After the AGM, Anne Brearley gave us an interesting talk about Norfolk Island, which she visited in 2011. The tall pines planted at Cottesloe are our connection with this small Pacific island. The first Norfolk Island Pines in Cottesloe were probably the ones planted in John Street in 1917 by the Zimpel or Doscas families. Anne’s talk was illustrated by photos taken by Loisette Marsh in the 1960s when she and her family lived on Norfolk Island while doing research on potential agricultural crops and marine life.
Anne grew up in Cottesloe where she explored and was fascinated by history, plants and animals – themes that led to this talk. Her interest in Natural History, fostered by the Junior Naturalists’ Club, helped her obtain a job as a lab assistant at the WA Museum. Later she majored in zoology and botany at UWA, leading to a PhD. She then worked on the invertebrate communities in seagrass meadows. This diverse mix of interests led to her writing the book Ernest Hodgkin’s Swanland about the estuaries of the southwest of WA. Anne is currently an Honorary Research Associate in the UWA Oceans Institute. ORT
Anne brought us back to the great era of discovery and the search for the Great Southern Continent. James Cook, on his second voyage of discovery in the Pacific, discovered the island, which he named after the Duchess of Norfolk. On landing there in 1774 and going ashore with two naturalists, he recorded a flax plant suitable for rope-making, and “spruce pines, suitable for ships’ masts”. Later, botanist Robert Brown with artist Ferdinand Bauer visited the island.
The conifers referred to are not true pines (Pinus spp), but Araucaria heterophylla. Together with the Bunya Pine of Queensland and the Monkey Puzzle of Chile (related to the Kauri of Australia and New Zealand) and the Wollemi Pine, they belong to the family Araucariaceae that has existed since the Triassic. They have separate male and female trees, but older trees can become bisexual. Contrary to Cook’s prediction, it turned out that they were not suitable for masts at all, but very good for boat-building.
Norfolk Island is the only emergent part of a volcanic ridge extending from New Zealand to New Caledonia. There were four volcanic episodes, resulting in four different rock types. The rock weathers to fertile orange soil and there are basalt stacks, sea caverns and columnar formations. Anne described magical places where the Norfolk Pines are hung with the lichen known as Spanish Moss. On the other hand, there are places where erosion has created wastelands.
The first Europeans settled in 1788, when Lieut. King was dispatched from the recently founded colony at Sydney Cove in an effort to supplement food and flax supplies. In 1790 the supply ship Sirius was wrecked on the island, and the survivors had the effect of doubling the population overnight, resulting in a food shortage. Providentially, a species of petrel, the “Providence Pigeon”, arrived to breed on the island. Although the 200,000 birds relieved the food crisis, the effect on the bird population was significant. Settlement was abandoned in 1814.
A second settlement as a convict prison was established in 1825. Treatment varied from enlightened to harsh, and some convicts committed suicide by jumping off boats while on the way back from offshore islands. The settlement was closed after thirty years and the convicts sent to Van Diemen’s Land. This was the major period of building and Anne showed drawings, and photos taken around 1900, of some of the buildings made from stone quarried nearby and mortar made by burning the local limestone. Also we saw the ruins of a cemetery, and a pentagonal prison which was built in 1847.
A third settlement came when a group of Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the Bounty mutineers, arrived in 1856. In answer to a plea for help from starving Pitcairners, Queen Victoria had offered them Norfolk Island. Subsistence farming and whaling were the main occupations, and there was barter with visiting whalers. A Melanesian mission operated for about fifty years, and a chapel was built in 1880. Whaling lasted till the 1960s when numbers were depleted. Different crops have been tried – e.g. butter beans, coffee, lemons and Kentia palms – but have not always succeeded. The island economy has gone through many boom-and-bust cycles, and the isolation has always been a problem with regard to trade and availability of medical services, machinery, etc. At times, income has been generated by tourism, and recently by dutyfree shops.
Like many islands, the biodiversity on Norfolk is quite low although there are several unique species. Much of the original fauna and flora has disappeared over the years because of the many disturbances brought about by settlers and stock. Among other former crops, lemon trees have become weeds, so there is now a dilemma as to whether to eradicate them or retain them as part of the island’s heritage! Rats, probably first brought by the Polynesians, have wiped out the reptiles, and eat seeds and nesting birds. Europeans brought chickens and cats, both of which have become feral. Seven out of fifteen endemic birds on the island are extinct. However, Anne talked about some of the birds that remain. There are beautiful White Terns and Red-tailed Tropicbirds, and there are Masked Boobies nesting successfully in the cliffs.
Archaeological work has found stone axes and evidence of banana plantations, showing that Polynesians had lived there for a time. The Western Australian Museum carried out marine archaeological surveys of the Sirius. Even Ernest Hodgkin did a small study on limestone erosion while he was visiting Loisette. He found that the inter-tidal platforms resulted from a combination of physical, chemical and biological processes.
Anne gave us a fascinating combination of history and natural history about a tiny Pacific island that most of us knew nothing about. Now when we look at our Norfolk Island “Pines” we may see more than just a tree.
Mike Gregson