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Author Archives: Geoff Edwards

Captain Quintal and Howard Farnsworth

Updated on date by author

‘Captain Quintal Drive’ heads around the southern arm of the Island’s aerodrome. It was named after Fletcher Evelyn Quintal, a Boer War and WWI veteran more often known as “Sarnim” or “Captain Quintal”. See https://www.thepeerage.com/p15667.htm#i156666.

 

The following anecdote can be attributed to Ross Westwood, Sarnim’s grandson, when he was asked by Russell Francis about the very large iron tank on the Farnsworth property. Notes taken 20 January 2010.

 

“The iron tank was about 9m in diameter and the same in length and held approximately 60,000 litres. It was originally one of four which were all situated around the perimeter of the airport and held aviation fuel, brought in originally in 44 gal (200 litre) drums and decanted. The last surviving one, on the Farnsworth property, was first situated on Ross Westwood’s property, near the front entrance.The tank used to be down there on Sarnim’s lawn.  It held fuel for aeroplanes during the days when US Air Force planes were transiting through. After the war ended, Sarnim wanted the thing off his property so the Department of Civil Aviation put it up for tender. The whaling company bought it to hold fuel or whale oil and arrangements were made to get it back down to Kingston. It was laboriously dragged across country to the Kingston jetty, via Longridge and Flagstaff Hill, where it lay for some time. Then the whaling company ceased operations and the company’s assets were put up for tender. The previous occupier of Howard Farnsworth’s property, Moore, won the tank tender and the thing was again dragged back from Kingston and installed at Farnsworth’s to eventually reside on the airport boundary side, its present position – about 400 metres away from where it had been at Sarnim’s.”

 

Farnsworth House

As remembered by Ross Westwood, whose property neighbours the Farnsworths’. Also known as the house of Robert Rook (Canon).

  • Built by Tom Lee about 1928
  • Remained empty for about 5 years
  • Early ’30s a family called Predall occupied the house for a couple of years
  • Then about mid-’30s the Rooks moved into the house until wife died late 1930s
  • Robert Rook moved out to live with his daughter (mainland?).
  • Then house sold to an American about 1948 (Edward Moore and wife). About 1953 Moore’s wife died and house sold to another American, Fred Garner
  • Garner was in the forces (American air force?) and worked in Alaska (at a US base?) and wife stayed on Norfolk full-time until she contracted cancer and left the Island and went back to USA
  • House rented out to a few short-term people – Meaton (Australian airport OIC after airport taken over from New Zealand services); Francises; Bennett North.

Then house sold to Howard Farnsworth and wife Kaye. After Howard died, Kaye travelled for long periods then Dudley Kruger lived in house when Kaye travelled.

 

Additional anecdotes attributable to Ross Westwood

  1. The property’s boundary along the public road side is a couple of metres inside where it ought to be because originally a large Norfolk pine was on the boundary. It was simply fenced around (on the inside).  When the tree was taken down, the boundary fence stayed in its original line, thus nipping off a few square metres of the property.
  2. When the ABC began broadcasting on a limited basis, the broadcasts could be picked up in Norfolk island with a simple long-line antenna, which were usually hung from the nearest large tree. Ross’s (great?) grandmother could never understand how music came out of the tree and into the little box.  Birthday requests could be made to “Uncle George” (ABC announcer).  When it was the Islander’s birthday (90-something), the message was given over the air that there was a present under her bed and to go and look.  The old lady was utterly astonished at the fact that the voice coming out the wireless knew such a thing.

Sequential occupations and sources of information about them

Updated on date by author

Geographer Ian Bowie visited the Island in December 2024 and has allowed the Society to re-publish some of his reflections on the Island’s history.

The Sequent Occupations of Norfolk Island. Downloaded 14 December 2024 from Mr Bowie’s personal website https://ijsbowie.wordpress.com/2021/05/05/the-serial-settlements-of-norfolk-island/.

Mr Bowie has given advice on historical sources:

“As  to some particular potential resources, you might want to visit https://www.library.gov.au/research/access-collection/australian-joint-copying-project-ajcp/ajcp-public-record-office-pro  and https://www.library.gov.au/research/access-collection/australian-joint-copying-project-ajcp/using-ajcp. The AJCP is a remarkable  resource of colonial period data, funded as part of Australian Bicentennial project [though other countries were involved] and the Colonial Office and Admiralty files are of especial relevance for Norfolk Island. Mostly information from these files is raw data, for the use of researchers really, but Cathy Dunn has made considerable use of it for her publications on Norfolk Island’s first penal settlement  (https://www.australianhistoryresearch.info/) and https://blog.une.edu.au/convicthistory/2023/10/12/norfolkisland_firstsettlement_directory/. Cathy has interests in the second penal settlement too. NSW State Records hold Births Marriages and Deaths records for Norfolk Island e.g. volume 4 of the NSW which are searchable  (https://mhnsw.au/guides/births-deaths-and-marriages-registers-1787-1856/ ) although individual records  are more easily found at https://www.nsw.gov.au/family-and-relationships/family-history-search (see also https://www.bda-online.org.au/files/NI3-Residents.pdf). Again most of that would be of interest to researchers. Of more general interest would be other holdings in the National Library and NSW State records  (https://mhnsw.au/guides/norfolk-island-guide/) partly reflecting the fact that the Island has been governed as if it were part of NSW at times  [I haven’t found comparable records for the Van Dieman’s Land part of the Island’s history). The NSW State Library has its own extensive holdings  also overlapping with those of the National Library (https://guides.sl.nsw.gov.au/life-in-the-colony/settlements) and they hold many splendid maps and photos.

