CONDITION OF NORFOLK ISLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16032, 25 September 1915, Page 5 (Supplement)

CONDITION OF NORFOLK ISLAND.

Mr. Ati.ke Hunt has furnished the Commonwealth of Australia with an interesting 'memorandum upon Norfolk Island, .in which he says the population is now 746. The island lies in the Pacific, 800 miles off the New South Wales coast, and 400 miles from New Zealand, and is now annexed to the Commonwealth. Norfolk Island is about five miles long and three broad, and is described, as embracing wide areas of well-grassed land, long avenues and small woods of the stately Norfolk Island pine, broken hills, and fertile valleys, with the long Pacific swell breaking everlastingly on "the bases of the cliffs surrounding it. The climate is salubrious, with a mean temperature of 68 degrees, and Mr. Atlee Hunt prophesies that it may one day become the Madeira of the Pacific. An area of 8500 ajcres is at present either utilised as pasture or dotted with weeds, having gone out of cultivation since the time when gangs of convicts ploughed and hoed all the cleared land. The soil is now only casually cultivated, and offers openings for the cultivation of coffee, fruit, and timber to new settlers there. To the ordinary farmer or labourer there is as vet no opening, but there might be for a limited number of men with a little money and sufficient energy and enterprise "to develop jts resources. ---.--- -