Phillip Island
To the south, Norfolk Island has two uninhabited neighbours. About a kilometre offshore lies Nepean Island - a small islet of coral and sandstone which provides a haven for thousands of seabirds. Much of Kingston is built from blocks quarried there by Lieutenant King's convicts. Phillip Island - 6 kilometres south of Point Hunter - is a volcanic mass rising to 300 metres at its highest point. This peak is called 'Jacky Jacky' in the mistaken belief that a prisoner of that name jumped from it to his death. In fact, should a convict have managed to get rid of his irons and, by great good fortune, to have struck a day when the usual frothing cauldron was just a nasty swell, and should he finally have found a foothold on Phillip's snarling rocks, enabling him to clamber ashore, he would have found nothing to eat unless he could catch a seabird with his bare hands. Hunger would eventually goad him into attempts at catching the pearly geckoes, and even the superb Wanderer butter-flies, but he would survive for only a few days, as on the entire island he would find not a drop of drinkable water.
A monumental mishap perpetrated by the early commandants reduced Phillip to a barren moonscape. As a source of food for the colony and sport for the officers, 4000 pigs plus goats and rabbits were introduced. With no natural predators, the pigs and goats devoured 90 percent of the vegetation and, when they were gone, the rabbits stripped it to its kaleidoscopic rocks. A long and expensive eradication program has finally destroyed the last rabbit and the greening has begun, but the island still throbs with eerie colour.