DAY 8 - NORFOLK ISLAND
Day 8 – Saturday 11th JANUARY
2020.
We have been
driving past Selwyn’ Reserve every day since we arrived on the island a week
ago and have been constantly saying we must take a walk through there. Well today we did it. We were going back to the museum today but it
did not open until 11am so we decided to leave earlier still and go for a
wander through Selwyn’s Reserve on our way into town…
We have been
admiring the beautiful flowering plant each day as we drove past so today was
the day to explore them in more depth.
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Flower of the Cow Itch tree |
The only way
into the reserve was to climb over a style.
I wasn’t sure how I would cope with this and the first seemed pretty
high off the ground… I surprised myself and wit a little help I managed o climb
over. This is something that I wouldn’t
have been able to do six months ago…
It was
really lovely walking through the forest and out to the cliff top. Like the rest of the islands, the views were
outstanding here also….
There were
some old machinery wrecks in the forest that we were keen to check out also but
when we tried to walk down towards them, that area was fenced off so we had to
walk back to the stile and climb back over it and head down to Puppy’s Point
and park there and climb another stile.
Steve climbed over an earlier stile on the main road and was going to
walk down through the gully to meet us,
by the time we got into the forest
he had caught up but was eager to get the good camera as he had walked
through a group of little birds that he thought were finches. We later found out that they might have been
the little song thrush bird.
He took the
camera and headed back to where they were and got some really good photos… He also walked down the gully or creek bed to
the drop over the cliff into the ocean.
By the time
we had finished our walks it was 11am so time to head down to Kingston to check
out another one of the museums.
On our way down there we thought we would check out the "Officers' Bath first. The Officers' Bath consist of a stone stairway leading down to a platform around which a stream, Town Creek, flows. It was built during the Second Settlement to provide a supply of fresh water to the Kingston Settlement. An underground conduit with a vaulted stone ceiling carries fresh water from a dammed creek in Soldiers' Gully to the Baths, and then under Quality Row to spill into the stream that runs through the Common into Emily Bay. It is said that the stonemasons required to build the Baths and conduits were deliberately convicted and transported from England to Norfolk Island...
This
morning we chose to check out the “HMS Sirius”.
This was the ship coming from Australia with supplies that got
shipwrecked on the reef just out front in Slaughter Bay.
To get to the museum we had to drive past "Tent City" and Government House. "Tent City" was set up back in 2015 or 2016 and is a protest against the Australian Government taking over the administration of the island... Up to 1914, Norfolk Island was a British colony, similar to Australia
pre-1901. After that, it was an external territory of Australia. They
had their own Legislative Assembly
and ran the island with minimum input from Canberra. They had their own
hospital and their own education system, both supported by NSW. They were not part of Medicare or the Australia system of social
security and they did not pay income tax. They ran the island with the
kinds of funds that an Australian local council might collect, augmented
with 12 per cent GST. They claimed that their annual budget was
balanced, in recent years amounting to about $25 million. Minister Gary Hardgrave told the Australian Parliament that: “The introduction of a new Norfolk Island Act to effect change of
governance arrangements is supported by a substantial majority of
residents.”
The islanders were furious with this, claiming it was a lie, and some months later ran a referendum under Norfolk Island statute, which showed that 68 per cent did not want to change their previous status. Effectively, Canberra had voted the Norfolk Island legislative assembly out of existence. They claim that this was illegal and have taken their case to the United Nations.
The Museum had a lot of information on the
“First Fleet” also, including the names of everyone who sailed on the ships in
it.. There were a total on 1373 persons
on board the ships. Of those, 619 were officials (marines, ship crew and
families including 18 children. 732 were
convicts…. This consisted of 543 men, 189 woman and three children. There were also 22 convict children
consisting of 11 boys and 11 girls. During
the voyage there were 22 births, 13 boys and 9 girls, and during the voyage
there were 69 deaths/dischargers/deserters.
(61 males and 8 females)
The voyage
of 25,588kms was travelled with 184 days at sea, and 69 days anchored in
ports. The total voyage time was 252
days or 36 weeks. I am not sure that I
would have liked to spend that much time aboard a ship, and that would be an A1
Cruise ship not something like the cramped quarters they were have had to endure
on the ships they came out to Australia on.
Whist in the
museum, we also watched a video on the HMS Sirius and the discovering of the
shipwreck back in the 1980’s and how they managed to retrieve some of the
artefacts that had laid on the floor of the ocean for some 200 years.
The time we
got out of the museum it was lunch time… Kathy wanted to make a pit stop, so
the rest of us waiting on the beach front down in Slaughter Bay. The sun was out for one of the few times it
has been out this week, and the Bay looked beautiful. The colour of the ocean were vibrant and the
water was pristine clear. We spent a
little time soaking it all in. If it
hadn’t been for our hungry bellies we might never have left….
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Our car |
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Beautiful Slaughter Bay |
Hunger did call so we decided to head into town and check out another new little café
called “The Olive” Café. It was quite
crowded so that I always a good indication that the food is good…
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Ian's lunch |
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Kathy's lunch |
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Our lunch |
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my share |
We placed
our orders, Steve and I shared a Chicken with in season roast vegetable toasted
wrap with chips and aioli, Ian chose a pulled beef roll with coleslaw and
chips, and Kathy chose chicken and garden salad. We all had drinks and whilst I had a diet
coke, the others had hot drinks which came in awfully colourful disposal cups
with photos of either bird life or plants on them. The food and drinks were good, and we left
feeling very satisfied…
This
afternoon we planned on doing a “Walk through the Wild” which is a rainforest
walk on private property. The walk and
the mini golf that is situated here are open each afternoon from 2 to 5pm only. We were extremely surprised to find there was
no charge to do the walk or play mini golf.
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time for a game of chess... |
The walk was
excellent with lots of signage along the way informing you not only about the
many plants in the rainforest, but also about the birds and life on Norfolk Island. We spent a good hour wandering through the
forest enjoying all there was to see.
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Wandering the track |
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What's this |
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The dreaded cow itch tree - |
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Just looked like a snake sliding through the forest.... |
Once we finished this walk we decided to play a round of mini golf. The course was great, only 9 holes, but each hole represents some aspect or place on interest on Norfolk Island. It is obviously a very popular activity on Norfolk Island and I can understand why as it is free. We were going to play a couple of rounds but stopped after the first round due to the rain that had started falling.. Still, we had a lot of fun playing this round, Steve was the clear winner, with Ian coming next followed by Kathy with myself coming last. I may have redeemed myself if we had played another round…
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The whole mini golf course represented different tourist attractions on Norfolk Island.. |
We had a
very chilled out couple of hours, reading, watching the news on TV and for me,
editing photos and catching up on journal writing…
Tonight we
had decided to eat out so by 6.30pm we were heading back into town to go to the
Bowls Club for dinner. We had previously
been here last Saturday night and had enjoyed the meal. The meals were enormous, so this week, we
decided to share a meal between each couple.
Steve and I stuck with the meal we had the previous week which was
called a “Seafood Feast”. Not too bad a
value at $28. Ian and Kathy choose to
share the “Fish and Prawn” meal with chips and Salad and their meal was
$30. We also ordered an entrée of mini
vegetable spring rolls with chillie sauce and we all shared these.
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