanesian Mission that had originally been there, but moved to the Solomon Islands in 1920.  They took all the school and other bui,dings with them, but had to leave the stone chapel behind as a gift to the Pitcairn Anglicans.  I was then sucked in to joining the morning prayer and bible study with half a dozen parishioners .. an interesting experience, but the end of my morning explorations!

After a delicious pie from the bakery, I headed to "the roundabout".  Norfolk has just one roundabout in the middle of the main street of Burnt Pine township.  Travel instructions nearly always seem to be given with reference to "the roundabout".  And it was near he roundabout that I joined the afternoon tour introducing the highlights of Norfolk.

We had and excellent guide/driver who knew his history well, and took time to slow down and let us see things with comfort.  Mind you, keeping traffic to the 50 kph speed limit is no problem, as the roads are a patch work of roughly filled pot holes, making for a rather bumpy ride.  The tour took in a couple of very scenic lookouts, and a drive through Kingston, the original convict settlement.  I will explore that at my own leisure tomorrow.  On the way we passed a huge Norfolk Pine that Captain Cook sketched here in 1774, and is found in his journal.  Also an avenue of Moreton Bay figs that have flourished here with enormous root systems spread wide.

Afternoon tea was a $5 donation to the remaining Melanesian mission, with trestles laden with scones, strawberry   jam and cream ready to go with tea or coffee.  Very efficient as there were 4 tour buses arrived together.  Then on to the Cascade Jetty where we saw cargo being handled Norfolk style.  The small freighter has to anchor off shore.  Large life boats are towed out by launches and loaded from the freighter.  They then are towed back to the jetty where the cargo is hoisted by crane, and a return load put aboard the lifeboat for export by the freighter.  Big loads, like trucks and buses, have to be straddled across 2 lifeboats strapped together.  All freight comes from New Zealand, so if you buy a car in Sydney it first must be shipped to NZ and then transhipped to Norfolk.  No wonder life here is so expensive.

At 5 pm I joined 50 or so other tourists at the playhouse for a perfomamce of The Trial of the Fifteen ... Written by a local, and performed by descendants of the Pitcairn Islanders, it gives a potted history of Norfolk Island in a humorous way.  A bit amateurish, but an hour not wasted.  After that, I was too tired to explore a new eating venue, so I returned to the Leagues Club for another classy meal.  My Google Maps then safely delivered me back to Coast .. No mean feat in the complete darkness of the rural roads.

Some photos of today's activities are here.