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.

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