Experience the best of Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island lies in the South Pacific about 1,400 kilometres east of the Australian mainland, between New Zealand and New Caledonia, and is an Australian territory. It is only eight kilometres long, a plateau of pasture and farmland ringed by cliffs and lined with the tall Norfolk Island pines that gave the tree its name. Kingston, on the south coast, holds the Georgian buildings and ruins of two convict settlements, part of the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage listing.

Many islanders descend from the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions, who moved here from Pitcairn Island in 1856 and still speak Norf'k, a blend of old English and Tahitian. Mount Pitt, 319 metres high, rises in a national park of forest and walking tracks, and Emily Bay, a reef-sheltered cove below Kingston, is the main swimming beach. Phillip Island, a rugged outlier to the south, is a seabird colony.

Cattle graze beside the roads, and the local table draws on fresh fish, island-raised beef and home-grown fruit. Bounty Day each June recalls the arrival of the Pitcairners, with period costume in Kingston, and Thanksgiving, brought by American whalers, is still marked in November. The climate is mild and subtropical, seldom very hot or cold.