Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am a member of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories, and the committee recently had a visit to Norfolk Island on a familiarisation trip and also to speak to many groups there. I had been there before, in fact earlier in the year, to research some of my relatives who passed through there, both as convicts and as free men and women.

A fact that is not totally known in this country is that many people who were on Norfolk Island, for fair or foul reasons, eventually settled in Tasmania. Two spots in particular were New Norfolk in the south of Tasmania, in the great electorate of Lyons and the entrance to the Derwent Valley, and Norfolk Plains, which is where I currently live. I grew up in the towns of Longford, including Cressy, Westbury and Perth. These places were named because of the people coming from Norfolk Island and not from the county of Norfolk in England.

If you compare the two islands, you find there are quite a few similarities, although Norfolk Island is much smaller. The architecture from the past must have come out of the same design book and no doubt the same architect from the Colonial Office. Norfolk Island’s Kingston, or the KAVHA area, might have been lifted straight from Port Arthur, or vice versa.

The families in Tasmania also share many links with Norfolk Island, and they can be found in the graves at Kingston, in the literature and also at the museum. So this year, when New Norfolk was celebrating its bicentenary as a town, the First Fleeters invited members of the Norfolk Island equivalent group, and they delighted in exchanging histories and family stories while visiting the many sites that are associated with those early days.

To commemorate the occasion as well, I organised to present two Norfolk Island pines—those majestic, distinctive trees that grace the skyline wherever you look in Norfolk Island—to the Derwent Valley council last Sunday, along with a Norfolk Island flag. The mayor, Tony Nicholson, accepted the young trees and put them in the care of the Derwent Valley Garden Club to look after until they are big enough to plant out in a short while.

It was a great occasion and many of the locals dressed in period costume. Croquet was being played on the council office’s lawn when I arrived and I also inspected a magnificent display of spring and early summer flowers by the garden club. There were also displays of furniture and gadgets from the past. There were some wonderful women practising the fine art of making lace in the great town of New Norfolk in the electorate of Lyons. The children had also been busy making fans and other fantasy garden items.

It has been a great year for New Norfolk with events happening every month to commemorate various aspects of the bicentenary. I have been able to be part of a couple, which has been a very pleasurable experience. I would just like to congratulate New Norfolk, the mayor and the councillors along with the whole of the town for their efforts throughout this year in their bicentenary with their links to Norfolk Island.