Tag: cultural travel

The Riddle of Norfolk Island

The Riddle of Norfolk Island

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A view across the water to Phillip Island from Norfolk Island, taken near the landing place where a British agricultural settlement was established in 1788.

When I was a little girl who collected stamps, some of the most beautiful and intriguing examples to come my way were from Norfolk Island. There were pictures of birds and butterflies and shipwrecks and, loveliest of all, an engraving of a sea-girt, pine-forested landscape that appeared in a multi-coloured series of stamps ranging from a ha’penny to two shillings in value. My aim, of course, was to collect all the different colours.

At the bottom of each stamp in this series was the proud wording ‘Founded 1788’ – the same year as Sydney, my hometown. I had a vague understanding that Norfolk Island both was and wasn’t part of Australia, that its history was entwined with ours but that it was also somehow separate and different.

Part of the classic Norfolk Island stamp series, first issued 1947.

I loved the Norfolk Island stamps, particularly the ideal landscape represented in that classic engraved series. One day, I thought, I would like to go there.

It took more than 40 years, but finally, this month, I did visit for a week’s holiday with my husband. Not a travel-writing assignment – just a bit of R&R, tinged with the glamour of those long-ago stamp-collecting memories.

Forest and sea on the island’s north coast.

We had to check whether our flight was international or domestic (the terminals at Sydney Airport are separate). Definitely international, but online advice varied as to whether a passport was needed. I’m glad I didn’t rely on the Australian Government information that ‘Passports and visas are not required when travelling to Norfolk Island from the Australian mainland’ (www.regional.gov.au), because it turned out that passports were indeed demanded.

Once at the airport we checked in, received a gate number, and confidently followed the sign that said ‘All Gates’. At the Smartgate, though, our passports were refused. A kindly airport employee came over, looked at our boarding passes, and told us that we had to go to a special gate, because this was a domestic flight. Really? A domestic flight leaving from the international terminal?

The ‘special gate’ we were sent to had no electronic passport scanners, just good old human passport control. The woman at the desk asked our destination, and when we told her, her face went hard. ‘Have you been there before?’ We said no, her lips tightened and she made a kind of ‘Hmm’ noise, before subjecting us to the closest facial scrutiny we have ever experienced at any airport in the world.

Calm, clear water at Emily Bay on the south coast.

You honestly would have thought we’d said we were going to Syria or Afghanistan, not a little island halfway between Vanuatu and Auckland that’s a favourite holiday destination for Australian retirees.

On arrival at Norfolk Island, things stayed weird, although they were a lot more relaxed. We’d been instructed on the plane that we should mentally substitute ‘Norfolk Island’ for ‘Australia’ when completing our landing cards. First: what kind of official advice is that? And second: easier said than done!

By the time I’d finished with it, my card was a real mess. How long will you stay in Australia? 7 days. Where will you go when you leave Australia? Australia. What is your address in Australia? A hotel on Norfolk Island. What is your permanent address? A house in Australia. On it went, a tissue of absurdities. I thought the official on the incoming passport desk would be sure to reject it, but she just waved me through with a smile.

Anson Bay, on the west coast. It was strange to watch television from the Central Australian desert when surrounded by this kind of scenery.

In our hotel room, we turned on the television to find that all the advertisements were from Alice Springs or elsewhere in the Northern Territory. Never have I felt so tuned in to the lifestyle of our desert regions. My Australian mobile phone not working, I purchased a SIM card from Norfolk Telecom so I could call family at home. My daughter informed me that my calls appeared to be coming from the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Visiting Norfolk Island was turning out to be the most geographically incoherent experience of my life. I decided to try to find out if the place made any more sense politically.

The answer is not really. You get the sense that something is up as you drive past the Centre for Democracy in the town, Burnt Pine, drop in to the tent embassy at the Kingston historic area, or notice the many green-and-white Norfolk Island flags flying from homes all over the island.

The Tent Embassy in the Kingston Historic Area.

Depending who you talk to, Norfolk’s present political situation is either a dastardly plot or a bureaucratic nightmare. Basically, the island’s financial problems during the GFC ten years ago raised questions about the sustainability of the self-government they’d enjoyed since 1979. In 2015 the Australian government passed legislation, which came into effect in 2016, revoking Norfolk Island’s right to self-govern and imposing a Canberra-led administration.

Let’s just say that the Norfolk people aren’t happy with the new order, and there’s a definite David-versus-Goliath feeling in their attitudes towards Canberra. This antipathy doesn’t extend to visitors from ‘the mainland’, who are warmly welcomed, but it does apply to our national anthem. Norfolk Islanders refuse to sing ‘Advance Australia Fair’ and remain faithful to ‘God Save the Queen’ – meaning Victoria, the monarch who allowed their ancestors to settle the island.

Placard about the ‘Hands Up for Democracy’ movement on Norfolk Island. Note the reference to Queen Victoria, whose memory is revered here. 

