Norfolk Island Trip

An early morning start on Saturday April 17th departing from the Bendigo Railway Station by Airport Bus at 6am. From Melbourne Airport domestic flight by Qantas to Sydney Airport then a much smaller international flight to Norfolk Island. The meals on the plane both ways were excellent and red wine to wash it down (or white wine or beer or fruit juice). About an hour and a half from Norfolk Island the captain announced that rain and fog might prevent us from landing and that we may have to detour to either Brisbane or Auckland for the night. However it cleared sufficiently in time for us to continue and make a safe landing, about 10pm. The hire cars waiting for us at the airport were a bit suss. Very casual people on Norfolk. When following our leader to the Dolphin Inn, our motel accommodation, our car slowed right down to a chug, then caught fire. Some quick action I can tell you in removing luggage, camera, accordion and concertinas worth thousands. Next car we were given conked out and the third car after driving to Kingston next day wouldn’t start (couldn’t get the gear out of park) until I told Stuart it was the way you hold your mouth. I actually managed to start if for him after also trying vainly for about five minutes. Accidentally put my foot on the brake and it changed gear into drive. After that we were right.

The purpose of the trip, or my involvement was as musician and dance caller, it was a week of bush dance and music. From Monday morning to Thursday morning there were workshops of teaching the dances by various guest callers while the musicians practised the arrangements. I had two one hour sessions on different days and variously taught the Polka Mazurka, Exions Quadrille, Bon Ton, Dutch Hoe Waltz, Garibaldi’s March Waltz and the Fitzroy Quadrilles. To my surprise Garibaldi’s March Waltz, a progressive dance in stately elegant style was the most popular of my selection. Additionally I assisted Coral Eden from Melbourne in demonstrating and teaching the Charmaine and the Tangoette. The music was a challenge for Stuart Simms (lead pianist of the Gay Charmers Old Time Band from Lake Charm, also playing violin) and I. The co-ordinator, David Johnson of ‘Bush Dance’ blue book fame (Bush Music Club Sydney) had arranged the tunes in sequence suiting the chromatic instruments such as fiddle and generally changing from key of D to G or vice versa, and many having minor key sections or chords. Stuart is used to playing in major keys in C and F to suit his button accordionist and I’m used to playing single row style in one key and seldom anything that is minor. The keyboard provided was a very inferior form of ‘piano’. My accordion was in A and D so I only used it a couple of times such as for Athol Highlanders in A, having to mainly stay on concertina which had D and G rows and my second concertina tuned to G and C was also used where this combination of keys came into play. But we managed most things including many jigs and reels we hadn’t heard before as well as Schottisches, Polkas and Waltzes. Despite our difficulties both Stuart and I would pay credence to the skill of David’s ability to arrange the dance music and lead it to the acclamations of the dancers who never ceased to comment on the excellence of the music.

Coral also taught a Welsh Dance and the English Playford ‘Well Hall’ which is in 3-2 time. I whistled while Stuart fiddled, but Rome didn’t burn. There were two or three bush dances in some of the evenings where the taught dances were again practised, but with lesser instruction and calling. Otherwise all afternoons and at least three nights were free.

Sunday morning (our first morning) there were markets and we managed to accrue a few local craft products as gifts to take home. Rose Simms mentioned she was very fond of Passionfruit and I found some homemade Passionfruit tart for her as well as some Guava jam for myself and some CDs of a local pianist, more classical themes which I also like. Rose said her mother made a lovely Passionfruit Jam and she described the recipe which she had contributed to the Lake Charm Recipe book, saying she’d never seen it elsewhere. Lo and behold I discovered a little Norfolk recipe book and passionfruit jam was in it, identical Rose said to that of her mother’s. That night we were treated to a wonderful fish fry at St. Barnabus Church by the locals.

There had been some rain and fog over the first couple of days, but we managed a really good bus tour which gave us an overview of the Island, all its attractions, history, unique language and so on. From this we were able to follow up with our own tours as well as one on a four wheel drive to a remoter corner of the Island. Actually got bogged right up to the axles and fortunately were able to be winched out just before the cable broke.

The Norfolkers that are originally descended from Pitcairn Island originals as a result of the Mutiny on the Bounty have a distinct language that is recognised in its own right and which is a meld of Old English and Tahitian. I will explain more about this in a summary of the history of the Pitcairners which is fascinating. They pronounce Pitcairn as Pitkern, as in kernel or colonel.

