I arrived home from Norfolk Island on Wednesday afternoon after a solid week of activity. I had a busy week and I was pretty tired after having three early mornings (3.45 am) in a row.
I filled in my second last day (free of any planned activity) revisiting some of the places that I had already seen and where I wanted to take some more photos. In St Barnabas Church, for example, I had been lazy and not cleaned my fisheye lens. I hadn’t used it for a long time and it had dust all over it which came out on my photos, so I went back to redo them.
The speed limit on the island is 50kmh and a good reason for that is to make sure that you don’t hit any of the cows that graze on the roadside. They are all over the island and have right if way. The government has no money to repair them and they are mostly patched potholes on previous potholes.
The seas near Kingston were very rough and gave me some nice images of waves breaking on the reef. The also stopped the monthly supply ship from unloading for a day or two as it was far too rough to bring in the freight using the traditional method of lighters towed by launches. The pier on the other side of the island is out of action for many months while they upgrade it. It is still the same jets built by convicts in the early 1800’s. By contrast, the seas on that side of the island were very smooth.
In the centre of town is an area displaying protest signs about the Australian Government taking over from the previous local government. Some people don’t like this at all, claiming that their ‘human rights’ and culture are being threatened. I personally think they are clutching at straws but I did call into their protest camp to listen to their story. They have occupied the old government buildings and are appealing to the United Nations and British Government about the change.
On my very last morning, I was again up at dawn to take some more photos. On the previous day, I had made a mistake with some of my camera settings and mucked up my photos. This time, I did a much better job and I am happier with my images. I’m glad that we didn’t need to get to the airport until lunch time so I had time to spend a few hours in the early morning taking photographs.
I enjoy your photos very much Bruce. How English in many ways some of the laws and habits still are. And a sharp reminder to us all that social change mostly occurs slowly particularly in more isolated communities. Change is seen as a threat and generally as a species we are conservative. Interesting.