Norfolk Island expedition

Explore Norfolk Island, a small island with a big history and unique biodiversity. Learn about the research Australian Museum scientists and collaborators are conducting and how you can be involved.

Updated

21/11/24

Dr Helen Smith and Natalie Tees on Norfolk Island expedition

Natalie Tees and Paul Flemons on Phillip Island at night

Nesting red-tailed tropicbird, Norfolk Island.

Scientists on Phillip Island in the morning

The Norfolk Island expedition

The Australian Museum, known for its exciting scientific expeditions to places like Lord Howe Island, Balls Pyramid and the Solomon Islands, will conduct scientific research on Norfolk Island for its 2022-2025 expedition. Norfolk Island has a diverse environment and notable historic sites offering a unique heritage seldom found elsewhere around the world.

The Australian Museum and its collaborators will be travelling to Norfolk Island to undertake multiple phases of research over the next two years. This expedition is a broad-scale, multi-pronged collaborative program of biodiversity surveys and archaeological fieldwork.

The expedition will take place over two phases:

2022: Phase 1: Terrestrial biodiversity survey and archaeological excavations.
2025: Phase 2: Marine biodiversity survey.

Phase 1: October-November 2022

Rebecca Bray (Auckland Museum) and Dane Trembath (Australian Museum) scaling the steep landing site on Phillip Island. Image: Tom Bannigan
© Australian Museum

In collaboration with the Norfolk Island community, Parks Australia, the Australian Institute of Botanical Science and the Auckland War Memorial Museum, Australian Museum scientists have conducted biodiversity surveys of native and introduced fauna and flora, adding to the existing scientific knowledge of the biodiversity of the Island and inform management practices.

A program of archaeological fieldwork, including excavation, was conducted by University of Sydney Masters student Nicola Jorgensen and Australian Museum scientist Dr Amy Way in collaboration with the Norfolk Island community. This excavation has furthered our understanding of pre-European, Polynesian settlement on Norfolk Island and explored the nature and extent of this occupation through the objects they left behind.

Norfolk Island video overview

Cinematographer Tom Bannigan accompanied the team in 2022 producing two short videos of the expedition.

Phillip Island video overview

Cinematographer Tom Bannigan produced this video focusing on a smaller venture to Phillip Island.

3D Scans

During the 2022 Norfolk Island expedition, two Polynesian-style stone adzes, made of basalt, were excavated during an archaeological excavation. The excavation confirmed this was an adze-making site, making this the second investigated Polynesian site on Norfolk Island. Each adze was at a different stage of manufacture.

During the expedition, Meagan Warwick and Charlie Kingsford scanned the adzes. As part of the community engagement program, we welcomed locals to experience 3D scanning each afternoon in the lab and during the community day which was held at the end of the expedition week. This technology inspired locals of all ages to learn how the AM-technology works. Back at the Museum, our team have put this data together to create these 3D models. Please explore further below:

Members of the Australian Museum Malacology team – Dr Frank Köhler and Dr Isabel Hyman – and Taronga Zoo colleague, Parnee Bonson, visited Phillip Island as part of the AM-led Norfolk Island expedition. The team were on the look-out for Critically Endangered snails, and the results were astounding!

6 November 2023

The Norfolk Island puzzle: Identifying new insect and spider species

The ongoing identification of insect and spider specimens collected during the Australian Museum-led Norfolk Island expedition is throwing up a host of new family and species records & plenty of puzzles. The AM Arachnology & Entomology team tell us about these exciting finds and the work ahead.

10 October 2023

Bats, rats and cats – oh my!

To gain a holistic biological and historical picture of an area, both native and introduced species should be studied over time. Recently, our mammalogy team surveyed bats, rats and cats on the Australian Museum-led expedition to Norfolk Island.

1 August 2023

Dr Richard Major and Emily Cave on Norfolk Island expedition

The beautiful birds of Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island is home to many beautiful birds – however, Norfolk Island also has an unenviable extinction rate when it comes to its bird fauna. To understand more, our scientists studied the endemic and exotic birdlife of Norfolk Island during the recent Australian Museum-led expedition.

17 May 2023

Wayne Cherry collecting botany specimens, during AM-led Norfolk Island expedition, Phase 1, 2022.

Researchers discover new plant species on recent Norfolk Island expedition

A team from the Australian Institute of Botanical Science has collected about 400 plant specimens on the recent Australian Museum-led expedition to Norfolk Island, helping the community identify new weeds that potentially could cause havoc to local ecosystems.

17 April 2023

Entomologists Dr Helen Smith and Natalie Tees studying Norfolk's insects and spiders

Norfolk Island expedition: Understanding a South Pacific jewel

Norfolk Island, a small island with a big history and unique biodiversity, was chosen by the Australian Museum for its 2022-2024 expedition.

