By definition one of Australia’s most remote communities, Norfolk Island, 1400 kilometres from Sydney and out on its own in the South Pacific, could be at the start of a generational change that may steer it on a different course into the future.
For decades a destination with appeal to seniors who liked its pastoral quietude and duty-free shopping, a Gold Coast real estate operation that has just entered the property scene there sees scope for widely signalling its clean, green, locally grown credentials to a younger crowd.
L.J.Hooker’s Tara Imlach, who is currently marketing two commercial properties with multi-retail outlets in the commercial centre of the island’s largest town, Burnt Pine, says a fresh cohort has entered the council and is discussing re-zonings that would encourage more properties to convert from retail to food and beverage.
As well as a wine producer, there’s already a microbrewery there. But Imlach reckons the Island could host more breweries and interesting hospitality venues, “and a new [visitor] generation could definitely give it uplift”.
Angie Anderson, of Pitcairn Islander descent and until recently a resident Norfolk realtor, says there has been a noticeable shift from senior tour groups to FITs, or free independent travellers, and that an already-healthy hospitality scene “with heaps of employment” is grateful for the return of backpacker workers.
Battered like other destinations by national and international COVID shutdowns, with an economy so heavily reliant on tourism, Norfolk Island – or “NI” – has undertaken extensive rebranding, including online images of sapphire seas, spiking pines in emerald farmlands, World Heritage penal ruins and a copy style overtly aimed at a youthful demographic.
This “paradise”, with its convict and Pitcairn credentials, offers snorkelling, fishing and a mode of surfing described as “from the time when surfing had a soul”.
The promotional material also considers that, in producing such a range of locally raised edibles that boast of costing only carbon metres rather than carbon miles, NI was organic “long before it was ‘a thing’ ”.
One of the two properties on the Taylors Road commercial drag that L.J.Hooker is selling is The Strand Arcade – with 13 tenancies, one of which is vacant – that is priced at $1.5 million.
Further down the street is a two-shop building with a two-bedroom apartment above, priced at $1.2 million.
Putting the prices on the adverts is also an island thing. The prices, Imlach explains, are based on the estimations of a fly-in valuer. They may be negotiable but “we think they’re pretty fair”.
Of the more than two dozen commercial properties currently up for grabs on NI, quite a number are strung along Taylors Road, and at least five are hotels, motels or multiple units. Like the residential and land offerings, there is extensive variation in the valuations, from well under $500,000 to a whisker under $6 million.
Norfolk has fewer than 2000 permanent residents. Many others, including the two Taylors Road owners, also have homes on the Australian mainland and move between addresses for months at a time.
Both holdings have come to market because their long-term owners have experienced changed family circumstances that have pushed them to retire permanently to Sydney or the Gold Coast.
Another motel-like operation that Tara Imlach had for a time was taken off the market when it was “rezoned from accommodation to permanent residency and the owner decided to stay to get the permanent income from the [residential] rental demand”.
Angie Anderson confirms that the rental scene is good, with returns of as high as $500 a week on a house that might have cost $700,000. Compared to more expensive mainland investment properties, “that’s not too bad”, she says.
If more zonings change from retail to other commercial uses, Imlach believes NI has all the attributes to develop as a sophisticated farm-to-plate destination similar to New Zealand’s Waiheke Island, which has 30 wineries and is a 40-minute ferry ride from Auckland.
NI is further from a capital city “but is still only two hours from Sydney or Brisbane”. Qantas flies in and out daily.
For the younger market, Imlach believes, NI is a bit of a “golden secret”.
“But it reminds me of our Sunshine Coast, or our Gold Coast hinterland. It’s green, there are a lot of farms, you drive hilly, scenic roads past all these cliff and ocean views. You can drive right onto the beach. It’s beautiful.”