I recently went to Norfolk Island on a research-writing holiday. The beautiful island-nation, with its complex history, made a deep impression on me. Here is a summary from Hell and Paradise: The Norfolk-Bounty Pitcairn Saga by Peter Clarke:
“On two specks in the vast Pacific Ocean, Norfolk and Pitcairn Islands, live the descendants of the most infamous mutineers in the annals of the sea. The people - the Christians the Quintals, the McCoys, the Adamses, the Evanses - still speak their own language, a bizarre mixture of eighteenth century North Country English and eighteenth century Tahitian. The hub of Pitcairn is the town square, in which is preserved the anchor salvaged from H.M.S. Bounty. The hub of Norfolk is a complex of superbly-preserved structures built by convicts - reminders of the most ghastly penal settlement in the history of the British Empire. These two islands share a legacy of Hell on a scale unique in history, interspersed with spells of Paradise which few mortals have experienced. …its story ranges from Captain Cook - probably the greatest navigator the world has known, to eighteenth century Tahiti - a sensual utopia that captured the world's imagination, to Norfolk Island - the world's most abominable penal colony, to the Isle of Man - where Fletcher Christian's forbears dominated the world's oldest parliament for five hundred years, to H.M.S. Bounty on which was enacted the world's most famous mutiny, and on to life today on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands - tiny communities about which the world is scarcely aware.”
Here is an informative documentary series that includes snippets of the local language, Norfuk, being spoken:
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