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Norfolk Island is situated at 29 degrees South, 168 degrees East,
3,300 miles west of Pitcairn, 930 miles north-east of Sydney, and
630 miles north-west of Auckland. It has a land area of thirteen
and a half square miles and a circumference of twenty miles. Norfolk
is a rolling, pine-clad island, rather low-laying except for two
peaks which rise to somewhat over one thousand feet. On the south
coast is the only town, Kingston. Norfolk was discovered by Captain Cook on October 10, 1774, on
his second voyage to the South Pacific. From 1788 to 1856 it was
used by the British as a penal colony. Norfolk is important in the history of Pitcairn as the destination
for the second migration of the whole population of the island in
1865. In 1913 Norfolk became an Australian territory. Today about 40
per cent of the close to 2,200 inhabitants on Norfolk are descendents
of the Bounty mutineers. The island gets about 20,000 visitors
a year, mostly from Australia but also from new Zealand. On Norfolk Island, "Bounty Day" is celebrated on June
8, the anniversary of the arrival of the population from Pitcairn.
--Text from Mutiny and Romance in the South Seas: A Companion to the Bounty
Adventure by Sven Wahlroos. Used by permission. See Book
Recommendations for more information about this book.
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