NORFOLK ISLAND
An island of surprises
M
ANY KIWIS KNOW OF ITS HISTORY, but few are aware of its blue lagoons and white sand beaches, it’s fantastic food, local dialect, and its unique flora and fauna. Even fewer know that this little piece of paradise just two hours out of Auckland celebrates Thanksgiving. It may be 12,000 kilometres from the US of A, but every November Norfolk Island puts that most American of holidays front and centre with church services and feasting on roasts, pumpkin pie and cornbread.
souls found immediate affinity with the locals, who had relied on a mastery of the ocean for their very survival for many years.
An early American trader, Isaac Robinson, is usually credited with formally introducing Thanksgiving to Norfolk Island in the 1880s. Robinson became Norfolk’s Registrar of Lands and the island’s first - and so far only - United States consul, and he was responsible for merging the traditional American celebration with the more English Harvest Home festival. The story goes that he and three friends decorated All Saints Church in There is actually a perfectly good the capital of Kingston with palm reason that Norfolk is one of the few leaves and lemons, and the rest, as places outside of the United States they say, is history; Thanksgiving to mark Thanksgiving. American continues to be a popular public whalers were frequent visitors to the holiday marked each year on the island, and these hardy seafaring third Wednesday of November. A I R C H AT H A M S . C O . N Z // S P R I N G 2 0 1 9
27
