Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island guide

As well as being a penal establishment, one of the primary reasons for the first settlement at Norfolk Island was economic: the Colonial Government hoped to utilise the flax and pine trees on Norfolk Island

Students scooping water from the dripstone in the courtyard at Elizabeth Farm.

The Elizabeth Farm dripstone

Next time you turn on the tap and pour a glass of cool, clean water, think about how people in Sydney managed almost two hundred years ago

Photo of Cockatoo Island
Convict Sydney

Tom and Fowler

On 4 May 1843, Fowler and fifteen other Aboriginal men broke into watchman Patrick Carroll’s hut near the McLeay River, 107 miles from Port Macquarie

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Convict Sydney

Norfolk Island

A hellish prison outpost was established in two phases on Norfolk Island between 1788 and 1855

Convict life on Norfolk Island

Convict life on Norfolk Island was severe and often brutal. Below is a snapshot of one convict, John Walsh, who spent ten years on Norfolk Island from 1834 to 1844