OUR PACIFIC PARADISE
The cluster of small islands known as the Territory of Norfolk Island lies in the south-western Pacific Ocean, 1400km due east of Evans Head, NSW. It’s about halfway between New Caledonia and New Zealand. Comprised of Norfolk Island (proper) and two small, uninhabited islands to its south — Phillip and Nepean — the group is administered by the Australian Government as an external territory.
The provincial capital and administrative centre is Kingston, on the south side of Norfolk Island, in a picture-postcard setting on the shore of Slaughter Bay. Government House, the official residence of the Administrator, stands on Quality Row in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the former penal settlement. The island’s major settlement and commercial hub is Burnt Pine, about 3km inland near the airport.
Norfolk Island has a resident population of about 1800 people, of whom nearly half are descendants of the Bounty mutineers who migrated here from Pitcairn Island in the 1850s. The islanders speak both English and a creole language known as ‘Norfuk’, a blend of 18th century English and Tahitian. In 2004, an act of the Norfolk Island Assembly made Norfuk a co-official language of the island and efforts are being made to keep it alive via dictionaries and the renaming of some tourist attractions.
ISLAND LANDSCAPES
The islands are the exposed pinnacles of the Norfolk Ridge, a narrow, steep-sided range of seamounts running 1600km from the northern tip of New Zealand to New Caledonia. Norfolk Island has an area of 35sqkm dominated
