My first glimpse of Norfolk Island was a brief flash of emerald green hills through the low cloud cover. As the aircraft banked to the left, it rocked up and down and within minutes we were heading towards the ground. So much ocean and so little ground. I knew very little of this place and yet I was going to spend the next two years living here amongst a strange and unique culture.

It wasn’t until I was virtually boarding the aircraft that I learnt the descendants of the infamous naval mutiny aboard HMS Bounty, now inhabited the island. This was the first of some unexpected surprises.

Situated some 1440 Km south-east of Brisbane and only 800 Km south of Noumea, Norfolk Island has a sub-tropical climate blended with the unmistakable features of an English country-side. A strange combination, which only helps to re-enforce the specific features of the island’s history. The beauty and serenity of the island is reflected in its historic buildings, its stunning coastal scenery, and its tall and majestic pines.

October 11, 1774, Captain James Cook left the HMS Resolution in a small boat to “view the island and its produce”. He described an island paradise with pines “in vast abundance and to a vast size”. By February 29, 1788 Norfolk would become the British crown’s focus for a second penal settlement under the command of Lieutenant Gidley King. By 1792 the settlement would briefly rival the size of Port Jackson (The settlement in Australia), yet in the years ahead it would firmly establish itself as one of the most horrific penal settlements in the British Empire.

In the meantime, on board the Bounty and anchored off Tahiti, Fletcher Christian had endured enough from his supposed friend, Captain William Bligh. On April 28, 1789 Christian and his sea-mates would create another thread in the history of Norfolk. Whilst King was establishing the settlement at Norfolk Island, Fletcher Christian and friends mutinied and set Bligh on his own record setting journey across the Pacific. Perhaps lured by the beauty of the Tahitians and their idyllic island, the mutineers would unleash a chain of events that would spawn not only a new settlement on Pitcairn Island, but also the beginnings of a new language and culture unique in the world.

Fletcher and his comrades, including a number of Tahitians, would eventually settle on Pitcairn Island, a tiny speck in the south east Pacific. After burning the Bounty, the new settlement would evolve into a unique cultural mixture of Tahitian and English customs. Eventually, due to over-population and the subsequent lack of food, they would apply to Queen Victoria for assistance in finding them a new island home.

By June 1855 most of the prisoners on Norfolk had been removed. On June 8, 1856 the entire community of Pitcairn on board the Morayshire arrived at their new home, Norfolk Island.

To the new arrivals, this was indeed paradise. To sum up their continuing love of the island a short verse from a descendant of Fletcher Christian, Ena Christian, says it all.

"She’s a pearl. She’s a jewel, a south sea diamond, but to all of us, she is just “Our Island!”’