“That, Captain Bligh, that is the thing; I am in hell — I am in hell.”
Fletcher Christian's reply when Lieutenant Bligh, during the 1789 mutiny on HMS Bounty, reminded him of past kindness. His despair set in motion the voyage to Pitcairn Island whose descendants would found Norfolk Island's modern community in 1856.
— Fletcher Christian, Norfolk Island
Source: William Bligh, A Narrative of the Mutiny on Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty (1790)
More Proverbs from Norfolk Island
The wind from the east is the wind from home.
The easterly trade wind is remembered as a nostalgic reference to Pitcairn Island, the ancestral homeland of Norfolk Island's Pitcairn-descended community.
He'll see so good, he'll see round a corner.
A humorous exaggeration remembered as one of the sayings of islander Charles Henry Evans (born 1886), still recalled today under the nickname "Dar thing fe Chat's" — part of Norfolk Island's tradition of cherishing individually name-tagged sayings.
Whatever you can do today, do it well tomorrow.
A line from islander Archie Bigg's Norf'k poem "Morla el do", encouraging care and quality over rushed effort.
He makes my heart flip over.
A figurative Norf'k expression for falling in love, borrowing the nautical word "kepsais" (capsize) to picture a heart overturned by affection.
Stuck together like a fastboat to a whale.
Describes two people, usually lovers, who are inseparable — drawing on the whaling-era image of a small boat fastened tight to a captured whale.
That's a real fastboat story.
Norf'k for a comic, "whale-sized" exaggeration — used to gently tease someone for stretching the truth for a laugh, part of the island's dry, nautical humour.