Norfolk Island, Australia

Where the Bounty mutineers' descendants started over

An Australian South Pacific territory roughly 1,600 km from the mainland, settled twice — first as a brutal British penal colony, then in 1856 by Pitcairn Islanders who outgrew their own tiny home and needed somewhere new.

Norfolk Island served as a notoriously harsh British penal settlement from 1788–1814 and again 1825–1855, reserved for the empire's most difficult convicts. After it closed, the entire population of Pitcairn Island — descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers — relocated there in 1856 when Pitcairn itself became too small. Their Norf'k language, a blend of 18th-century English and Tahitian, is still taught in schools today.

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