Norfolk Island : its government and administration
Abstract
Only forty days after Governor Phillip's First Fleet entered
Port Jackson on 26th January 1788 to found the first British settlement
in the South Pacific, a second such settlement was established on
Norfolk Island. The island lay 905 nautical miles to the east northeast,
at 29 degrees south latitude, of what was to become the town of Sydney.
From 6th March 1788 the island has been occupied continuously excepting
for an eleven year period of abandonment from 1814 to 1825. In its
early days it played an important part in the social, economic and
administrative history of the colony of New South Wales. Later, from
the mid nineteenth century to the period of World War 11, it slumbered
in comparative quiet under the occupancy of the "Pitcairners", the
descendants of the mutineers of KMS Bounty and their Tahitian consorts.
Since 1945 improved communications have brought the island more into
the forefront of Australian and world events to the extent that now, in
1976, the many facets of the island, its constitutional future, the
welfare of its people, its economy and the retention of its numerous
and varied natural attributes, present problems to which there are no
quick or easy solutions.