It was well I was flying. Access by sea is difficult due to the surf and high cliffs. There are three islands in the group. As well as Norfolk Island there are the smaller Nepean Island and larger Phillip Island. Norfolk is the only inhabited island with a population of under two thousand people. It's small enough that people can be named in the phone book using only their nicknames like Griffo, Gumboots and Honkey-Dorey.

Norfolk has had three human migrations, the earliest the Polynesian population c800-1200. British settlers had hints of that settlement and in 1974 archaeologists confirmed obsidian they found came from the Kermadec Islands near New Zealand. The settlement disappeared for unknown reasons and its lasting heritage was the Polynesian rat which still survives on the predator-free island. Norfolk was rediscovered in 1774 by James Cook in his second voyage of discovery. Cook was interested in the beautiful pine trees named for the island (which he named for the Duchess of Norfolk). "The chief produce of the island is Spruce Pines which grow here in abundance, from two to three feet diameter and upwards," Cook wrote. "It is of a different sort to those in New Caledonia and also to those in New Zealand and for Masts, Yards (etcetera) superior to both." Norfolk's pines and flax would be crucial elements in Britain's ongoing interest in the island as its Navy depended on Russian imports.

When Britain sent convicts to Cook's other Australian discovery at New South Wales 14 years later, Norfolk was a critical part of the plan. Admiralty's orders to First Fleet commander Arthur Phillip was to "send a small establishment (to Norfolk) and prevent it being occupied by the subjects of any other European power". Within a month of landing in Sydney Cove he appointed Philip Gidley King as governor of the island and ordered him to sail there with a convoy of 22 (including 15 convicts) to begin a second British settlement in the Pacific. After failing to find suitable landfall on the north of the island they came ashore on March 6, 1788 at "Sidney Bay" (now Kingston) on the south side.

For the first few weeks the new settlers cleared land, sowed seeds and cut timber. King's men initially planted crops close to the beach but later pushed back to the more sheltered Arthur's Vale with its fertile soil. They fought rats, parrots, caterpillars and worms for enjoyment of the crops but gradually built up a working supply of food. Unfortunately the flax plants proved unsuitable for Navy use.

While Norfolk thrived, food in Sydney was scarce and in 1790 Phillip sent 183 convicts and a consignment of marines to the island. First Fleet flagship HMS Sirius approached Norfolk on March 19 but in heavy surf crashed upon the reefs and was wrecked. While no one was killed it was a terrible blow to the island and to Sydney itself. On hearing the news Phillip contemplated ending both settlements. It took the arrival of the Second Fleet later that year to save the colony. A plaque at Slaughter Bay marks the spot of the sinking and a nearby museum hosts one of Sirius's six anchors.

East of the settlement lay the island's only sheltered bay with a lone pine and a sandy beach. King saw several turtles in the bay and named it Turtle Bay. It was later renamed Emily Bay and today provides safe swimming and wonderful snorkeling in the coral reefs. King's lone pine remains majestic guarding the bay.

The settlement lasted 26 years. Britain was concerned about its cost, its distance from Sydney, and the lack of a safe anchorage. By 1814 all convicts were sent to Van Diemen's Land, the buildings were destroyed to prevent further use and a dozen dogs were left behind to eat what stock remained.

But Norfolk found another use as the home for the doubly damned - the worst prisoners in Sydney and Hobart. From 1826 new settlers used the crumbling walls of the first settlement to rebuild according to instructions of colonial secretary Lord Bathurst: "to hold out that Settlement as a place of the extremest punishment short of death". Bathurst was aided by a succession of sadistic commanders who treated their prisoners with contempt far from Sydney's gaze.

Beyond hope, the convicts mutinied many times without success. In 1826 fifty convicts bound their overseers, robbed the stores and put three boats to nearby Phillip Island where they were re-captured. In 1834 a hundred convicts rose up, aiming to take charge of a boat and sail to freedom. They were overcome by the military garrison and the rising was crushed in hours. Authorities convicted 29 men and 13 were hanged.

As well as a formidable jail, the British built a fine military barracks and a commisariat store. In 1840 a new style of commandant arrived in Alexander Maconochie determined to treat prisoners as humans. He installed the mark system to give points and incentives for good behaviour. While he was welcomed on the island, authorities in Sydney had doubts about his leniency and he was replaced by yet another martinet in 1844. The island continued with vicious commanders until Britain announced its intention to end the convict establishment in the 1850s.