It’s certainly not my place to offer an opinion on the new political arrangements, many of which boil down to issues of compliance (on taxation and industrial relations, for example). The only comment I will venture is that if, like the inhabitants of Norfolk Island, I was told I must vote in Australian Federal elections but that I had been assigned to the electorate of Bean in Canberra, I’d be astonished and angry. How the voters of Norfolk Island are supposed to feel that this gives them any real representation in the Australian parliament is a mystery to me.

I dropped in to the Post Office to see if the Norfolk Island stamps were still as beautiful as ever. Alas, they are no more – since 2016 Australia Post has subsumed the island’s philatelic service. (Although, to be fair, there are some lovely new Australian stamps with Norfolk subjects.) But the gorgeous scenery that captured my attention in those old-fashioned stamps I collected as a child is, in reality, even more stunning than I’d imagined.

View near the Captain Cook lookout on the north coast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trooping the What?

Trooping the What?

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Not always as calm as this, the elegant streets of Westminster host many different kinds of public celebrations and protests.

Trooping the colour is the biggest annual event in the calendar of royal pageantry. On the second Saturday in June, the entire British royal family gathers in London to celebrate the Queen’s official birthday. The ‘colour’ (the flag of one of the royal regiments) is ‘trooped’ (paraded) along the Mall from Buckingham Palace to Horseguards Parade in a vibrant display of military tradition, impeccable horsemanship and silly hats.

This year’s trooping the colour had the extra benefits of perfect weather and being Meghan Markle’s first public outing since her marriage to Prince Harry. Even non-royalists might find that combination hard to resist. My partner and I, on holidays from Australia, were staying less than half a kilometre from the action – a mere ten-minute stroll away.

The parade we didn’t see. Photo by Katie Chan, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69837136

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the memo, and spent the whole sunny morning shopping in Oxford Street. Oops. But we did get to witness a different kind of parade later in the day.

This year, the second Saturday in June was also the day of the World Naked Bike Ride, when thousands of people shed their clothes and take to their bikes to draw attention to the vulnerability of cyclists in our car-dominated cities. Do you normally have trouble noticing cyclists on the road? Not on this day.

The London chapter of the WNBR organized six different routes, which converged on Hyde Park during the late afternoon of 9 June. We found ourselves inadvertently in the thick of one cohort of naked cyclists, when we took what was supposed to be a shortcut along Shaftesbury Avenue, trying to get away from the hordes of pedestrians at Leicester Square. It was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Lincoln’s Inn Fields with the 2018 WNBR
cc-by-sa/2.0 – © David Lally – geograph.org.uk/p/5806100

Seeing hundreds of naked people in the street without forewarning is startling. There were so many of them, they were all headed our way, and they were, for the most part, so very naked. It was a little bit like the Summer of Love, and a little bit like Hieronymus Bosch’s painting of The Last Judgement.

What with red lights, young men leaving the ranks to pose for selfies with girls on the pavement, and the general quantity of bikes and bodies, the parade made slow progress.

Of the naked cyclists near us, I estimated 90% were male. While many of the relatively few women had chosen to wear underwear or body paint, most of the men had opted for the full monty. It was quite an eye-opener. Who knew the human form came in such shapes and sizes?

World Naked Bike Ride London 2018. Photo by C.Suthorn / cc-by-sa-4.0 / https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69865650

Later I read that the event meant something, or some things. It was intended to be a protest against our society’s oil-dependency and (also) a celebration of the human body. For an accidental spectator it felt more random than that, a piece of authorized anarchism in the spirit of Carnival. Kings for a day, the naked cyclists ruled the roads by committing a mass act of indecent exposure.

‘Look at us,’ they were saying down on The Mall. ‘We are the British royal and military establishment, and we’ve got tradition.’ ‘Look at us’, the cyclists replied. ‘We’ve got balls!’

Banners over Piccadilly to celebrate the 200th birthday of the Royal Academy. The middle one seems to prophesy the naked cyclists soon to fill the street.

The next day, Sunday, we got caught up with two more parades. In the morning, we followed the sounds of laughter and cheering to Piccadilly, where 30,000 women were marching to commemorate hundred years of British women’s right to vote.

Women of all ages were there, many dressed in the suffragette colours of purple and green. It was a joyous, heartfelt occasion, part celebration, part call to action in the ongoing struggle for gender equality.

In the early evening, in the same part of London, we passed police officers in bulletproof vests, some on horseback, some running, some speaking urgently into walkie-talkies. They were monitoring two political marches that almost crossed paths, but didn’t quite. A small number of anti-Hezbollah protestors were marching under an Israeli flag, while a larger number of anti-Israel protestors were marching under ‘free Gaza’ banners and (controversially) Hezbollah flags. The atmosphere was tense, bystanders looked stressed, and we didn’t linger.

This charming street in St James became, later in the day , the site of opposing marches protesting the situation in the Middle East.

So, all in all, we saw a lot of things trooped in London that weekend – bare bottoms, suffragette banners, warring flags. Smiling faces, scowling faces, pride, mischief, rage.

Just not the famous colours.