Norfolk Island  A Brief Overview of our Political History

Our famous ancestors .........

1789...

Well-known depiction of Captain Bligh being cast off in the cutter, overlain with a likeness of Fletcher Christian

HMS Bounty, in Her Majesty’s Service, at sea under the command of Captain William Bligh. On board her - discontent, mutterings, sickness, plottings. Mutiny were the rumblings. Mutiny was the order given. History was in the making and a new page was written in the annals of time ...

The mutineers were Europeans, independent of mind and action. They found refuge with their Polynesian companions from Tahiti - 28 Polynesian and mutineers in all - on a distant and uncharted peak called Pitcairn Island and a new civilisation was to be born....

   1790
Pitcairn Island

Early drawing of Adamstown.

A new and distinct race of people was evolving. Two distinct ethnic groups were combining to eke out an existence on the distant and rocky isle of Pitcairn. This small group of pioneers, isolated in their hideaway, learning to live together, intertwining the major characteristics of their two distinct cultures, each bringing with them their cooking traditions, their social interaction, their music, their laws and their rules to live by...

Different cultures, different mores - more men than women - a recipe for discontent. All was not tranquillity, all was not idyllic - tempers flared, many lives were taken, but as time flowed, their differences merged and a separate and unique civilisation matured...

A unique civilisation creates history...

A new language developed, Polynesian/European skills emerged. Community government achieved a unique combination of self-help, personal independence and family and community commitment.

Gone were the fair skinned Englishmen off the Bounty, lightened were the skins of the Polynesians from Tahiti ... the new generation of olive skinned Pitcairners are the ancestors of the Norfolk Islander today.

Hannah and George Young   Thursday October Christian