In 1856 Britain closed the jail again and allowed Pitcairn Islanders to move in. The new arrivals were the descendents of the 1789 Bounty Mutiny. HMS Bounty under Captain William Bligh was taking its breadfruit cargo from Tahiti to the West Indies when mutineers led by Fletcher Christian took command. They released Bligh and fellow officers who escaped on a longboat 6500km to Timor (unaware of the new Norfolk colony a third of the distance away). The mutineers picked up Tahitian natives who eventually joined some of them sailing to remote Pitcairn Island. Sexual troubles led to most of the men being murdered but the women survived and raised families which became a peaceful settlement over the next 70 years. By the 1850s they were outgrowing their island but their exemplary Victorian morality had many supporters in England who suggested they move to Norfolk. The Pitcairners arrived at Kingston pier in 1856 just as the final prisoners were removed.

Though some returned to Pitcairn, the majority settled on Norfolk, taking military homes in Kingston's Quality Row. They survived on rudimentary farming and whaling, believing Victoria granted them ownership of the island, which the British disputed. When an inquiry in 1905 was dissatisfied with cultivation on the island it suggested commonwealth control and the withdrawal of privileges including the use of Quality Row. The Pitcairners burned the cottages in protest but gradually fanned out across the island.

By then Pitcairners shared their island with newer arrivals. British missionaries long coveted the pagan souls of the South Pacific. John Coleridge Patteson was the first Anglican bishop of Melanesia in 1861. His mission ship sailed across the region landing in Norfolk in 1864. Two years later New South Wales governor Sir John Young gave permission for a training school and bishop's headquarters with a grant of 40 hectares on the west of the island. The station was established on St Barnabas Day, and the saint gave his name to the mission. By 1899 it held 210 Melanesian scholars and a large staff of missionaries. The Pitcairners were not consulted and led separate lives to the mission, though it employed some and provided a market for produce.

In 1902 the Pacific Cable Board opened a station at Anson Bay and Norfolk became an important link in the Pacific cable system. The cable linked Vancouver to Fanning Island (now Tabuaeran, Kiribati), and Fiji to Norfolk where it divided to Southport in Queensland and Auckland. It provided employment and its communication facility accelerated Norfolk's inclusion in the outside world.

That inclusion was turbocharged by the Second World War and the need for an airstrip. In 1942 Australian and American engineers selected a spot at Longridge. They cut down the Avenue of Pines which existed since penal days and completed the airport by 1943. Though the island was outside the theatre of battle, the new airport became an important link with South Pacific islands and hosted 2000 servicemen at its peak. After the war, it enabled the new industry of tourism.

Today, the area around Kingston is now a World Heritage Area and tourism delivers 40 percent of Norfolk's GDP but the island has always struggled to turn a buck. Accepted into the Commonwealth of Australia in 1913, it was granted limited self-government in 1979 though lurched through a series of financial crises. In 2015 Canberra abolished the Island's legislative assembly with the territory run by an Administrator.

A new Regional Council was elected and most Commonwealth laws including taxation, social security, immigration, customs and health were extended to Norfolk Island. Islanders held a referendum in 2015 where 68 percent voted for a say in their own future. Aggrieved Pitcairners set up a "tent embassy" at Quality Row. As well as income tax, they pay land duties on previously untaxed ancestral properties and some are ineligible for previous pensions under Norfolk's welfare system.

Pitcairners consider themselves the "indigenous people" and have appealed to the UN. In Norfolk's town centre at Burnt Pine, there is a "field of democracy" display. Each sign of green hands is signed by an Islander who collectively "are imploring the world to unite and join their crusade for continued custodial rights."

While I appreciate the David v Goliath romance, I don't believe Norfolk Island can sustain itself without outside help. Instead of having a chip on their shoulders about their place in the world, Pitcairners - who now make up less than half the population - would be better served improving their Council and making the most of natural advantages. They have a gorgeous geography with a lovely national park and a rich colonial history which because it mostly happened before 1856, they have ignored. Norfolk Island is a beautiful and unique place. But its people need to lose its sense of entitlement and work for democracy from the ground up. Demanding a 4G telecommunications service would be a good place to start.