NORFOLK ISLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

NORFOLK ISLAND.

LIVING AND DYING. KINDNESS IN DEATH. A CARE-FREE PEOPLE. (By ANNE ASHMORE.) m. There are delightful old homes on Norfolk'lsland, where you may .be taken in as a boarder, or you may be lucky enough to find a cottage of your own. In that case you will spend an appreciable portion of your day—once the first frenzy of sightseeing is over—idling round from little store to littler store making believe to shop, but falling into easy, interesting gossip with the personality on the other side of the counter. In any case, live as you may, food and shelter are cheap enough; but you may actually die and be buried for nothing!

It i» a custom with the isla^Jers —a custom which they are determined to preserve as long as possible—that, when anybody dies upon the island —relation, friend, settler or stranger—their six feet is allotted them, their grave is dug for them, their coffin is made for them, and they are laid to sleep without a penny of payment to anyone. All is done in love and brotherhood, and the whole of the island will turn out reverently to mourn the passing of the lonely stranger as sincerely as though a familiar figure of their own world had gone away. And the funeral will place in the little old graveyard which can have no exact counterpart iff all the world.

Out of Kingston, and on the road that leads to Bloody Bridge, within a fencedin acre in sight and sound of the blue, bright sea, lie persons of every rank, of every degree of villainy and virtue. At the further end, the part first enclosed, beneath crumbling, tumbling stones, rest alike the weary, worn-out bodies of the men who came overseas for the term of their natural lives and the military guardians who, year in, year out, kept stern, inexorable watch over them and who, too, died in exile, far from home and friends. In the majority of cases only the bare name and date of death is recorded— de mortuis nil nisi oonum —but here and there an astounding epitaph keeps the memory and particular claim to distinction of some prisoner green for all time. One wonders who amongst his friends waa responsible for this: —

In Memory o* William B (the name is given) Native of County Tipperary, Who waa executed for Mutiny On this Island 1834.

Still, William was an Irishman, and he died at a time when such an end—rebellion against laws framed and administered by the English—was meritorious land magnificent.

John Atkinson 37 yeara of age Prisoner of The Crown and Constable at Govt. House. Drowned while fishing for the Commandant.

One is glad to note that the stone was raised and the inscription composed by the Commandant, who also records his grief at the loss of a dear friend. Such incidents and such friendships were only too rare a hundred years ago. Frank Warner, native of Rhode Island, U.S.A., brutally murdered (would he have grudged it less, one wonders, if genteelly transacted) by a Greek Miscreant on board Am. ship "HOPE," 1861.

These graves are of ancient days, as the history of Norfolk Island counts. At the nearer end lie the more recent Pitcairn Islanders as they faded and passed away in due time after their transference from that overcrowded speck of earth to this ampler, kindlier space. Youngs, Adams, Christians, Quintals, Buffetts, Nobbs, Evans and McCoys—all the aristocracy of the community—recur over and over again, till the cemetery must have become (as friendly and homely a meeting place as any other. Even strangers and sojourners who found themselves unexpectedly detained for ever, after a few months of living fellowship with the islanders, must have felt themselves at home and welcome even here. Lotus Land.

But life on Norfolk Island is more than sweet and no one will die who may live and mingle in the joyous daily round of what the Lotus Eater calls work. At a moment's notice, all duties and all cares are cast to the winds and the whole community turns gaily out to a picnic, which will last not only until twilight falls, but far into the night. As the warm, fragrant darkness comes down, huge fires are lighted, and, hand in hand or reposing in each other's arms, the happy, carefree islanders sing and sing for hours, their rich voices—an inheritance from Tahitian forefathers and mothers—rising and falling in plaintive, sentimental melodies that have been familiar to them all from babyhood.

As the fire dies down, too, it is believed that they kiss. In fact it would be hard to believe that they do not kiss. A tremendous amount of kissing goes on in Norfolk Island. .Not only between the young men and maidens, which would excite no remark anywhere, nowadays, but among their elders of all ages —in the house, on the road—anywhere at all where friends meet and part; while the wanderer returned from foreign parts is received with cries and tears of joy, clapped on the back, enveloped in vast arms, passed from hand to hand and stuffed at feasts until he can hardly move or smile.

At a hall, situated as near as may be in the centre of the island, dances, too, are frequently held—sometimes two and three in the week—and it will take the mainland girls all their time to rival their island sisters in beauty, dress or dancing. The latest dances and the latest music come over from Sydney and Auckland, and a local orchestra, with a passion for melody and rhythm, plays beautifully and unweariedJy till the small hours of the morning. Among the dancers, as they float round, boy and girl together, there is a fire and a'

IttIIimniNIIMIiIINfIimunnOsnMIItMMIIIUtIIMHIIMUMWtMnNUIIUHHUWUIUUMMUIUIMIIOTNninnIH languor, a sparkle and a melting softness that seems unattainable to the completely whiteblooded races.

Saturday night is dedicated to the pictures and this is one form of entertainment that cannot truthfully be recommended to the visitor. The reason is only too easy to understand. Any picture coming over here is out of circulation for so long that the rental of it would be quite an impossible matter if it were one that anybody out in the world would want to see. But this must be their very last appearance on any earthly screen and even then, so many weak portions have to be excised, leavihg unbridged gaps and inexplicable situations, that the story as a whole is one jumbled confusion, neither amusing nor interesting. But an uncritical audience seems to enjoy it—it provides another weekly excuse for a merry gathering —and the hall is crowded every Saturday night at one shilling and sixpence or two shillings a seat, practically every member of the audience licking an ice cream cone, a cool delight only recently introduced upon the island.