Extract from Norfolk Island Tourism website:
"When James Cook adjusted his telescope to focus on Norfolk Island, back in 1774, could he have envisaged how he would reshape the story of this tiny island? Certainly he intended to make his mark on the place as he recommended to the Admiralty that it be used as a source of masts, spas and sails for the burgeoning British navy.
As a result, Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet to arrive in New South Wales, dispatched a party of twenty-two men and women under the command of young Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King to make a settlement on Norfolk Island, soon after they had pitched their tents at Botany Bay. King’s task was to put the fifteen convicts under his command to work felling and milling the Norfolk Island pines and preparing the flax for the making of canvas. But things didn’t work out as planned.
They discovered that the native pines, though excellent for all types of construction, were not suitable for battleship masts; and the flax was a mystery to the Irish linen weavers.
Nevertheless, the colonial outpost survived and prospered. Its role transformed into one of feeding the penal settlement at Port Jackson, which it managed to do despite shipwrecks, droughts and insect plagues. Later it became a substantial penal settlement in its own right, however, with the discovery of the fertile soils around the Nepean, Hunter and Hawkesbury Rivers, New South Wales no longer needed to rely on Norfolk Island’s produce and the settlement was closed in 1814.
HELL IN THE PACIFIC
Norfolk Island settled back into isolation, but its coastal forests had been felled; its bats extinct; and the winter migration of petrels abandoned forever. The cattle, goats and pigs left by the settlers wreaked further havoc as they foraged for food.
Then in 1825, human voices were heard again. This time, the convicts were heavily chained and closely guarded. These were the worst offenders and re-offenders from every jail in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, sent to suffer for their crimes on the worst penal settlement in the colony. They were set to work rebuilding the roads, bridges and store houses destroyed and abandoned over a decade before. The elegant Georgian buildings of heritage listed Kingston are the fruits of their backbreaking labour. Punishments were frequent and harsh.
Conditions on Norfolk Island during this penal settlement became so unbearably brutal and inhumane that reports sent by concerned clergymen and government officers finally resulted in orders to close it. By the end of 1855, most convicts had been removed and the fate of Norfolk Island once again hung in the balance."
Today, Norfolk Island is heaven in the Pacific, a jewel in a deep blue ocean, a lush, beautiful island with sandy beaches, jagged cliffs and tall Norfolk pine trees. There are eighty kilometers of lane ways across the island and cows still have the right of way. And with an excellent airport, this laid-back green island paradise is a thriving tourist holiday destination.
Entire History of Norfolk Is to the present day is narrated on this website: (
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World Heritage List
Class Cultural
Legal Status Declared property (31/07/2010)
Place ID 106209
Place File No 1/12/036/0015
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