“Obviously…there have been so many official reports from the report  of the Nimmo Royal Commission onwards. I had a little difficulty with some of these notably earlier heritage-related ones because some authors have been tempted to retiterate errors. It was helpful to find archaeological reports such as https://journals.australian.museum/anderson-and-white-2001-rec-aust-mus-suppl-27-19/ [and the other papers in that supplement] and on the two penal settlements https://www.academia.edu/9205542/Duncan_and_Gibbs_2014_Norfolk_Island_Archaeological_Remote_Sensing_Project.Surprising finds included  https://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/pitcairn/history.shtml  and  https://anglicanhistory.org/oceania/ni/e on the Project Canterbury website (mainly to do with the Melanesian Mission in great detail). Genealogical details on Pitcairners on Wikipedia led me to some interesting pieces of herstory eg https://historymatters.sydney.edu.au/2017/05/the-women-of-pitcairn-and-their-descendants/  (and reminded me of the novelisations of the stories of Teraura and Mauatua). The reseach of Tim Causer eg,  https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1331354/1/Worst_Types_Norfolk_Island_(2010).pdf offers a useful antidote to conventional wisdoms about the penal settlements which certainly were brutal but only rarely sadistic and reminds us that the great majority of convicts sent to both settlements were not convicted of heinous crimes.”

 

 

Discovery of evidence of Polynesian settlement

Updated on date by author

Polynesian_adze

No previous human occupation of Norfolk Island was suspected until the first European settlement’s commanding officer, Lt. Philip Gidley King, discovered a type of banana growing near the first settlement site in 1788.  Soon after, the remains of a canoe was found inland.  And again later still, evidence of cultivation and the working of stone tools (“chizzles”) was discovered in the interior of the island.

It wasn’t until late in the 20th century that professional archaeologists found a positively identifiable Polynesian village structure near the Kingston foreshore.

See attached photo.

 

 

Photopress International

Updated on date by author

Photopress International was established on Norfolk Island in 1973 by Gary Robertson. It was originally a print shop running AB Dick jobbing printers and was run out of the family garage at Rocky Point. Screen Printing was added to the business a few years later. Photopress was split into two separate businesses in 2021 – Wunna T’s screen printing and Photopress.

 

King Charles III in the making

Updated on date by author

Prince Charles at school in Melbourne with his Norfolk Island bodyguard Howard Farnsworth. Englishman Farnsworth lived on Norfolk Island in the 1950-60s and was the policeman. For some reason he became Robert Menzies bodyguard and then Prince Charles’. Or vice versa.The photographer is unknown.The original picture is owned by Natalie French neé Quintal, who did house care for Mrs Kaye Farnsworth many years ago.

Charles is on record as observing that his education at Geelong Grammar and its mountain Timbertop retreat was the most influential period of his education.

 

Nan Smith

Updated on date by author

We acknowledge the Australian Garden History magazine, issue 17(1) of July/August 2005 for the following paragraph about Island identity Nan Smith.

Nan Smith, the long-time President of the Norfolk Island Historical Society, was born in Auckland, New Zealand and educated at St Cuthbert’s College. During the war Nan’s father purchased, sight unseen, an old island home and 13 acres of land on Taylors Road, Norfolk Island. In May 1945 with World War II still being waged in the Pacific, he managed to secure a place for Nan and himself on an Air Force transport plane to Norfolk. It was this visit that seeded Nan’s enduring interest in the Island’s history. Shortly after this visit Nan purchased, at great expense for the day, a couple of second-hand books that were to become the beginnings of her research material. In the intervening years she accessed records from the Public Records Office London, the Mitchell Library and the Archives Office in Sydney to name a few. In 1986 Nan and her husband retired from Sydney to the house her father had purchased on Norfolk Island. She has written one book about the convict era and contributed to a number of other historical books about Norfolk Island.

 

After Nan’s death, the house was purchased by new resident Shane Allen. In 2024 Shane generously donated the bulk of Nan’s eclectic library to the Knowledge and Learning Centre, 70 Taylors Road, where it formed the foundation of the collection there.