A week on Norfolk Island

CabanSail

Had to take holidays over Christmas & New Year so wanted to find somewhere to go. Found an affordable week away on Norfolk Island, somewhere I have always wanted to visit. It is a fascinating island with a lot of history. Many of the locals are descendants of the Bounty Mutineers and there is a strong link with Pitcairn Island, where the Bounty ended up. There is also the ruins of two earlier settlements as a penal colony.

The first few days was wet and misty, there had been a long dry spell and the water tanks were low so the rain was welcome. I had to look for shots which worked well in the conditions.

Lone Pine (above) is a famous landmark. They think this tree, a Norfolk Island Pine, was there alone when Captain Cook visited the island in the late 18th century. Unfortunately it is now suffering from insect attack and a fungal disease and may soon need to be felled. Attempts have been made to plant a replacement but none have survived.

This is the Jetty in Kingston, a World Heritage listed area, which was made back in the convict days. It is still the site where most of the cargo comes ashore. It is too shallow for ships to dock, so they anchor in the bay and goods are brought ashore on "lighters" which are towed to the dock and manually unloaded. As they cannot use shipping containers so the cost of freight is very high. Almost as much as landing a container in a major port for a cubic meter (AU$450) and more for refrigerated goods (AU$750) so imported goods and food tends to be expensive.

This is a historic Anglican Church. The roof is built like an inverted boat without use on nails out of local timber. Fisheye lens and self timer used here.

These are a couple of the disused lighters, which were employed to unload cargo. The two boat sheds are, so we were told, the oldest working boats-sheds in the world (or something like that, it may have been in the Southern Hemisphere)

On Christmas day we spent time swimming in Emily Bay until dusk. Took the G12 out in it's underwater housing for a few shots.

Waiting to depart at the airport we got into conversation with Ian. He's a retired teacher who was the Principal at the Norfolk Island School. Would like to spend more time with him as he had some great stories. He's 88 years young and lives on his own now. In the next year his goal is to learn to use a computer so he can start to write some stories. Hope he does.

The economy on the island is not good now. Since the GFC the visitor numbers have fallen from 45K a year to 22k now. If you are looking for a nice location to spend some time and a great place for Photography then keep Norfolk Island in mind.

CabanSail

On the flight back to Brisbane I saw this cloud formation and had to grab a few shots of it.

To me it looked very much like the Qantas logo.

With a bit of editing it made it look like this.

denismc

Thanks for posting, I love the history, and the relative remoteness gives it a certain mystique. Would love to visit someday but its a bit of a hike from this part of the world

CabanSail

It's quite a distance from here, about 1400km directly east of home, but is quite a lot further from most on Boards in Ireland. It is a fascinating place with a lot of history. I must admit I have quite an attraction to Islands, and have visited quite a few now. From memory I have been to Fraser, Moreton, King, Flinders, Garden and Norfolk Islands as well as Malta. Later this year I hope to go to Inishmaan too. There is something about small island communities which is very appealing.

As the history of Norfolk & Pitcairn Islands is very closely linked I did look into the possibility of going there. No wonder Fletcher Christian chose it as a hiding place, it's still very hard to get there.