News

Norfolk Island

By Alice Allen Innes

"V[OW, who would want to holiday on ll Norfolk Island?” would-be kind friends asked us when we spoke of coming here. But, having come, I would say, “Who wouldn’t want to holiday here?’

There are, of course, types like the female tourist to Switzerland who com plained that there was nothing to see but the scenery; for ordinary cusses, like us, however, Norfolk proved a great place.

We were sad to find that the famous avenue of pines is gone—4so stately giants, that stretched for a mile and a half and had been planted long ago by convicts at the order of their Com mandant, have given away to the new aerodrome. It can be chalked up to the debit side of the war, I suppose, although it has its compensations: that aerodrome has brought Australia and New Zealand within easy tourist distance of Norfolk.

Local residents were all keyed up for the tourist trade this Christmas, and two hundred visitors were expected for this season; but the infantile paralysis epidemic in New Zealand has cut off all tourists from that quarter.

IN Fiji, as Judy Tudor has told us, one may go forth in the friendly, sturdy and rather bumpy Wog-wagon, meeting fellow-travellers of every shade and colour.

In Norfolk we have the wog-wagon’s counterpart—the friendly, cheerful, con verted lorry known as the “grog-wagon.”

It is driven by that philosopher, Mr.

Bob-Dickie Burfit who. with one eager eye on the very neglected roads, answers

a score of questions put by nosey tourists, like myself.

The grog-wagon gathers us all up twice weekly—most of us with a roomy zip bag, bottle-basket or even a homely old

sugar-bag. Butter and beans and bacon, we needs must get—but the real zest of the adventure is down at Kingston with Mr. Smith, at the Bond Store. (There is no pub on Norfolk; liquor is obtained only on a Gov ernment permit.) Mr. Burfit conveys mes sages to this person and that, from this one and that as the local phones are again out of order.

There is also a spot of shopping for an absent one.

Mrs. Soanso’s baby is sick.

Can the butcher give us her meat He can, and does.

Has Mr. Patching mended Mr. Someone’s watch yet?

“Ready on Monday,” someone volunteers.

Did anyone see Uncle Cholly's roan mare? “On the Weir Common!” some one else replies.

And so we fly past the old ruins of Kingston and around the “top roads.” The locals have many a jest at our expense in their own queer language; and then, relenting, translate so that we may all share the joke. Unlike Time, the grog

wagon manages to wait for everyone while we shop—or merely gossip.

I see a notice in Burns Philp that lemon seeds are wanted and that £2 per

pound will be paid for them. Wild lemons grow everywhere here, but the lack of labour to gather them seems to be the catch. The passionfruit pulping season has also started. Passionfruit— which usually cost 2d. or 3d. each in Syd ney—grow wild even on the mountain roads here. Beans are also being harvested now for seed for Australian growers.

The “grog-wagon” in operation.