2002-01-27

Last night I was disappointed by people's bullshit. *Sigh*. I'm not sure why people feel they have to make up stuff to convince me of something, or who they think they are talking to. I'm no high school gossip girl. Just tell me plain. Don't give me four hundred different reasons, each of them made up. Please. PLEASE!!! It just means the respect quotient goes down, so I suppose its not my loss, but theirs.

Enough of the esoteric heartbleeding, I'll continue with the Norfolk travelogue...

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One of the features Norfolk boasts is its historical settlements, left over fromthe days in which Norfolk Island was a penal colony. (Can anyone under 30 say 'penal' and not smirk??). Europeans first arrived on Norfolk in 1788, though these were mainly free settlers. They found evidence that the Polynesians had at least visited the island, but by the time the settlers arrived they had gone.

After some years, it was found that the main settlement in Sydney was encountering some problems. They were unable to expand the settlement and grow enough food due to the hostilities of the local indigenous population. Reasonably so, I reckon, cause the settlers were being very aggressive and obviously intended to hog all the resources for themselves, to the detriment of the locals.

anyhow, for awhile, this meant that the Norfolk settlement was asked to grow food to supply the Sydney colony. Luckily, the English gaols were overcrowded, so they sent a shitload of convicts out to help grow more food. The historical ruins at Kingston are the relics of the goals and military establishments set up to accomodate this.

After all the convicts left, in 1850 or so, the Pitcairners arrived. These were the descendents of the mutineers from the Bounty, and they had outgrown their small island of Pitcairn. After writing to the Queen, they were granted permission to settle the newly vacated Norfolk Island. This permission was given partly because they didn't want any other colonial powers, like the French, to get their hands on the precious land.

I know all of this, because my mother and I went on a half day tour of the historical ruins where we learnt all this stuff, and more.

One of the most interesting parts of the tour was when we went to the cemetary. The guide explained many things about all the old tombstones, and told some stories of the people who died.

Did you know that all cemetaries face east? I had never realised this. Norfolk Cemetary blatantly faces east, as it sits right on a beach and is one of the most beautiful spots for a cemetary. Well, for anything really. Anyhow, the reason the guide told us this was because we had noted that several headstones faced away from the ocean, whilst all of the others faced towards the ocean, to the east. He explained that these folk had committed suicide, which is a sin. As such, their headstones were turned away from the rising sun.

They were luckier than some. Fourteen convicts had tried to take control of the settlement, and had faught the soldiers that held them, using their shvels and other rudimentary tools of war. The rebellion was quashed and the men were publicly hung. They were then buried in a mass, unmarked grave outside the boundary of the cemetary. That, you see, is unconsecrated ground, which would be a horrible fate to the god fearing folk of the time. This tactic was used by the military authorities to the other convicts as to what would happen to them should they try to rebel.

We also found the headstone of someone who could be a relative. Mother took down the details of who he was, and we will convey it to my uncle, who has feverishly been tracing our family history.

On the final night of our trip, I went with mum on a prograssive dinner. What this entailed was riding around in a minibus and having dinner at the homes of local people. Pre-dinner drinks at one house, entrees at another, mains at another and dessert elsewhere. Each home was magnificent, as they are constructed from what is fairly readily available on the island and with originality and style. The owners would give a little chat about how they built their houses. One house was copied from a design in a 1950s magazine and was a 12 sided structure (duodecahedron) that I would love to copy. Another fella had spent all his time building an amazing habitat for his home and the garden was amazing with found objects all over the place.

All in all the trip was pretty mellow. The generation gap is much more obvious on Norfolk, cuz I saw many times older folk try to speak to younger folk and it simply didn't work. No...

Oh, and they have their own lovely language there, that is a mix of pigeon English and the Tahitian that the wives of the Bounty mutineers spoke.

One thing that got me a little excited was being able to drive the hire car we had. It was a modern little sedan, and the only other car I had ever driven was my hulking 20 years old manual van. I got to drive the zippy little automatic all week, which was good practice for driving in general. There is, however, a custom on Norfolk i was not used to at all. You must wave at each and every car. Not a full hand wave though, one simply raises one's pointer finger