Norfolk Island residents divided over takeover plans

To the tourists who alight at Norfolk Island's picturesque airport, this speck of land in the South Pacific seems like paradise.

It has beautiful beaches and rolling green hills, but no income tax, no traffic lights, and no mobile phones. The pace of life is so laid-back that the plump Jersey cows have right of way on the roads.

But beneath Norfolk's serene exterior, rebellion is stirring. The island was settled by descendants of the Bounty mutineers in 1856, and has a tradition of resisting political interference. Now it faces a fate that some locals regard as catastrophic: takeover by Australia.

Norfolk, situated 900 miles north-east of Sydney, started life as a British penal colony so brutal that it was known as Hell in the Pacific. An Australian external territory, the island - five miles long by three miles wide - has governed itself for 27 years, administering health, welfare, justice and immigration.

But with Australia jittery about regional security and the local economy in the doldrums, the colonial power is preparing to step in.

Canberra is considering two options for Norfolk's future, both of which would reduce its autonomy. One would consign it to the status of a shire council.

While some islanders welcome the prospect of closer integration with Australia, many fear that it would jeopardise their unique identity.

Just under half of the 1,800-strong population traces its ancestry back to Pitcairn Island, the South Pacific sanctuary of Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers.

The English sailors fled there in 1790 with a group of Polynesian women, after setting their captain, William Bligh, adrift in an open boat and seizing their ship, the Bounty.

Their heirs were joined by three British men - John Buffett, John Evans and George Nobbs - and the community soon threatened to outgrow tiny Pitcairn.

With the last convicts about to leave for Tasmania, Queen Victoria offered Norfolk Island to the Pitcairners as a new home. They decamped en masse, making the 3,700-mile voyage, although a few homesick families later returned, forming the basis of the modern population on Pitcairn.

While Norfolk Islanders have inter-married with Australians and New Zealanders, they remain fiercely proud of their roots. They speak a dialect that blends Tahitian with Old English, and they still cook and fish the Polynesian way.

Many bear their ancestors' surnames; in fact, there are so many Christians, McCoys, Quintals and so on that the telephone directory lists certain people by nicknames, such as Lettuce Leaf, Cane Toad, Tarzan and Smudgie.

It all sounds charming, but the locals fear that the introduction of welfare payments and a new immigration regime will trigger an influx of Australian "dole bludgers" seeking an easy life in the sun. At present only people with a job or money to invest are allowed in.

The islanders say that their idiosyncratic customs will disappear, and their relaxed way of life will be eroded, if Norfolk becomes just another outpost of Australia. They cherish such liberties as not having to wear seatbelts, and being able to leave their houses unlocked and their car keys in the ignition.

Change is not readily accepted on Norfolk, which has had television and telephones only since the 1980s. Placards proclaiming "Go home Aussie" were posted around the island when an Australian minister visited last year. Some locals are now demanding independence.

That idea seems fanciful, given the size of the place and the decline of the tourism industry, the mainstay of the economy.

Norfolk, which was once a popular destination for the "newly-wed and nearly-dead", does not even have a harbour. Supplies, which arrive on a ship from the mainland every few weeks, are ferried ashore on whaleboats.

Some locals, such as Mary Christian-Bailey, whose family owns a tourist apartment complex called Fletcher Christian, smell a hidden agenda in Australia's plans.

That agenda is oil, claims Mrs Christian-Bailey, referring to as yet unmined gas hydrates that lie within Norfolk's marine territorial limits.

"There is a strong feeling that that is the main reason why Australia would like to take us over," she said. Mrs Christian-Bailey described the islanders as "extremely peace-loving and polite".

But she warned that they might take direct action if they felt backed against a wall by Canberra. "I can't imagine violence, perhaps a little rudeness," she said.

A couple of miles away in the capital, Kingston, the site of imposing stone buildings from the convict era, Geoff Gardner sat fuming in his office.

Mr Gardner, the island's Chief Minister for six years, had just been deposed in a coup that he claimed was engineered by Australian "lobbyists". Demoted to Speaker of the nine-member Legislative Assembly, Mr Gardner remains robustly opposed to Australian rule.

"This is a place that was given to the people of Pitcairn to inhabit as their own for ever and a day," he said. "They wish to continue to determine their own destiny, and not have it determined by a colonial power wanting to extend its influence."

On the wall behind him was a portrait of the Queen. "God Save the Queen" is still the national anthem on Norfolk. But the island is a strange mix of cultures.

Thanksgiving is celebrated, a legacy of the American whalers who settled in the 19th century. The main public holiday is Bounty Day, which commemorates the arrival of the Pitcairners after their epic voyage.

Last week islanders of Pitcairn descent dressed in period costume and congregated on the pier in Kingston to mark the 150th anniversary. In a cemetery overlooking the Pacific, they laid wreaths on their ancestors' graves, before proceeding to a picnic in the grounds of an old convict prison.

The Australian Governor-General, Michael Jeffery, who had flown over for the occasion, complimented them on their "beautiful and bounteous" home. But politics was never far from people's minds.

As one islander said: "If they take away our identity, we'll have nothing left." Not everyone shares those fears.

Tom Lloyd, who edited the local newspaper for 40 years and led a "pilgrimage" of Norfolk Islanders back to Pitcairn in 1984, said: "To be frank, I've had difficulty understanding what people are worried about. They can say what they like in Canberra, but we're Norfolk Islanders and we'll always be that, and it's up to us to retain what we believe should be preserved."

Alice Buffett, a highly respected local matriarch and author of a textbook on the Norfolk language, believes the island is incapable of governing itself to the level required.

"I disagree with the view that Australia is taking us over," she said. "We've only had self-government since 1979. It's just a matter of putting the genie back in the bottle."

Australia regards Norfolk's system of parliamentary government as excessively complex. Grant Hambling, who is the island's administrator, equivalent to a governor-general, advocates a "more conventional" arrangement.

Mr Hambling acknowledged that Norfolk Islanders had "a history of resisting paternalism and imposed change", which some observers linked to their mutinous ancestry, he said. "They don't like Big Brother from Canberra waving a stick. But a lot of the debate is cultural and emotional, and not grounded in sound economics."

Australia says that Norfolk's economy is in such a dire state that the island will go broke within a few months unless drastic remedial action is taken. The locals respond that they have lived through booms and busts before, and some are confident that Norfolk will survive the latest crisis.

Tourism, though, is in decline, partly because of the collapse last year of the local airline. The islanders complain that Australia refused to step in to prop it up.

Meanwhile, the murder in 2002 of a young Australian woman, Janelle Patton, destroyed Norfolk's image as a crime-free haven. It was the first murder on the island in 150 years, and was particularly brutal. A New Zealand man was recently charged, and will face committal proceedings later this year.

Two years after Ms Patton's death, a second murder occurred. Mr Gardner's deputy, Ivens "Toon" Buffett, was shot dead in his office by his son, Leith. Leith Buffett was suffering from a mental illness and is in the psychiatric wing of a Sydney prison.

Many islanders say that Norfolk lost its innocence when Ms Patton, who was a temporary resident, was killed. Now they are fighting to conserve what they have left.

"We don't want government by remote control," said Mrs Christian-Bailey.

"When the Pitcairners came here, they believed the land would be theirs to use as they wished, and that they would be allowed to live according to their own laws and customs. It seems they were brought here under false pretences."

- INDEPENDENT