The deportation of the Norfolk Islanders to the Derwent in 1808

Our Government has availed itself of Mr. Bonwick's special knowledge to secure copies of the papers he has researched from the English State Record Office relating to the settlement and earliest history of Tasmania. Of this period no contemporary records have been preserved in our local archives ; our knowledge of those early times has hitherto been derived merely from vague and inaccurate tradition. The material supplied by Mr. Bonwick has enabled me to lay before the Royal Society the first authentic story of the planting of Tasmania and of the motives which led to it. In former papers we have seen how the occupation of our island came about. The next chapter in our colonial history to which I ask your attention is Norfolk Island, a small and solitary island, separated from us by more than a thousand miles of ocean, the fortunes of which have, nevertheless, been strangely interwoven with those of our own colony.<br>It is most familiar to us as a synonym for cruelty and crime, a reminiscence of the days when the distant island formed a dependency and a part of the then penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land. To the majority this, which is within the memory of many still living amongst us, is the only known link between our colony and it—perhaps the only known fact respecting its earlier history. Comparatively few are aware that—with the single exception of Sydney — Norfolk Island is the oldest English colony in the South Seas. Perhaps still fewer know that to that same far-off island, so familiar to us in later days under another aspect, Tasmania was indebted for a large proportion of her earliest colonists.<br>To this historical fact the familiar names of New Norfolk in the south, and Norfolk Plains in the north of this colony remain a perpetual but unappreciated memorial.<br>The history of Norfolk Island and its early colonists thus becomes an essential part of the history of Tasmania. The history of its colonisation and settlement can be gathered from scattered references in the works of Collins and other contemporary writers, but Mr. Bonwick's researches in the Record Office enable me to lay before the Royal Society the first authentic story of the evacuation of the island and the transference of all its free settlers to the Derwent in 1808.