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SUBTROPICAL PINE TREES, obstinate cows and wild roosters. Elderly folks dawdling along serpentine B-roads in micro-cars. Deep-green paddocks next to sinister Georgian-era convict ruins. Before visiting for the first time, these images painted the picture of Norfolk Island in my mind’s eye.
But they barely peel back a single layer of the cultural complexities of this 35-square-kilometre Australian external territory (around 1412 kilometres east of Byron Bay). A place profoundly entwined and defined by a population descending from the English and Tahitian mutineers of the Bounty, Fletcher Christian’s kin, who resettled on Norfolk when they outgrew the Pitcairn Islands. To know this island is to know its people. So here are seven chats with seven knowing locals, in search of the essence, quirks and jewels of 21st-century Norfolk Island.
FROM SUBSISTENCE TO SIGHTSEERS
Les Quintal: Everyone knows ‘Lettuce’
“You don’t come to Norfolk to visit a resort,” says Les ‘Lettuce’ Quintal. “First and foremost, you are visiting the home, primarily, of mutineer descendants. Some people get confused, thinking we’re of convict heritage, but the two histories are distinctive. And before them, there’s Polynesian
