Norfolk Island - where convicts, Cook, Captain Bligh and BOUNTY left an indelible mark on its history

Norfolk Island is a tiny old volcanic outcrop in the South Pacific. Apart from being isolated, it is steeped in history – both heroic and brutally inhumane.

On his voyage of discovery aboard RESOLUTION, Captain James Cook stepped ashore briefly on this section of the coast of the small island (6 x 8 km). The year was 1774.

Though the sheer cliffs and inhospitable rocky shore made further investigation impossible, Cook named the island NORFOLK. He saw value in the natural vegetation - the tall timbers (now called Norfolk Island pines) for shipbuilding and the flax-like plants for sail making.

The Island is a natural paradise and, today, is World Heritage listed with the best examples of Georgian architecture in the Southern hemisphere. It’s a place where the cattle graze the long paddock and have right of way on the roads.

 

Unfortunately, Norfolk Island has no natural harbour and the transport ships which arrive once a month are off–loaded in the old-fashioned manner by lighters (longboats/whaleboats).

Its museums reflect a history of shipwrecks (HMS SIRIUS) and settlement and events from N.I.’s early visitations by Polynesians around 700 years before Captain Cook ‘discovered’ it and gave the island its name; to the eras of the early colonial settlements and its dark convict stain; to the arrival of the descendants of the ‘BOUNTY’ mutineers from Pitcairn Island in the mid-1800s. 

Despite this bronze memorial standing in the square, the BOUNTY itself never came to Norfolk Island After the mutiny against Captain Bligh, the ship was sailed to Pitcairn Island by Fletcher Christian and his ‘crew’ where it was fired and sunk. In the years that followed, the mutineers and their Tahitian women spawned a unique population and it was their descendants who landed on Norfolk Island in 1856. 
The 'Pitcairners' consisted of 40 men, 47 women, 54 boys and 53 girls, in all, 194 people whose names appear beneath this monument. They were to become the ‘torch bearers for the Norfolk Island heritage’.  

Today’s small population (less than 2000) is made up of many direct descendants of Fletcher Christian, Quintal, Nobbs, Adams and McCoy. Their names are engraved on the gravestones in the cemetery.

 
I have just spent a week on Norfolk Island and would thoroughly recommend a visit.

The following posts have more details and pics.

Strahan holiday in search of convict history

My main purpose for heading west was to experience the atmosphere of a place steeped in some of Tasmania's ugliest history and with practices if is not proud of.
Amongst those: the notorious penal settlement on Sarah Island; the treacherous entrance to Macquarie harbour known as Hell’s Gates, and a dead King River – the product of greed and subsequent environmental pollution.
My visit was part of my research on Matthew Brady, the Tasmanian bushranger and convict who was sent to Sarah Island in 1823. Twenty two months later, he escaped in a stolen whaleboat and sailed to Hobart Town to begin his period of infamy.
But what I found on the wild west coast of Tasmania was a huge pristine harbour, a sleepy fishing village whose main industry in the summer season is tourists, stories of piners and miners and convict times, and some of the most unforgettable excursions which you cannot experience elsewhere in Australia.
Including a ride up the King River in a jetboat!

Pic: Strahan Harbour

Grummet Island – hell at Hell’s Gates, Macquarie Harbour

A couple of hundred yards from Sarah Island is the tiny rocky outcrop of Grummet Island. This was indeed a Hell on earth for the convict prisoners of Van Diemen's Land.
It was here in the early 1800s that originally a group of women was housed.
Later it was the place where the worse male convicts, the offenders and troublemakers were sent at night.

As there was no wharf, the men had to wade through chest deep water or swim to get ashore. They would then have to sleep either naked or in wet clothes throughout the night and then wade back to the boat in the morning for another day of hard labour.
Pic: Tiny Grummet Island seen from Sarah Island. Today the rocky outcrop is overgrown by bush and nothing remains of the prison building which existed there

Macquarie Harbour and the Gordon River, Tasmania

If you visit Strahan, on the west coast of Tasmania, a day trip on one of the cruise ships on the harbour is a must. Not only will you enjoy a day of sightseeing and educational commentary but excellent food and comfort aboard the modern vessels.
The pristine river and wilderness area is known not only from its once prolific stand of Huon Pines but for the long running dispute over the building of the Gordon on Franklin Dam.
There are few rivers in Tasmania which have not been damned for hydro electric power and now Tasmania has more power than it requires.
Fortunately the voice of the environmentalists won the battle and secured the free flow of this part of the Gordon River.
But it was the very dense, inhospitable nature of the forests and the rugged terrain that made the Harbour and ideal place to locate a penal settlement way back in the early 1800s. And it was here that the hardened convicts of Van Diemen's Land were sent. It was a place they regarded it as Hell on earth.
Pic: Gordon river World Heritage cruise ship
Pics: World Hertitage cruise ship
Mountain ranges flanked in wilderness forest surround Macquarie Harbour