Norfolk Island is a small inhabited island in the Pacific Ocean located between ► Australia, ► New Zealand and ► New Caledonia, and along with two neighbouring islands forms one of Australia's external territories. Norfolk Island is the main island of the island group the territory encompasses and is located at 29°02′S 167°57′E. It has an area of 34.6 km² (13.3 mi²), with no large-scale internal bodies of water but 32 km of coastline.
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day Norfolk Island, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day Norfolk Island.
Norfolk Island, discovered in 1774 by the British explorer James Cook, becomes a British penal colony in 1788, which it remains until 1855, when it becomes part of New South Wales. From 1844 to 1856 it is part of Van Diemen's Land, but in 1856 it is re-incorporated in New South Wales as a separate territory. From 1914 on it is an Australian federal territory. It is granted selfgovernment in 1978, when it gets an own legislative assembly.
Notes and references
General remarks:
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.