There are cows wandering all over the place and they have right of way. They are mainly a source of export meat and there is not the facility for milking on the Island, so all milk is UHT imported from the mainland (which is either Australia or New Zealand) at over $7 a litre. You might think the cow pads could be a hazard (lawn mines) but they disappear fairly quickly owing to the presence of dung beetles. As a consequence it is rare to see a fly. There are also black chooks everywhere and apart from the odd feral cat and ship rat, both of which are baited, there are no predator animals on the Island. Unfortunately many weeds and overseas birds have been introduced and several of Norfolk’s indigenous birds have become extinct. The Green Parrot has just been saved from elimination due to a breeding programme, it suffered badly from habitat change and the introduced Crimson Rosella from Australia gives it a hard time. The indigenous form of Boobook Owl is reduced to one bird, but they’ve managed to cross it with a closely related species from New Zealand and have built up numbers that at least have the Norfolk bloodline.

The Norfolk Island Pine of course is the dominant tree and as a landscape feature is just magnificent, often silhouetted against lush green grassy slopes and bluffs dropping down to the brilliant sapphire blue Pacific Ocean. The Norfolk Island Pine is the centre piece of the Island’s flag and on their coins if you lucky enough to get one.

Captain Cook discovered the Island and thought the tall straight trees would be an asset for masts for the ships of the British Navy. As a consequence the Island was secured for the Crown within a few weeks of Phillip arriving at Sydney. It turned out they were not suitable for that purpose; too many knots with all the radiating branchletes. We viewed a very old hollow Norfolk Pine log and all the branches are linked inside the hollow, like the spokes of a cartwheel, and this is nature’s way of protecting them from dislodging in heavy winds. This tree is an Araucaria and closely related to the Monkey Puzzle Tree of South America as well as our Bunya Bunya and Wombei Pine and another link in the pre continental drift connection of Gondwanaland.

It has been an unusual season for Norfolk and over summer they have already received 30 of their annual 52 inch rainfall.

The botanical gardens are well worth a visit to stroll through a lush rainforest jungle. It was originally established by a Mrs. Moores, born in 1890. She was well ahead of her time and recognised that Norfolk Island had many interesting indigenous plants which she established in her garden. Before her departure from this earth she made extensive arrangements for the care and perpetuity of her garden and gradually many more acres of land have been purchased and added to it and it now resembles more a National Park than a garden. It is managed by the Australian National Parks administration. There are many Nephila or Golden Orb Web Spiders on Norfolk as well as the St. Andrews Cross Spider and these were frequently seen with glistening droplets of water highlighting the beautiful webs.

Kentia Palms from Lord Howe Island are extensively cultivated for lucrative nut production and export and they have an inverted conical cap placed around the stems of the palm to stop the rats gormandising on the precious produce.

There are many beautiful gardens on Norfolk and colourful foliaged and flowering tropical plants adorn most front gardens and the general town streetscape. These include the yellows, oranges, reds and purples of the Croton leaves contrasting with emerald greens and very dark indigo hues and various horticultural forms of Hawaiian hibiscus, bananas and so on. There is also an indigenous Hibiscus native to Norfolk with primrose cream flowers and crimson stigma. Also there are large symmetrical rosette shaped succulents grown in the gardens.

There is no easy way of bringing produce and heavy materials onto Norfolk Island. There is not a harbour and wharf, but at the ‘Cascades’ and at Kingston a small concrete pier to which the cargo ships have to anchor beyond the reef and barges towed by a tug bring the goods in to be winched by cranes onto the trucks that wait to transport the materials into town. I have on DVD footage of a bus being straddled across two barges and towed across to the crane on the pier. Also at the Cascades is the remains of whaling equipment where the blubber was reduced to oil. There are only five brick houses on Norfolk; it is an enormous cost to bring the necessary number of bricks in by sea. On our progressive dinner where we had sweets, the owners explained their cargo of bricks sank at sea; but close enough to the pier to be hauled out by the cranes. The progressive dinner (entrée, mains and dessert at three different homes) was magnificent and you just have to see the homes to believe them. Mansions made of local pine and NZ Kauri, vast views over the island and Pacific Ocean.

Ninety eight percent of Norfolk's income is tourism and while many of the locals are extremely wealthy, they work very hard making scones and jam, banana cake and tea and coffee almost every afternoon for the visiting coach tours. There are three progressive dinners a week for approximately fifteen buses variously detouring and sharing between five homes that have three courses in succession for a bus at a time. Think I'd be fed up with that every week. Some of the locals have up to three different jobs, juggling between each as circumstance demands.

