Island > Articles > Norfolk Island

Tiny Norfolk Island has no income taxes, McDonalds, foreign debt, dole or graffiti. There has been no major crime since 1855, and there's only one street light. Norfolkers can proudly say, "We don't have it all."

This self-governing Australian external territory juts out, like a green volcanic periscope that has risen in mid-ocean for a look-see, approximately half way between Australia and New Zealand. (That its discoverer Capt. James Cook bumped into it at all is another those wonders of luck and seamanship that characterised his career). For the traveller this eight by five kilometre volcanic island is a fine decompression chamber.

Surrounded by its moat of turquoise lagoons and thumping surf, the 3455-hectare island was first settled as a British penal colony from 1825 to 1855. When the British gaolers and convicts left, their place was almost immediately taken by settlers from distant Pitcairn Island - the descendants of Fletcher Christian's Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions - to whom Queen Victoria granted this island. Norfolk society changed at once. Brutality in the name of God, Queen and country was replaced by charity and civility, qualities still evident today.

Fewer than 2,000 people live on Norfolk, with many still bearing the surnames of their Bounty ancestors - Christian, Quintal, Young, McCoy, Nobbs and Adams. The surnames are so repetitive that Norfolk's phone directory is the only one in the world that also publishes subscriber’s nicknames - "Storky", "Carrots", "Shagsy", "Gotty Snowball" and so on all being more solid citizens than their tags might imply.

Norfolk - basically a village with an island to itself - is so unusual a community that here the definition of "anxiety" here is not leaving your keys in the car ignition overnight. Paranoia is locking any door.

The 36,000 or so visitors who arrive each year are the island's principal source of income. Norfolk Island pays no Australian taxes, and in return receives no grants; thus, as a matter of survival, duty free shopping, restaurants, accommodation and tours form a highly developed tourism industry.

Norfolk is a sane destination for a family holiday. There's fishing, sailboarding, golf (with a convict-built, Georgian-styled, stone clubhouse), bushwalking, horseriding and... a whole lot of nothing special to do. In a place where (as the Norfolkers say) "the only skyscrapers are the pine trees", your kids can run free in a landscape free of highrise and lowlife.

Instead you can enjoy beaches like beautiful Anson Bay, a horseshoe of yellow sand and emerald water. Here you can spend an afternoon snorkelling or, when the swell's running, surfing its crystal clear waves - with the nearly unknown pleasure (for most surfers) of sharing them with almost no other boardriders.

I took the plunge below the waters of pretty, but ominously named, Slaughter Bay. I was using only a mask and snorkel, but ten metres from the shore already a cornucopia of corals had erupted. The miscellany of a reef's metaphors bloomed before my mask: fans, furs and ferns, plates, brains and doilies - all done in coral, all woven through by the laser trails of tiny coloured fish.

"That's nothing compared to the main dives," reports my friend, divemaster (and descendant of Fletcher Christian) Karlene Christian of Bounty Dives. Pointing to the lagoon's fringe reef, she says, "Beyond it are plenty of world class dive sites with drop-offs, swim-through caverns, arches and grottos - and 50 metre visibility." Norfolk can be a diver's dream. And if you're not yet a diver, it's a good place to both have a holiday and to gain your PADI open water certificate, at bargain rates for a seven-day course.

Each morning visitors pack the various excursion coaches that depart from Norfolk's main village, Burnt Pine. There are breakfast bushwalks and half day island tours and, at dusk, a cliff-top "fish fry" feast in front of a sunset framed by (what else but?) Norfolk Island Pines. Come night, a sound and light show amid the stone ruins of the old Kingston penal settlement evokes some of the brutality of the convict era.

Kingston seaside cemetery is an especially poignant place: consider the headstone of one convict, Thomas Wright, who was buried here at age 105 years. He died four years into a 14-year sentence that was handed down when he was already 101 years old!

One striking feature of Norfolk is the pace and the redundancy of urgency. Secular cows have an almost sacred right of way over cars. Drivers always acknowledge each other. (As a friend explains: "You end up with a permanent erection of your right hand forefinger just from greeting other drivers.") With rental cars so cheap here (around $20 per day), hire one and enjoy discovering the island at your own pace. And you never lose the keys - they're always in the ignition.

And here's another travel tip. Should you die on the island, the burial fee is only $25: cheaper, as the locals note, than the airport departure tax.

"Wesa mussa dun": on Norfolk this means, "We're almost done". The burred consonants and almost recognisable words of "See yorle morla" mean, "See you tomorrow". One of the most fascinating aspect of the island is its unique Pitcairn-Norfolk dialect, a Bounty-brewed patois that mixes the tongues of 18th century West Country England (as spoken by Fletcher Christian and his mutinous mates) and Tahiti - just as Norfolk has mixed those same ancestral genes.

A cobalt blue sea buffers snoozy Norfolk Island against the tumultuous world beyond it. As I prepare to return, reluctantly, to that world, I note that even my airport boarding pass says, "Yorle Kam Baek Suun." It needs no translation.

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