19 January 2023

Watawieh (Hello)! AM visit to Norfolk Island ahead of expedition

In early September, Kim McKay AO, Professor Kristofer Helgen and Paul Flemons visited stunning Norfolk Island and met with the community. This trip was in preparation for Phase 1 of the Australian Museum led expedition to Norfolk Island, which is taking place in late October.

18 October 2022

Nancibella quintalae, until now thought to be extinct

Rare snail species found alive on Norfolk Island after 130 years

The tiny, enigmatic snail was last collected in 1889 and is currently listed as extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). So, we were very excited to find Nancibella quintalae alive on Norfolk Island!

4 December 2020

Image of Team Snail on Norfolk Island. Andrew Daly, Isabel Hyman and Mandy Reid on Norfolk Island.

The science behind the stamps: Land snail research on Norfolk Island

Australia Post has just released a new stamp issue featuring two of Norfolk Island’s beautiful endemic land snails – species that are currently the focus of taxonomic and conservation work by AMRI scientists.

6 July 2021

Speciation and extinction: the land snails of Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island

Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands have remarkably rich, narrowly endemic land snail faunas, with a combined ~130 unique species.

Tuesday 20 April 2022

Learn more

More information:

Sydney Morning Herald (2022). ‘Not a scrap of vegetation’: The decades-long fight to bring Phillip Island back from the brink.
Sydney Morning Herald (2022). A sick turtle and a forgotten reef: The story that has become a social media sensation.
Sydney Morning Herald (2022). Norfolk Island find solves part of Pacific’s most enduring mystery.
Australian Geographic (2022). Ancient stone tools uncovered on Norfolk Island by Australian archaeologists will rewrite history.

Do you have any feedback about the Norfolk Island expedition? Please contact AMRI using the form below.

Contact AMRI

Our team: Phase 1

Norfolk Island is located in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and New Caledonia, 1,412 kilometres (877 mi) directly east of Australia's Evans Head and about 900 kilometres (560 mi) from Lord Howe Island. Together with the neighbouring Phillip Island and Nepean Island, the three islands collectively form the Territory of Norfolk Island. At the 2021 ABS census, it had 2,188 inhabitants living on a total area of about 35 km² (14 sq mi), its capital is Kingston.

The first known settlers in Norfolk Island were East Polynesians but they had already departed when Great Britain settled it as part of its 1788 settlement of Australia. The island served as a convict penal settlement from 6 March 1788 until 5 May 1855, except for an 11-year hiatus between 15 February 1814 and 6 June 1825, when it lay abandoned. On 8 June 1856, permanent civilian residence on the island began when descendants of the Bounty mutineers were relocated from Pitcairn Island. In 1914 the UK handed Norfolk Island over to Australia to administer as an external territory, but as a distinct and separate settlement.

This remote island is also of major biological importance, still relatively poorly understood in a marine sense, and has many rare and endangered species unique to the island and surrounding area. This expedition offers a rare opportunity to survey nearshore biodiversity not impacted by commercial fishing with an expectation of discovering new species amongst its broad array of unique habitats. Changing global weather patterns and oceanic circulation impacts marine fauna and a key goal of this expedition will be looking for evidence of changes in distributions of open water and nearshore vertebrate and invertebrate marine species.

On the Islands themselves, the status and origins of NI terrestrial fauna will benefit from further scientific investigation. The AM will clarify the status of vertebrate and invertebrate species, native and introduced, on the main and offshore islands to inform management of these areas and contribute to an understanding of the origins of these species and how they fit into the global puzzle of species radiation to inform management of the fauna on other similarly remote islands. An example of how AM scientists can work together with Norfolk Islanders to promote conservation management, is the recent rediscovery of land snail Advena campbellii by Norfolk Island local Mark Scott in 2020, leading to a conservation program initiated by the AM.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We acknowledge the Polynesian/Tupuna/Tipuna who first called Norfolk Island home, whose story is still being written and pieced together. Through our work, we endeavour to add pages to their widely unknown narrative. We honour their connection to this land/whenua/fauna in times gone by and invite them to guide and breathe life back into the treasures which they left for us to uncover and to piece together the story they did not tell.

We extend that acknowledgement to the descendants of the Pitcairn Islanders who still walk this land and whose Polynesian ties link them back to the East of this Great Ocean – Tahiti. We honour their Pacific story on this land, we acknowledge their Tupuna/Tipuna ancestors and the culture they forged here on Norfolk Island. A culture that continues to thrive today.

And finally, we acknowledge the other Pacific Island communities that now call this Island home. The Pacific diasporas from across the Great Ocean – whose connection to this land may be more recent but whose presence also adds to the Pacific narrative of Norfolk Island in the here and now.

THANK YOU

The Australian Museum would like to thank donors and the Australian Museum Foundation for their support of this expedition. The first phase was made possible by the generosity of the Vonwiller Foundation and Vanessa Tay.