After landing on a lush green dot in the South Pacific and learning that the airport flags are flying at half-mast because that is the tradition whenever anyone on the island dies — anyone — the suspicion firms.

Discovering on the way from the airport to the hotel that every driver waves at every other driver, while giving strolling cows the right of way, makes it a certainty.

Different is how these islanders have been since their ancestors staged the famed mutiny on the Bounty — celebrated in song, dance and Hollywood movies — and different is the way they want to stay.

Which is why a modern-day mutiny loomed when the Australian government announced last year that the island faced bankruptcy and Canberra planned to take greater control of the self-governing territory.

"The individuality that came down to us from the Bounty and the Tahitian ladies accounts to a large extent for the inbuilt opposition to the move," says Tom Lloyd, who owned the local newspaper for 40 years before retiring in 2005.

Most of the core population of some 1300 islanders are descendants of the swashbuckling British sailors and beautiful Tahitian women immortalised in a series of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' movies.

The mutineers set Captain William Bligh adrift from the British warship the Bounty when they famously fell in love with the South Seas, and its women, in 1789.

The mutiny gained such a romantic gloss that chief mutineer Fletcher Christian has been portrayed by a series of Hollywood heart-throbs over the years, including Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson.

So many of the islanders are descended from the band of mutineers that the telephone directory lists their nicknames for purposes of clarity. Fletcher Christian's offspring are known as Morg, Doosy, Toofy, Moochie, Loppy and Smudge.

Christian and eight other mutineers first made their home on Pitcairn Island with a group of Tahitian women, but their descendants moved nearly 6000km to Norfolk Island in 1856 when Pitcairn became too small for them.

Queen Victoria had granted them the right to settle in the abandoned former penal colony, but from the early days there were disputes about the degree of independence the islanders were given.

No poverty in paradise

The tiny sub-tropical paradise of green hills and valleys perched on steep cliffs above crashing surf has been classed as a self-governing Australian territory since 1914.

But it is 1500 kilometres east of the Australian coast, surrounded only by the vastness of the south Pacific, and the people call themselves Norfolk Islanders, not Australians.

The Polynesian ancestry shimmers like a ghost through the faces of the islanders, strong in some, weaker in others where the European bloodline dominates.

All speak English, but among themselves break into their own singsong dialect, a mixture of 18th Century English and Tahitian.

"There was very strong resentment of the idea of more Australian control," says Peter Maywald, an Australian who has been secretary to the island's government for three years.

With no income or company tax, the nine-person elected assembly raises money through import duties, a tax on tourist beds, controlling all liquor sales and running government enterprises such as Norfolk Telecom.

The Australian government finally dropped its plan to take more powers in December, after consultants found that the island could be solvent if it sorted out a few issues — sparking great celebration, Maywald said.

"It's an affluent island in general terms," he told AFP. "It is sustainable on a model that is just totally different from Australia and New Zealand — it's based on low taxes, low wage costs, low welfare, low regulation."

Tourism is the main industry, but Norfolk has managed to avoid the poverty-in-paradise trap which afflicts many other South Pacific islands that rely on holidaymakers for income.

'It's almost a pure form of communism"

"As a boy it was purely a subsistence economy because nobody had much money, but nobody ever went hungry or didn't have a roof over their heads or somebody to love them," said Lloyd (77).

"From what I know of communism it was almost a pure form of communism, when nobody had anything but everybody had everything."

Younger islanders, many of them having returned home after travelling widely for education, training or simply on holiday, are also proud of the communal spirit in their homeland.

"I feel privileged sometimes, to know eight generations of my family history," says Kath, a woman in her 30s whose maiden name was Christian, as she serves customers in a bar scented by fresh hibiscus flowers on the tables.

"My cash-box from my other job and my wallet are in the car outside," she says, pointing to the main street of the small commercial centre of Burnt Pine. "And the car's not locked."

Kath makes the point about the lack of crime on Norfolk because the first murder since the Bounty descendants arrived 150 years ago has focused unwelcome international attention on the island.

The brutal killing on Easter Sunday 2002 of Australian woman Janelle Patton (29) who was working on the island as a restaurant manager, shook the community to its core.

The discovery of her stabbed and battered body marked the beginning of four years of torment for the islanders, who were forced to consider the possibility that the killer was one of the extended family of Bountry descendents.

But last year a New Zealander, Glenn McNeill (29) who had been working on the island as a chef, was arrested and charged with her murder. His trial began this month.

If he is convicted, the islanders say privately, they will have a second reason to be grateful: in the space of a few months they will have retained their independence and been cleansed of the suspicion that one of their number was a murderer.

For more info...
• Visit the website of Norfolk Island Tourism.

AFP