This blog post is one of speculation and encouraging discussion.

Ask any long-term resident of Norfolk Island what Emily Bay was like when they were growing up, and almost unanimously their first answer is along the lines of, the beach seems wider now and Emily seems shallower. This is very much an informal straw poll, so other residents may disagree. I’d love to hear their perspectives, too, because memories are always fallible.

Another observation is that Quintal’s Passage, a manmade channel running between the bay and the open sea, is narrower than it used to be, with the growing corals almost, but not quite, closing the gap.

It got me thinking. I am also a keen student of the history of the World Heritage Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area, and a particularly interesting topic is the blasting of this channel into the bay. It sounds positively barbaric today, but at the different times it was done it would have been seen as a pragmatic solution to providing a safe harbour for the island. After a bit of research, I found that the channel has been blasted at least five times since the earliest colonial settlements, which began in 1788, most recently 85 years ago, in 1939.

Before we consider the history of Quintal’s Passage, I’ll make a brief mention of one of the ways the immediate onshore environment has been altered since European settlement.

I’m often asked how the coral disease on our reef got so bad, so quickly. I think this is an issue that has been creeping up on us gradually over decades. The lowland area was seen as a convenient place to grow crops to provide food for the fledgling settlement. Philip Gidley King wasted little time in creating suitable conditions to achieve just this. The land was cleared, and in 1789, just a year after the settlers and convicts arrived, the swamp was drained by the construction of a channel that emptied out into Emily Bay. In subsequent years, additional drains were added to make the system drain more efficiently.

Nutrients produced by people, livestock and other farming activities, and a plentiful supply of fresh water, would have started to flow directly out onto the reef from that moment. Prior to settlement, the water would have been held back in the swamp, behind a calcarenite wall, and would have gradually seeped out through the underground aquifer. The overground water may well have overflowed from time to time, but there was never the steady, more-or-less continuous stream that was created by King’s engineering works.

So exactly where is Quintal’s Passage, and how is it connected to the swamp?

Look across to the reef just below Point Hunter, particularly at low tide, and you will see a metal pole projecting above the waves marking this passage. It is hard to see in the photograph, above, but it is there. You can also see two parallel rows of rocks that demarcate the passage. Its presence tells of the repeated attempts to put Emily Bay to use as a safe harbour and even, it was suggested, as an airport.

Foveaux’s first attempt – 1802 to 1803

The idea of cutting a channel was first suggested by Governor Major Joseph Foveaux who unsuccessfully attempted to blast it in 1802 and 1803. In February 1803, he was forced to request further supplies of gunpowder for the island as he had used all the island’s stocks. I bet that didn’t go down well back in New South Wales!

In 1805, John Turnbull, who was visiting the island, wrote this of Foveaux’s attempt:

‘They have hitherto directed their efforts to the removal of a part of the reef intervening between the sea and a bay on the other side, capable of receiving vessels of one hundred tons: but though they have attempted the project with unremitting earnestness, and expected to effect it by blowing it up, it has hitherto failed.

‘So invincible, and of such essential importance is this obstacle considered, that in the failure of all attempts to remedy it, the colonists expect to be called upon to abandon he island, and remove themselves either to New Zealand, or some part of the main land of New Holland.’

The Quintals – 1878 to 1879

It is thought that the next time blasting the channel was attempted was by the Pitcairners in 1877. On 26 May that year H.M. Alacrity, a surveying schooner commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Moore, made the island to survey the reef on south side fronting Emily Bay, and to report on the feasibility of cutting a passage through it for small vessels. His opinion was that it was beyond the means of the community to achieve at that time.

However, the following year in 1878, it was reported in the Australian newspapers that islanders John and Arthur Quintal, and a few others, were working on clearing a passage through the reef with dynamite supplied by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Hercules Robinson, a popular man on the island. He had supplied it with strict instructions for the men not to blow themselves up. The work was still underway in 1879.

 In 1884, discussions were ongoing about widening the channel further, although by this stage there was the realisation that only small vessels would ever be able to use Emily Bay as a harbour.

