Prisoners’ “hell" now paradise

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33479, 9 March 1974, Page 11

Prisoners’ “hell" now paradise

(By

KENNETH ANTHONY)

In the beautiful setting of modern Norfolk Island. Australia's tourist paradise. it is hard to imagine how, in days gone by, this pleasant place could have become known as "the hell of the Pacific." But even today, in the form of several surviving buildings from the first half

of the nineteenth century, there are a few grim reminders that Norfolk Island was once notorious as a convict settlement. Here, for more than 30 years. Britain sent some of her most violent and hardened criminals, to be kept in harsh conditions of captivity in what was then one of the most isolated places in the world. The buildings which housed the prisoners and their gaolers were built by the convicts themselves from local stone and timber. Details of some of them, taken from contemporary drawings, are shown on Norfolk Island's latest stamps The most formidable of these survivors of the criminal past is the massive outer gateway of the pentagonal gaol, seen on the 5c stamp. This must certainly have struck dread into the hearts

of newly-arrived convicts as they marched up from the pier nearby The date this prison was completed — 1847 —■ can (till be se< carved above the archway But the pentagonal gaol had a short career. In 1856 the penal settlement wa» closed, and Norfolk Island began a happier and more peaceful life with the arrival of the islanders from Pitcairn Is is not always realised that the descendants of the Bounty mutineers forsook Pitcairn for a time to live on Norfolk Island, though some of them later returned In their new island home they adapted some of the old prison buildings to live

in — among them the quaiters originally built for the Protestant clergyman on the island (seen on the 1c stamp) and the officers' quarters, an imposing Geor-gian-style building, which is depicted on the 10c value The 5Uc stamp shows the commissariat stores, completed in 1835. When the Pitcairn Islanders’ church was destroyed in a hurricane. in 1874 the stores were converted for use as a chinch.