Curio

State Library of New South Wales
A view of Queenborough on Norfolk Island

A view of Queenborough on Norfolk Island

c1804
Watercolour on paper
Bequest of Sir William Dixson, 1952
DL Pd 397

This watercolour of the settlement of Queenborough on Norfolk Island was painted by someone who had never been there! Norfolk Island was settled only a couple of months after the First Fleet landed in Sydney in January 1788. It was hoped that the island’s famous pines could provide masts and spars for the British navy, and the flax that grew there cloth for its sails.

Queensborough, now known as Longridge, was south of what is now the island’s airstrip. The settlement was established in a protected, fertile valley in June 1790: the land was cleared, corn planted, and huts built.

John Eyre, however, never visited Norfolk Island. This watercolour is probably a copy of a drawing made on the island around 1796 by storekeeper William Neat Chapman, who was a good friend of the island’s governor, Philip Gidley King. King later commissioned Eyre to copy Chapman’s watercolour. Chapman’s original wash drawings were in black and white, so Eyre would have guessed the colours or perhaps relied on King’s descriptions of the Norfolk landscape.

Queenborough was at first known as Charlotte’s Field but was formally renamed in April 1791 in honour of Princess Charlotte, the wife of George III. In the 1840s it was renamed Longridge Station or Agricultural settlement. The area is still known as Longridge.

This watercolour is not titled. However it is identical to another version, also held in the State Library, which is signed by Eyre and titled A View of Queenborough on Norfolk Island.

In 1793 Governor King arranged for two Maori men to visit Norfolk Island to teach the Europeans how to ‘dress’ flax, or turn the flax plant into cloth. It was hoped that this cloth would be suitable for ship sails, and potentially the foundation of an important local industry. But unfortunately dressing flax was women’s business and the men knew very little about the process.