Under Governor Lord Beauchamp’s orders – 1900

Once again, on 7 February 1900, and at Governor Lord Beauchamp’s instigation, Mr Burrowes of the New South Wales Department of Works arrived at Norfolk Island to supervise improvements to Emily Bay’s ‘harbour’. As a mark of how important this work was considered to be, all other public works were suspended in order to provide four teams of twenty men as free labour. The work was generally popular, however, one man refused to work on the project claiming it was not ‘public work’. He was duly prosecuted for his insubordination.

By April, 200 tons of stone had been won. By July, with the onset of winter and the commencement of the whaling season, the work was suspended. The whaling season provided many families with a good portion of their annual income, so the opportunity was not to be missed.

For the Resolution – 1925

In 1925, the entrance to Emily Bay was once again enlarged to allow the Resolution – the ship built by the Norfolk Islanders in an attempt to control their access to shipping – to sail for Auckland on 29 January 1926. The administrator allotted a sum of £100 for the work, and advised that no further work would be done on the reef thereafter. The Annual Report for the year ended 1925, noted:

This will necessitate the use of the services of an engineer of the submarine miners, to lay the explosive charges and carry out the demolition of the passage through the reef. About 1,500lb. of gun-cotton, with all needful primers, fuses &c., are on hand, available for the work.

Emily Bay Airport – 1939

Despite the advice from 1925, the idea of using Emily Bay as a safe harbour was raised once more, in 1939. In a feasibility report for establishing an air base on Norfolk Island, Flight Lieutenant TC Curnow noted that mooring buoys for aircraft could be installed in either Emily or Cemetery Bays. His preference was for Emily Bay, which is not really surprising, although he remarked that considerable blasting would need to be carried out to ensure the bay was safe for emergency use. Even so, that year a new entrance to Emily Bay, eight feet wide, eight feet deep and ten chains long, was cut.

So, returning to the casual observations of island residents: a shallower bay, a wider beach, and a narrowing Quintal’s Passage:

The swamp has continued to be drained throughout the two British colonial settlements, and during the Pitcairn settlement, which commenced with the Pitcairn islanders arrival in 1856. Is it possible that Quintal’s Passage has allowed the bay to be flushed with seawater more readily and thoroughly than it is today? And, is it possible that the gradual narrowing of Quintal’s Passage is impeding that flushing of the bay at the eastern end, thereby allowing a sick coral reef system to keep reinfecting itself? It’s a thought!

In the diagram taken from the Norfolk Island Lagoonal Reef Ecosystem Health Assessment 2020-2021 (Australian Marine Parks), below, you can see the directions and speeds of flows across the lagoonal ecosystem in March and April, 2020. It can be seen from this that Emily Bay doesn’t flush as quickly as some would like to believe.

I would add here, re-blasting the channel is not something I am advocating at all!

However, none of this discussion considers the root cause of the problem, which is that we continue to allow nutrient-rich water to drain out onto a coral reef. Of course, the influence of Quintal’s Passage on the health of our reef is merely idle speculation on my part, but whatever way you look at it, the history is fascinating.

We have shaped and moulded the Kingston landscape to suit our own ends, whether it is by draining the swamp, undertaking major earthworks and quarrying, or by using it for agriculture, grazing, manufacturing and building. We’ve planted marram grass and Norfolk Island pines to hold back the dunes and mined the sand for road building. What has eventuated from all this activity is a unique historical and cultural landscape, so special that in 2010, the Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area was inscribed on the World Heritage List as one of 11 historic sites that together form the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage Property.*

Simultaneously, the confluence of human activities and a unique natural environment have created a landscape of incredible significance, but have also contributed to placing the reef at risk. Kingston is a site that deserves the right resources and some special management to preserve all its facets. It is a difficult job to balance all these amenities, but it is a job we have to apply ourselves to if we are to maintain both a healthy coral reef and a unique World Heritage landscape.

*Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, communications and the Arts