I had arranged through the local RSL that we would play some of the World War 1 and 2 songs and tunes on Anzac Day (as well as one from the Boer War) after the official part of the ceremony was over. We had a ‘warm up’ on the Tuesday night and joined the local ‘rock and roll’ band, who were more 60s pop music and Country and Western. Trent was a present day Pitcairn Island (rather than Norfolk) descendant of Fletcher Christian with black hair and some Polynesian features. Many of the children of the mutineers and Polynesian mothers married Polynesians and so the second generation had very Tahitian in features. The other guitarist ‘Kim’ had a ‘wide hair part’. Hence they were known as ‘Blackie and Baldy’. Boy did the RSL rock that night and the locals just over the moon, as well as the folkies whom I wouldn’t have suspected could ‘bop’. Anzac Day was perhaps a little more sedate, but the most amazing buffet meal with some local banana and coconut dishes in the salads and all home cooked. One of the elders sang grace in that beautiful harmonious Polynesian style that no other in the world approaches. We danced the Lancers and the Foxtrot, the Charmaine and the Jitterbug while the locals played Two Up. It’s the only day in the year they can do this. Actually we also had a Progressive Barn Dance, a Stockyards and a Pride of Erin and quite few of the locals joined in.

The final ‘show’ we went to was the ‘Convict Night’ in which we had costumes provided. It was a real hoot with a great meal and entertainment by the ‘Commandant’ and his officer ‘Private Parts’. It was raunchy and risqué and not for the prudish. We heard of several New Zealand women complaining bitterly (earnestly?) to the booking agency about the ‘toilet humour’ which left the staff flabbergasted. However you do need to judge things yourself and I can see how some might be offended. Our party and all present including at least 50% New Zealanders just laughed and laughed and laughed. Tom and Marg Dean commented to me recently how much they enjoyed the humour. If you’ve ever seen a party game called ‘pass the orange’, then they had their equivalent of ‘pass the rolling pin’ which is held between or above the knees. I’ll leave it to your imagination, but it was only the females that were the participants.

Duty free shopping is widely available on the Island, exotic perfumes, imported Italian shoes, cameras and alcoholic beverages. We barely had time to poke our nose in the door although David Johnson had purchased some Bailey’s Irish Cream which was much appreciated when shared amongst the musicians at the ball.

The early penal history of Norfolk adds a macabre touch to the otherwise intriguing era of settlement mid nineteenth century by the Pitcairners. As early as 1778 immediately following Governor Phillip establishing settlement at Sydney, convicts were sent to Norfolk and some free settlers also established a foothold. However it was not a particularly successful undertaking and many later took an opportunity for transferral to Tasmania. By 1813 the settlement had been abandoned and most of the early buildings destroyed so as to prevent the likelihood of a refuge for escaped convicts or for occupancy by a foreign country. By the end of 1826 a second penal colony was established at what is now known as Kingston and apart from the cells some wonderful Georgian residences and public office buildings were established and remain the best examples of this particular architecture in the world. The second penal settlement catered for the hardest of convicts who were submitted to the cruellest of treatment. None escaped or even survived Norfolk. Eventually the penal settlement wound down with further transfer to Tasmania, and by 1854 only the lovely buildings remained. In 1856 owing to Pitcairn Island being overcrowded and starvation facing the occupants, Queen Victoria granted these descendants of the Mutiny of the Bounty Norfolk Island as a home with 50 acres of land to each family. As a consequence to this day, the residents still sing God Save the Queen.

