The deportation of the Norfolk Islanders to the Derwent in 1808

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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.It is most familiar to us as a synonym for cruelty and crime, a reminisce

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