Norfolk Island - New South Wales - Islands of Australia

Norfolk Islands town of Burnt Pine is the center of community life, along with the original settlement of Kingston in Emily Bay, and Cascade on the northern coast.  The remainder of the population is spread out in individual homesteads.   There are about 1800 permanent residents, immigrated from or descendents of natives from Pitcairn, New Zealand and Australia in equal measure.

The weather is mild and subtropical most of the year, with patches of rainforest climbing to the mountain peak. 

The tallest peak is Mt. Bates, surrounded by the Norfolk Island National Park and Botanic Gardens.  All in all about a third of the island consists of parks and reserves, which are filled with bushwalking and trails for both gentle bike rides and more adventurous mountain biking.   The island is home to 178 species of plants and many birds and animals, although it has no amphibians and no snakes! 

Traces of settlement by the wide-ranging Polynesian seafarers have been found at Emily Bay, but the island was uninhabited when Captain James Cook spotted it in 1774. He named it after Mary Blount, the Duchess of Norfolk.

In 1788, the “First Fleet” of eleven ships bringing convicts from England to New South Wales was ordered to settle a colony on Norfolk Island to preserve it from rival powers. It remained a slowly-growing convict settlement until it was decided in 1803 that it was too distant and costly to maintain. It was evacuated by 1814, but in 1825 a second penal colony was set up to house incorrigible prisoners. This one was horribly brutal, intended to be the worst punishment short of execution, but it too was discontinued in 1853 after the British Government ceased sentencing convicts to transportation.

Finally, in 1856, a group of settlers from Pitcairn Island arrived to build a lasting settlement. These were the descendents of the mutineers from the HMS Bounty and their Tahitian wives, who were outgrowing their tiny home. The town grew steadily in relative isolation over the next fifty years, before the 1900s brought telegraph cable, improved harborage, and seaplanes to the island.