A history of Norfolk Island to 1796

Abstract

There lies in the South Pacific Ocean a small and solitary island. Discovered only 170 years ago its history falls into three distinct parts: the period of the first convict settlement, 1788 to 1811, the period 1825 to 1853 when the island fitted into the British Government's system of penal colonization 'as the ne plus ultra of convict degradation'; Cambridge History of the British Empire, Vol.V11, part 1, Australia, p. 327 and the period from 1856, when its present settlement began as a home for the descendants of the Bounty mutineers. Norfolk Island lies on that mobile crust of the earth's surface surrounding the Australian Shield, which has rippled up and down many times in the latter geological ages, producing mountain ranges which often rise many thousands of feet above the sea as in New Guinea and New Zealand. 'Yet if the "earth buckles" be referred to the true datum - the relatively flat floor of the Pacific Ocean (16,000 feet deep) - there are several great ranges running more or less parallel to the eastern coast of Australia.' Ibid. p. 3. These folds project above sea level along small portions of their extent and one of these projections forms Norfolk Island.