Island By Chief
pp. 96-97 · Read in the full issue
Book On Norfolk
Magistrate
Norfolk Island’s lurid period as a penal settlement from 1788 to 1854 has long been a popular
subject with magazine writers
and Sunday newspapermen. But the same cannot be said for the island’s history since the Pit cairners arrived there in 1856.
THE reason for this is that life on Norfolk these last 110 years has gone on so quietly and with so few dramatic incidents that most people with an urge to write have turned their attention to more exciting subjects.
An exception to this almost in variable rule is Mr. Thomas Jackson, who retired to Norfolk Island 16 years ago after being Mayor of Rotorua, New Zealand, for 12 years, and who became the island’s chief magistrate in 1960.
Mr. Jackson, using his Maori name, Tamati Tiakihana, has just produced an 82-page booklet entitled Norfolk Island, which he describes as “a brief history of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and other settlers of Pitcairn on both Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands”.
Chit-Chat
Actually, it would be more correct to describe it as a book of chit-chat (mainly historical) rather than a formal history, for Mr. Jackson wanders from his main theme whenever the spirit takes him and yarns about anything from nick names to his trip to Tahiti in 1964.
Being a magistrate, he naturally finds such things as Norfolk Island’s liquor laws and legal status of particular interest, and he has devoted quite a few pages to these.
The book’s chief value as a historical document is that it re produces in full the judgment which Mr. Justice Eggleston gave last year in an action in which a resident un successfully based his case on the long-held belief that, constitutionally, Norfolk Island is independent of Australia (PIM, April, 1965, p. 27).
However, Mr. Jackson is at his best when he is retailing an anecdote about, or commenting on, the various aspects of island life.
His most pungent remarks concern the island’s present-day economy.
“The economy of the island,” he
says, “is at present based on tourism, the sale of stamps and the Australian Government subsidy. Should the in come from any of these sources be substantially reduced, the wave of prosperity the island is experiencing would come to an end.
“If tourism is to be encouraged the liberalisation of the liquor laws is essential, but I and many other long residents on the island deplore any attempt to turn Norfolk Island into a Waikiki or Surfers’ Paradise type of tourist resort.
“We welcome those who come to the island to enjoy its beauty and its peacefulness, but to those who want the tinsel and glitter and artificiality of an Americanised resort, we beg them to stay away . . .
“Tourism has brought a period of prosperity to the island, but it is a prosperity with no solid foundation.
“Very few of the newcomers are interested in agriculture, and many of the younger islanders who are enjoying a period of full employment are not even growing their own vegetables.
Disquieting
“On a fertile island which once produced all the food requirements for a population of two thousand people, it is tragic and disquieting to find so many of the population living on foodstuffs imported from over seas.
“The citrus fruits for which the island was once famous have almost vanished and there is urgent need for large-scale replanting of citrus trees.
“Pineapples, avocado pears, and good quality peaches should also be grown more extensively, for these are the things the visitors expect to find on a semi-tropical island—the memory of which will remain with them when the memory of the things in the duty-free shops has long faded . . .
“If a modern processing plant were established to process the peas, beans, carrots, and many other vegetables that grow so well here, the island could supply its own requirements the year round, and also find a ready market for its surplus in New Caledonia, the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands.
The land is here, the know-how to produce these things is here. If the will and determination to achieve these results is here also, the future prosperity of the island can be achieved . .
Mr. Jackson’s -book was printed by United Publishing and Printing Company Ltd., of Rotorua. It is available on Norfolk Island at