Norfolk Island's Picturesque Coastline

Watawieh? This means 'how are you?' in the Norfolk Island language. This lingo is a mixture of (a) English and (b) Tahiti's language. It is still spoken by many locals, though of course everyone also speaks English.

Dot and I have just spent 5 full days on Norfolk Island (NI). Our holiday there was prompted by the fact that we wanted to travel overseas and selected this destination for travel in April this year. We were attracted by the island's great history and its beautiful scenery, but alas the April visit was cancelled because of COVID-19 and the islander's fear that their medical services could not cope if the virus were to be imported.

Travel restrictions were recently lifted and we quickly rebooked our trip overseas. NI is not, of course, a foreign country. It is part of Australia and partly administered from Canberra albeit with some local government role on the island itself. Interestingly, we needed to depart from Sydney's international terminal to get there and had to go through all the usual international travel hurdles. Also, we flew with Air New Zealand - apparently no Australian airline currently has connections with NI.

This, the first of several posts, focuses on the island's fantastic coastal scenery. It just blew us away and I suspect that my photos will lure some of my readers there. By the way, our visit was generally warm to hot. NI lies just 29 degrees south and borders on the Coral Sea. In the last few days, Australia has had some of the warmest November days ever and when we arrived back in Sydney the temperature was 40 C!

Himii staat! Let's go! Have a look at this gorgeous scenery:

This was our first view of the coastline during an escorted tour to the former convict settlement of  Kingston. Nice spot to be detained, but judging from the cemetery headstones many died young.

In this and the picture below, we're looking at a range of administrative and residential buildings much more upmarket than the jail areas

Note the Norfolk Pine to the right of this picture. It's a great tree native to the island and its trunk is usually entirely vertical.

We were obviously not the first visitors to this spot. The Queen beat us by almost 50 years when she arrived precisely 200 years after the famous James Cook discovered the island.

Shhhhhh! This lovely little cove - sheltered from the ocean by a reef - is named after our daughter, Emily. It's Emily Bay. And it's flat waters are ideal for swimming  ... not that we did. And look at the lone pine below.

And guess who this dude is! 

I bet you'll get the answer right.

All these photos demonstrate just how beautiful the coastline is. Over the 5 days we drove much of the coastline in the car that was provided for us as part of the holiday package. We were independently mobile, which suited us fine. However, each day had organised trips to discover the wider history and culture of NI.

Occasionally a notice-board would identify key dates and people who drove the development of the island

Here we found some more detailed information about how James Cook discovered NI back in 1774. That was before he even reached Australia itself.

Around this location we had to keep an eye out for Mutton Birds who dig holes in the ground for their nests. We didn't want to twist ankles!

Back in the past, this jetty helped transfer goods destined for NI from ships offshore.

When we visited we found that it is now used to transfer recreational vessels from trailers on to the water.

Also it seems that those boats are often used to go fishing.

The bloke shown here was processing one of his catches and keeping the nice bits, probably for either personal or business consumption.

 

After this process the fish's remains looked like this.

Some of the remainder was also tossed into the water to feed a swarm of sharks. No wonder swimmers were remarkably absent from nearby water.

I can't resist showing two more pictures of Emily Bay. The waters had many lovely shades of blue.

Gubai. Si yu lieta anieh. This means "Goodbye. I'll see you later".