Living History - Norfolk Island

MOST OF US ASSOCIATE NORFOLK ISLAND with a convict past, but there is a lot more to its history than that, and the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area recognises not only the role this district has played in the island’s past, but its continued status as a site of living history.

The first inhabitants of Kingston and Arthur’s Vale were Polynesian, and Norfolk Island remains the only site in Australia to display evidence of early Polynesian settlement. Archaeological investigations have revealed evidence of landscape modifications in the Emily Bay area, including artefacts and structural remains that have been interpreted as a rudimentary marae. Radiocarbon dating of these sites indicates the settlement of the area occurred between AD 1200 and AD 1600.

A time capsule of a settlement that was not only part of Norfolk Island’s history but of the founding of New Zealand and Oceania.

Exactly where these early settlers came from is not known for certain, but the origins of the next wave of ‘settlers’ is much clearer. Captain James Cook first reported the island’s existence for Europeans in 1774, with the first settlers arriving in 1788, just six weeks after the First Fleet landed in Sydney. These hardy souls came to make the most of the native pines – which made excellent ships’ spars and masts – and the flax that made canvas. The rich local soils also proved much more productive than those found in Sydney, so much so that a sizeable portion of that fledgling colony was relocated to Kingston to take advantage of the surplus of food.

The new colony was designed to be the extreme in convict degradation – to act as a warning to miscreants

Convicts soon followed, and both convicts and free settlers farmed smallholdings of land, with the population peaking at 1,156 in May 1792. By 1804 the free settlers on the island significantly outnumbered convicts, who represented just 23% of the total population. By 1814 however, the settlement’s days were deemed to be over, and with its abandonment all its buildings were destroyed; it was widely believed that would be the end of the penal colony there and there would be no return.

It was not to be. Norfolk Island was re-occupied on 6 June 1825 and the settlement was again located around Kingston. Ironically, the remains of some of the first settlement buildings were rebuilt and old agricultural areas rehabilitated, as well as new areas being cleared. But it was to be of an entirely different character to the first settlement: the new colony was designed to be the extreme in convict degradation – to act as a warning to miscreants – and it came to stand for the worst of the convict transportation system.

Much of what makes the Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Heritage Area so unique – and strangely beautiful – dates from this period. The 1829 Government House, one of the earliest and most intact remaining government house buildings in Australia, has commanding views of the settlement, while the Old Military Barracks and officers quarters constructed between 1829-34 are surrounded by high walls, giving it the appearance of a military fortress. The elegant Quality Row houses, that provided quarters for military and civil officers were elevated in order to oversight the convict precinct, and there are archaeological remains of the two convict gaols, the blacksmith’s shop, lumber yard, water mill, lime kilns, the landing pier and sea wall. It is a succinctly captured time capsule of a settlement that was not only part of Norfolk Island’s history but of the founding of New Zealand and Oceania.

Remarkably, this was not to be the last chapter in the settlement of the island.

In December 1853 the island’s status as a penal colony was repealed and the remaining prisoners were removed, with the colony closing in 1855. But a small party remained on the island to care for the farms and livestock and to handover to a new group of incoming settlers, this time from Pitcairn Island.

The Pitcairn Island descendants of the Bounty mutineers had outgrown their island home and the British government offered them the option of resettling on Norfolk Island. The whole Pitcairn community landed at Kingston Pier on 8 June 1856, and their descendants, who today comprise nearly a third of Norfolk Island’s population, still speak the Pitcairn language. For them Kingston and Arthur’s Vale is a place of special significance because it has been continually and actively used since their arrival as a place of residence, work, worship and recreation.

And for visitors, to experience a place with so much history that is still a thriving and active community is equally special.