Welcome to the Norfolk Island Museum's blog. We are lucky to be located in the most beautiful part of a stunning island in the South Pacific. We are a little island, but our history and stories are great - from Polynesian and convict settlements to the home of the Bounty mutineers. Hopefully you'll enjoy our stories.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Norfolk Island’s history is really quite
amazing. There are so many ‘firsts’ and unique stories that emerge from this
little rock, 3 miles by 5 miles, and thousands of kilometers from the mainland.
One of the least known ‘firsts’ is that the first time Maori lived in a
European community and the first known map made by Maori both occured on
Norfolk Island! This was when Tuki and Huru, two men from the upper North
Island spent nine months on the island in 1793.

Tuki's Map drawn on Norfolk Island

The reason they were on Norfolk is entwined
with the reasons the British settled Norfolk Island so quickly in 1788. On
discovering the island in 1774 Captain Cook recorded two items potentially very
useful to Britain: the flax plant (Phormium
tenax) which could be made into sail cloth and the Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla) for use as
ship’s masts. Access to timber and marine supplies from Norfolk Island, New
Zealand and NSW became a key reason for the choice of NSW as the location for a
new colony by the Pitt Government in Britain.A Pacific boat building base could be established that would support the
expansion of naval and East India Company interests in East Asia and overcome recent
losses of resources from Baltic ports and North America following the War of
Independence. Plans were therefore made to settle uninhabited and resource rich
Norfolk Island prior to the First Fleet leaving England.

The first Commandant of the Settlement,
Lieutenant Philip Gidley King tried hard to fulfill his orders to process the
flax plant. When all attempts proved fruitless he resorted to an extreme measure,
sailing to New Zealand to ‘acquire’ (in
reality kidnap) Maori and bring them to the Island to instruct in the
processing method. Unfortunately for King, those men, Tuki the son of a priestand Huru the son
of a chief, quickly let him know that as it was women’s work they knew little
of flax processing. However during the stay their relationship with King became
a positive one based on genuine mutual respect and they lived in Government
House with King, his wife and young children.

The men appeared to enjoy a true social
exchange. King recorded Maori vocabulary and customs in his journal. Tuki drew
the earliest known map by a Maori of his homeland, first in the sand then
transferred to paper (now in the UK National Archives). The map is a testament
to the quality of communication that occurred between the men as it uniquely
records social, mythical and political features in the landscape. When King
personally accompanied Tuki and Huru home on the Britannia he was presented with gifts of thanksgiving for their
safe return, including two Basalt patu, now on display in our museum in the
Commissariat Store. King was never to learn that the reason the Norfolk flax species
could not be processed was due to the local variant having little fibre
content.