Travelling to Norfolk Island: flights, Kingston and the forest walks

How visitors reach the island

There is one airport, Norfolk Island Airport, near Burnt Pine in the middle of the island. The airfield dates from 1942, when Australian, New Zealand and American servicemen built it, and after the war it turned the island towards tourism. Scheduled passenger flights have been underwritten by the Australian Government, which keeps fares within a set range. In 2018-19 the contract was with Air New Zealand, flying twice a week from Brisbane and twice a week from Sydney, with three more weekly Sydney flights from mid-September to the end of April. More recent accounts name Qantas flying direct to Sydney and Brisbane and Air Chathams flying once a week from Auckland in a 36-seat Saab 340.

The distances are long for a domestic trip. The island lies about 1,412 kilometres east of Evans Head on the New South Wales coast, and Britannica puts it 1,676 kilometres from Sydney.

Sea travel is limited to cruise ships, which anchor offshore and bring passengers ashore by tender on cruise ship days. Supply ships also anchor off and discharge cargo by whaleboat, and watching a ship being unloaded at the Kingston or Cascade jetty is something visitors gather to do. Phillip Island, six kilometres south, has no regular boat service: Parks Australia said in 2026 that it was not running tours there and that no commercial tours were available.

What papers a visitor needs

Travel from the mainland stopped being international on 1 July 2016, when the Australian migration system replaced the island's own immigration controls. Australian citizens can travel with a passport or with photo identification. Citizens of every other country need a passport, even when arriving from elsewhere in Australia, and the Australian migration system applies to them as it does on the mainland.

It was not always so open. Before 2016 the island ran its own immigration controls, and even Australian citizens faced heavy restrictions on settling there. In 2012 the island's government relaxed them with an Unrestricted Entry Permit for Australian and New Zealand citizens on arrival. Until 2016, leaving for Norfolk took a traveller out of the Australian migration zone, and a visitor on a single-entry Australian visa could find it had lapsed on the way back.

Biosecurity rules are strict. Fresh fruit and vegetables may not be brought in, and even the native plants the national park replants are grown on the island from local seed.

When visitors come and what the weather does

The council's 2023 economic report describes the peak tourist season as running from September to April. The weather barely shifts: mean daily maximums at the airport run from 18.4 degrees in August to 25.0 in February. Winter, from June to August, is the wetter half of the year, with June averaging 142.6 millimetres of rain and about 14 rain days a month in midwinter. The drier, sunnier months are October to December, with November averaging 73.3 millimetres.

Numbers swing with more than the weather. The council's figures show 2,366 tourists arriving in September 2019 and 250 in September 2020, after the pandemic closed travel; in May 2020 there were 13. By April 2023 the year's arrivals had reached 28,071, and 31,700 were forecast for 2022-23, which the council's consultants called the highest level in 15 years.

Seabirds set their own calendar. From October to March white terns, black noddies and red-tailed tropicbirds fill the air above the park's coastal tracks, and humpback whales pass on their migration. Minke and sei whales, dolphins and the occasional whale shark are also seen offshore.

The clocks follow eastern Australia's summer time. Norfolk Island keeps UTC+11 as standard time and moves to UTC+12 for daylight saving, which runs from 4 October 2026 to 4 April 2027. The island moved its standard time from UTC+11:30 to UTC+11 on 4 October 2015.

How visitors get around

The island has about 80 kilometres of road, of which about 53 are sealed. Driving is on the left. The general speed limit is 50 kilometres an hour, falling to 40 in town and 30 near the school, and local law gives livestock right of way. Drivers wave to every passing vehicle, a habit islanders call the Norfolk wave. The council has recorded that half the road network needs urgent repair and that 12 bridges need work, and potholes are part of driving there.

Distances are short. Burnt Pine, strung along Taylors Road near the airport, has the shops, the post office, the community hall and most services. Kingston lies on the south coast and Cascade on the north, and homesteads are spread across the rest of the island. There are no railways and no public waterways.

What to see in Kingston

The Kingston and Arthur's Vale Historic Area covers the flat land behind the southern landing where both convict settlements were built. Since July 2010 it has been one of the 11 Australian Convict Sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its stone buildings line Quality Row, among them Government House, the Administrator's residence, which is still in use, and the court and administration buildings.

The Norfolk Island Museum runs its collections from several of the heritage buildings: the Pier Store, No. 10 Quality Row, the Commissariat Store and a display on HMS Sirius, wrecked off the island in 1790. The museum runs guided walking tours and a cemetery tour on set days, and its museums close on public holidays. Tours do not run on cruise ship days.

