Norfolk Island

From 1788 to 1814 Norfolk Island existed as an extension of the penal settlement in New South Wales. In 1825 the island was reoccupied as a place of banishment for the worst re-offenders. In 1856 the British Government resettled the Pitcairn Islanders at Norfolk.

This webinar looks at records in the State Archives Collection relating to the life and times of the people who lived on the island in these early days.

Watch the recording

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