The history of this group of people is the most interesting. Tahiti of course features in the equation and probably the freedom of ‘love’ with the native people is part of the catalyst to what was to eventuate. I can recall in the mid 1960s a passing dance craze, the Tamoure which was based on the swift hula style Tahitian ‘dance of love’. Captain Bligh for various reasons, one the pending weather, was obliged to hole up at Tahiti for several months while also cultivating breadfruit plants for the return to England, the prime reason for the expedition. Most of the sailors had ‘taken up’ with the Polynesian women during this time and were not particularly interested in departing, but would have faced rounding up and execution at home should they have remained. Bligh was a sort of Jeckle and Hyde and with an addiction to very small doses of arsenic. He became extremely difficult to work with and Fletcher Christian in particular could no longer cover for him or tolerate the abuse. In addition to this the Tahitian chieftain’s daughter was pregnant to him and they had already been living in a state of marriage. We all know the outcome, Bligh and some of the faithfuls put in a life boat and set sail, eventually arriving at Timor while Fletcher Christian, his fellow mutineers and some neutral sailors who could not fit in Bligh’s boat, returned to Tahiti and collected up their native woman as well as several Tahitian men. Fletcher had somehow realised Pitcairn Island had been chartered 200 miles of course and if he could find it, they were unlikely to be discovered. He did find Pitcairn, but the voyage took considerably more time than expected and he was close to being the victim of a mutiny himself. After landing on the island they set about establishing little thatched homes and in cultivating the land. However there were all sorts of problems, not the least the Polynesians and the English could not understand each other’s language. Fletcher in a typical British manner of the period subdivided the land among the nine European mutineers, none allocated to the Polynesian men, who were set to heavy work carting the water and hewing the wood. In addition three of the Polynesian men did not have wives and when one of the mutineer’s wife died, he took one of the Polynesian wives, adding further strains on a shortage of women. The Polynesian men gained arms and although the story is not clear many of the mutineers (probably including Fletcher) were shot. Subsequently two of the mutineers who had been away in the mountains returned and finished off the Tahitian men, although again the accounts vary. These two mutineers had discovered a way of making an alcoholic beverage from ‘Ti root’ and then using the Bounty’s copper kettle converted it into a still. They spent most of their time in a state of inebriation, one eventually committing suicide. Ultimately only two mutineers survived, and then later, Young died at the age of 36. The survivor, John Adams hallucinated under the effects of the Ti-root brew (whom a later visiting ship officer said was not unlike whisky and possibly better) and from then on became an absolute convert taking up the bible and teaching the bounty/Tahitian children religion, good manners and so on. When their descendants were moved to Norfolk Island they were amazed at the large Georgian residences in which they initially lived and the ‘use of the toilets’ had to be explained to them. Growing up as children they assumed a language of their own, a fusion between the old English of the mutineers and Tahitian of their mothers.

‘Webout you gwen?’ Where are you going? ‘Foot nort’ Why not. ‘Lubbe side is’ Leave it where it is.

We were to meet with several Fletcher Christian descendants during our stay. One, Enoch Christian, the bus driver on our progressive dinner, I enquired as to whether he could explain what really happened to Fletcher, was he killed by the Tahitian men? He explained that nobody really knew, there were several stories, but Fletcher certainly suffered depression and spent many hours away from everyone in an open cave. He said his best friend is reputed to have seen him and called out; Fletcher looked around and then disappeared into the bush. Enoch said it has also been handed down he built a raft to escape the island, but added, how could he build a raft without anyone knowing and if he’d taken to sea on it and found, would have given away the location of Pitcairn. He said he hoped he was buried somewhere on Pitcairn. An interesting comment, because no grave is known, including the others that were killed.

In that era, many Polynesian islanders were cannibals. They didn’t eat human flesh for the sake of food, but because they thought they gained their victim’s strength. It was documented that when Captain Cook was killed in Hawaii, all that could be recovered for burial at sea were his hands and feet. This is speculation on my part, it may well be the bodies were floated out to sea.

Both ‘Cyclorama’ and the Bounty Museum on Norfolk provide a remarkable exhibition of the history of the Mutiny and subsequent settlement on Pitcairn and then Norfolk Islands.

The trip home was a little stressful for me, having to be a work on Monday morning. We played for a ball on the Saturday night and were to be at the Norfolk airport for customs check at 6am and depart by 8. The rain and fog prevented our Sydney plane from landing Saturday evening, so plans were changed. We got a much needed sleep in and due at the airport at 10am. An amusing event going through customs, Linton Vogel from Corryong had his best farm penknife on him, forgot to put it in the down under luggage. As customs dropped it into a rubbish bin, his partner Jan Lewis exclaimed loudly ‘What a Wacka!’ The plane was meant to depart at midday but it was 1pm, which caused us to miss the 3pm link from Sydney to Melbourne. The 4pm flight might still have got us to Spencer St. in time, but it departed at 4.30. The Bendigo-Kerang train departed at 5.30, about 3 quarters of an hour ahead of our arrival at the station. Rose and Stuart were forced to stay overnight in Melbourne. I was panicking because I thought I would have to do likewise, but then discovered there was an 8.15 train as far as Bendigo. I arrived at 10pm, only to view all the taxis departing as I struggled out the entrance with one very heavy case, accordion, concertinas, camera etc, and looking a dork with one bowler hat on one’s head. Just no room for it anywhere without getting crushed. Finally another taxi arrived. I did make work Monday morning, it would have been nice if it was a quiet day at the office, but it was extremely busy. In hindsight, just as well, I had to keep moving. My heartfelt thanks to Lance and Barbara for organising this wonderful trip for us.

Peter.