May 2018: Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island is a tiny dot in the ocean, 1400 km east of Byron Bay.  Remnant of a volcanic plug, it measures a mere 8 km by 5 km.  Home to 1800 residents, it has a fascinating history.

Archaeologists have evidence of human habitation between 800 and 1400 AD as Polynesian peoples migrated east.  The island was uninhabited when Captain Cook stumbled across it in 1774 on his second voyage into the Pacific.  Based on his reports, a small party of convicts and troops were sent there from Botany Bay in 1788, the day after the First Fleet arrived.  They were to mill the Norfolk Pines for ships masts, weave flax for sails, and grow vegetables for the mainland colony.  This first European settlement was abandoned as a failure in 1814.

Trouble back at Sydney town with difficult convicts led to Norfolk Island being re-opened as a hell-hole prison in 1825.  Harsh conditions and treatment for its 2000 inmates finally moved authorities in 1854 to again abandon the island in favour of Van Diemen's Land.  The buildings and roads left behind proved a welcome gift for the descendants of the Bounty mutiny who had outgrown tiny Pitcairn Island 3700 miles away.  Queen Victoria offered them the Norfolk Island as a new home.  In 1856 all 193 Pitcairners moved in.  Over half today's residents are their descendants and still speak Norf'k (a mix of Tahitian and English).

The Pitcairn link

In 1789 Captain William Bligh in HMS Bounty visited Tahiti to collect breadfruit plants.  He delayed his return journey by some months to avoid adverse weather around Cape Horn.  This allowed his crew to form liaisons with local women, and a reluctance to sail.  Once under way, Bligh's intemperate outbursts against his crew led to mutiny, headed by Fletcher Christian.  Bligh and half his crew were set adrift in the ship's launch, eventually reaching Timor and then London.

HMS Bounty at Pitcairn Island

The mutineers first settled at Tahiti, but Christian recognised the risk of eventual capture by the British navy.  Nine mutineers and 20 Polynesians set out in the Bounty, eventually settling at Pitcairn Island.  Whilst the island provided an ideal home, by 1800 drunkenness and rivalries resulted in all the men folk being dead through murder, John Adams alone surviving.  Using the ship's bible to teach reading and morality, he developed a flourishing community out of the nine women and 19 children remaining.

By 1850 the island was no longer able to support the near 200 population now living there.  A letter to Queen Victoria seeking help resulted in her offering them the abandoned Norfolk Island colony as a new home.  In June 1856 all 194 Pitcairners sailed the 3700 miles to Norfolk.  Although the Young family of 17 returned to Pitcairn eighteen months later, the Norfolk settlement flourished and today neaarly half the residents descend from those first Pitcairn arrivals.