Prior to being the main
course for the Hawaiian Islanders, Cook stumbled across a spec of an island in
the South Pacific on his second circumnavigation of the world in 1774. Cashed up due his benefactor back in the
motherland, Mary Howard, (Duchess of Norfolk), Cook remembered that the
pounds keeping him afloat relied upon the Duchess getting something named after
her. So, with the lure of the pound,
Cook christened the isle "Norfolk". The irony
is that Mary passed away before she was aware of her namesake!
Like an uncut, blood diamond; the
islands history is one of depravity, human suffering, isolation, mutiny and
a pioneering spirit. After losing the colonies
of the Americas in 1776 and having nowhere to send their excess scum, Great Britain decreed that the settlements of Port Jackson and Norfolk would commence. So in 1788, six weeks after the establishment
of Port Jackson, Norfolk Island was settled and the gates of hell were opened.
Rugged cliff faces stand as
sentinels, thousands of kilometres of ocean mocked the notion of return, sociopaths
wearing the red of authority governed and human existence was debased by the
noose, bayonet, lash, irons and sodomy. Here, convicts were excreted and smeared across
the landscape.
Two archaic periods of penal
settlement crushed the lifeless souls of those held within the island. As a penal settlement, its goal was to
dehumanise and to allow debouched fantasies to become mainstream. Raffles of the flesh were held - here zombie
eyed, naked, female convicts danced; raffle numbers painted on their backs; prisoners
were forbidden to communicate with each other, lashed men’s skin arced and wept. 36 lashes were given out for keeping a
tame bird – even Jesus only got 39 lashes and he was supposedly the ‘King of
the Jews.’
Such was the reputation of the
island that petitions were accumulating for the closure of the penal settlement. As fate would have it, a group of mutineer descendants were to get one of
the greatest gifts ever given by a monarch.
These descendants of the Bligh Mutiny, stuck on Pitcairn Island; had out grown their little hovel and petitioned Queen Victoria for somewhere
else to live. Timing is
everything and with the tide turning against human transportation, Norfolk as a
penal settlement was closed and gifted to the mutineer's issue. The Pitcairners first stood upon Kingston’s pier in June 8 1856. With a light in their eyes; they marvelled at their new home.
The rest, they say is history,
with over 1600 people inhabiting the island today and over 40% of the
population being Pitcairners and hence of Bounty mutineer descent.
