No visitor to Norfolk Island would miss the green hand symbol. One town block is covered in these symbols of opposition to what the locals see as the Australian Government’s takeover of their island in 2016. As far as they were concerned, Queen Victoria had given the Pitcairners Norfolk Island in perpetuity. The sign reads:…
I confess I never watched any of the several movies made about the Mutiny on the Bounty. But it is a fascinating story and is the fountainhead of today’s Norfolk Island population. In 1789, HMS Bounty was returning from Tahiti after a mission to collect breadfruit plants for transport to the West Indies. Tensions had…
The imposing manor house above the lake doesn’t say much at all about what happened here during WW2. The house had been bought by a developer who would have built a housing estate but the manor and 58 acres of land was purchased in 1938 by Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, head of the Secret Intelligence…
I saw in the news that Johnny Depp is resurrecting his acting career, playing the role of Louis XV in a French film about one of the king’s many, many mistresses (Jeanne du Barry). There he was, astride a white horse, and then we were shown a scene obviously shot in the Palace of Versailles…
When I was a kid growing up in the sixties and seventies of the previous century, life was good. But there was an ever-present background noise, like the rattle in an air conditioner on a hot day. I’m talking about the Cold War. We all believed that nuclear war could well be just around the…
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit sick of covid-19 restrictions and American politics. This week I thought I’d write about something completely different. Three hundred and ninety-one years ago this month there was a bump in the night and the captain of the Batavia was heard to say, God verdomme. God…
Last year Peter and I had gone on a conducted tour of Kingston’s convict ruins with a descendant of the Christian family. I’d strongly suggest that anybody going to Norfolk for the first time attends the tours. The guides are mines of information, telling stories of convicts and jailers, painting a vivid picture of the…
One hundred years ago, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent along the Western Front. It was an armistice. The peace treaties were not signed until 1919 but the fighting had ended. Exhausted Europe heaved a sigh of relief. It was dubbed ‘the war to end…
It’s not very far from Berlin to Prague, so when we left Berlin on Sunday morning, we made a brief visit to Dresden, which was famously incendiary-bombed by the Allies in World War II. The city suffered under GDR rule, but has been rebuilt since the reunification. This was a walking tour, and I’ll confess…
We caught a train to take us from Warsaw to Berlin. We were in the first class carriages, but as Pete said, “If that’s first class I’d hate to be in economy”. I can’t say it was a train journey to remember, just a track through Eastern Europe on an overcast and drizzly day, stopping…