Norfolk Island : its government and administration

Only forty days after Governor Phillip's First Fleet entered Port Jackson on 26th January 1788 to found the first British settlement in the South Pacific, a second such settlement was established on Norfolk Island. The island lay 905 nautical miles to the east northeast, at 29 degrees south latitude, of what was to become the town of Sydney. From 6th March 1788 the island has been occupied continuously excepting for an eleven year period of abandonment from 1814 to 1825. In its early days it played an important part in the social, economic and administrative history of the colony of New South Wales. Later, from the mid nineteenth century to the period of World War 11, it slumbered in comparative quiet under the occupancy of the "Pitcairners", the descendants of the mutineers of KMS Bounty and their Tahitian consorts. Since 1945 improved communications have brought the island more into the forefront of Australian and world events to the extent that now, in 1976, the many facets of the island, its constitutional future, the welfare of its people, its economy and the retention of its numerous and varied natural attributes, present problems to which there are no quick or easy solutions