Norfolk Island is running out of food, its residents say, after the recent decommissioning of a ship by the main freight company servicing the island.
Residents of the tiny island 1,412km east of the New South Wales north coast, which relies heavily on the importing of goods from mainland Australia and New Zealand, say many supermarket shelves are empty as shops run out of basics like toothpaste, rice and deodorant.
“The situation is quite bad,” said Geoff Bennett, who owns the island’s biggest supermarket, Foodland, as images of empty shelves circulated on social media.
“We just haven’t got enough capacity in sea cargo to fill the shelves up again.”
Until last year, freight company Pacific Direct Line was running regular cargo services to Norfolk from Auckland with the vessel, Capitaine Wallis, but the company announced the ship was being taken out of operation in November.
After outcry from residents, the company scheduled another ship, the Southern Tiare, to come out to Norfolk while a more permanent solution was being negotiated.
The Southern Tiare’s last voyage there was at the end of December. Norfolk hasn’t had a cargo ship arrive since. While the Southern Tiare is due to sail there again at the end of March, the intervening months have seen supplies reduce substantially, and the forthcoming schedule only provides approximately 50% of the island’s freight needs.
After the Capitaine Wallis was taken off the route, the Norfolk Island administration organised Australian-government subsidised air-freight services to continue to ensure essentials came in.
But with a weight limit of approximately 1.5 tonnes, compared to the 1,000 tonnes available on a ship, and a cost increase of more than 500% for some goods, air freight can only be a limited, temporary solution.
“We are certainly facing some challenges,” Eric Hutchinson, Norfolk’s Australian government-appointed administrator, told Guardian Australia.
He sought to downplay fears that there was no food on the island. “Stocks vary across the items that are available and from retailer to retailer.
“If you’re a tourist coming to Norfolk Island you will get fed, and you’ll get fed really well.”
Hutchinson said planes were not a long-term solution as it was uneconomic in a lot of cases to transport things by air. But he said there was “no limitation” on the flights.
“If there is additional capacity required, there’s capacity to be able to bring those flights forward as is required.”
While many island residents acknowledged that the island often had lean times, those who spoke to Guardian Australia said they had “never seen it this bad before”.
Martin Cross runs Norfolk Stock Feed. He told Guardian Australia that he’s been out of supplies for weeks.
“Normally I have stock all the time. I never run out. But I haven’t had chook feed for seven weeks,” he said.
Cross said that due to a lack of chook feed, those with livestock had begun feeding oats, rice and other grains to their animals, further depleting food resources.
“We’ve had our times when we’ve run out of things. But we’ve never had our shelves on the supermarkets as empty as they are now. There’s no toothpaste, deodorant, rice, flour. All the staples are not there.”
“I’ve probably got a tonne of stuff sitting in Brisbane waiting to come over that I can’t get on board,” said Cross. “Never seen it this bad.”
He called the situation a “national crisis” in an article he published over the weekend in the Norfolk Online News.
Norfolk Island is one of very few remaining places in the world to operate without containerised freight, due to the lack of safe anchorage at the dock for cargo ships. Instead, ships remain out at sea, with loose cargo picked up with grappling nets and lowered down the side of the ship into wooden lighters that bring it to shore. The limitations add a further complicating factor to the freight issue.
As of last week, there were six flights scheduled before the Southern Tiare was due to arrive. A working group of importers, stevedores, shipping agents, the shipping company and community members was meeting regularly to find a solution.
“We’ve got a really constructive group that are looking at addressing what we want to happen which is a regular and reliable and cost effective sea freight service to Norfolk Island,” Hutchinson said.
Norfolk has been governed from Canberra since 2015, despite a strong local independence movement. There are approximately 1,800 permanent residents on the island, with about 700 to 900 tourists at any one time during peak season, according to the island’s administration.
Tourism is Norfolk’s primary industry. Many locals hold livestock and grow fruit and vegetables, some commercially, but there’s no capacity for large-scale industry on the island, so essentials such as toiletries, staples like rice, flour and cooking oil, and many discretionary items and foodstuffs must be imported.
