nblinks

[email fragment] Robert Hughes' history of Australian settlement, The Fatal Shore, has a couple of chapters on Norfolk Island, from which I remember the following:

1. At the outset, Norfolk Island was considered to be of way more importance and value than Australia -- due to the eponymous pine tree and a native form of flax. With a good supply of replacement masts and linen for sails, England could operate much more easily in the Pacific, and thus rule even more of the world. Problem was, neither the trees nor the flax turned out to be much good for those uses, so the whole scheme foundered.

2. The CIA Factbook info sort of glosses over why N.I. failed as a penal colony -- that it was way way way more brutal than even the worst Australia and Van Dieman's Land had to offer. I'm a little foggy on the details, but I think word finally leaked out about how bad the prisoners were being treated, and scandal shut the place down. So the island was empty and forgotten till some (but not all) of the Pitcairn Islanders were resettled there.