Kingston is also where the island's own events happen. Anniversary Day, or Bounty Day, on 8 June brings a re-enactment of the Pitcairners' landing, a parade, wreath laying, hymns and a community picnic. The island's culture explains what is being marked.

Where to swim and look at the reef

Emily Bay, beside Kingston, is protected from the open Pacific by a small coral reef and is the only place on the island considered safe for ordinary swimming. Glass-bottom boats take visitors over the reef lagoon. The whole lagoon at Emily and Slaughter Bay has been a no-take area since 15 February 2023, so nothing may be fished or collected there, and Cemetery Bay next to it is closed to the taking of sea urchins, sea cucumbers and starfish. Surfers use Anson Bay and Ball Bay on the exposed coasts.

What the national park offers walkers

Norfolk Island National Park and its botanic garden are open all year, and walking is how they are seen. Tracks range from easy to moderately difficult, and some in the botanic garden take wheelchairs. Parks Australia lists, among others:

• in the botanic garden, the Boardwalk (170 metres), Samson's Circuit (120 metres), the Tree Fern Valley Circuit (370 metres) and the Rainforest Gully Circuit (600 metres), where the green parrot's kek-kek-kek call can be heard;
• in the park, the Mount Bates Track (650 metres) along the ridge between the two summits, past the remains of a Second World War radar station, and the Old Mountain Track (540 metres), the route up Mount Pitt before the war, with a gun emplacement on the way and a view south to Phillip Island;
• the Bridle Track (1.7 kilometres) from the Captain Cook Monument around the edge of the coast through pines and white oaks, and the steep Bird Rock Track (760 metres) down to a lookout;
• the Palm Glen tracks through gullies of tree ferns and Norfolk palms, a palm found only on the island, with views south to Phillip Island;
• McLachlan's Lane (650 metres), past an old house site to a valley with a waterfall that runs only after good rain.

Rangers lead a free guided walk at the botanic garden each week. The Bridle Track starts at the Captain Cook Monument; Cook landed on the island in October 1774, and Parks Australia invites walkers to follow in his footsteps. In the gullies, the Tree Fern Valley Circuit passes huge whitewoods and the island's climbing fern, and the Palm Glen Track passes an old bastard oak, a tree found only on Norfolk. One rainforest walk carries a Norf'k name, A Trip Ina Stik, part of the effort to keep the island's language in public use.

Where the island's churches are

Two Anglican churches are among the buildings visitors seek out. All Saints at Kingston dates from 1870. St Barnabas Chapel was built for the Church of England's Melanesian Mission, which had its headquarters on the island from 1867 to 1920, and its windows were designed by Edward Burne-Jones and executed by William Morris. The Catholic church is St Philip Howard. Services are small, often led by visiting ministers.

What else a visitor should know

The island has one hospital. Since 1 July 2016 treatment there has been covered by Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, as on the mainland. The hospital can perform minor surgery, but serious cases are flown to mainland Australia, and the air charter is paid for by the Australian Government. Policing is by the Australian Federal Police, normally a sergeant and two constables with five local special members.

The currency is the Australian dollar. Every Air New Zealand flight from Australia carried freight in 2018-19, with medical supplies and mail given priority, and separate subsidised freight flights supplemented it, so the shelves depend on the planes as well as the ships. The mobile network is small, running from three towers, and the 2021 audit listed unreliable telecommunications among the island's difficulties. Norf'k, the island's own language, was spoken at home by 30.5% of residents at the 2021 census. Shops have traditionally closed on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and on Sundays, and the public holiday calendar includes days the mainland does not keep: Foundation Day on 6 March, Bounty Day on 8 June, Show Day in October and Thanksgiving on the last Wednesday of November.

Accommodation is in small, locally run properties. In 2012 ACIL Tasman counted 66 places to stay with 1,649 beds, five of them hotels and most of the rest self-catering cottages and units. Parks Australia estimates that between 400 and 800 visitors are on the island at any one time. Many are older: in 2018-19 almost 80% of visitors arriving by air were aged 51 or over, according to the Commonwealth department.

How the island's past shapes a visit

Most of what a visitor sees was shaped by the island's three settlements. The sea around the island is part of the history too: more than 20 known shipwrecks lie in the marine park and are protected by law, the Sirius among them. The convict buildings come from the penal colonies, the farms and family homesteads from the Pitcairners who arrived in 1856, and the airfield from the war. The history of Norfolk Island tells that story, and the geography explains why the cliffs left only two places to land.