There are no traffic lights, cows have right of way, the local radio station announces a shop’s unusual opening hours, cars are never locked and keys are left in ignitions. You’ll also find chickens wandering freely across the paved roads. “We call them free range, but really they’re feral,” jokes one local. The flight to Norfolk Island is, in many ways, a time machine taking us backwards. Even from the sky, spotting the rocky outcrop rising from the water, vivid green with steep cliffs dropping into turquoise water, the island looks almost undiscovered, certainly isolated. Locals stereotype visitors to the island as living in the golden years. And, sure enough, we’re the only people on the flight from Sydney without a full head of grey. Seniors are drawn by package tours of the island’s dark history, the fresh air, and because Norfolk is a quaint and nostalgic return to the way things used to be, the good and bad. But change is in the air. “Norfolk is the new Tassie,” a local tells me. “Just give us 15 years.” For now, shops stand as though they haven’t been updated since the ’50s, their frontages boasting original signage, selling fashion from another era and antiques as though they’re from this one.

But in this place from another time, there’s a wistful retreat as well to the good things in life. Many of the approximately 1750 residents – some who can trace their ancestry back to the mutineers on the Bounty whose descendants settled on Norfolk in 1856 with Polynesian partners and children – are now farmers. Wonky vegetables and fruit are sold roadside via trust boxes. I hire an open-topped Mini Moke to make the most of the offerings, spooning flesh from a ripe papaya or grazing on tiny sweet bananas en route. It’s some of the best food on the island; hunting and gathering Norf’k style. Many residents grow their own, or barter their produce gluts in a kind of island ‘freeconomy’, often leaving edible offerings on neighbours’ doorsteps.

Emily Ryves and her husband Zach Sanders were two young Norfolk Islanders who left, explored the world and returned because they missed the island and its unique position cut off from the normal. Their Hilli Goat Farm produces several cheeses as well as a goat’s milk skincare line. Emily runs tours of the farm that include a milking and a shared lunch sourced from the property. “In Australia they talk about food miles; on Norfolk Island it’s food metres,” she says. When I ask her if everything we’ve eaten during lunch is local, she says no: “The potatoes are from down the road and the onions across the other side of the island.” This is a place where the word ‘local’ refers to your own backyard. Everything else is grown on her property or, in the case of the trumpeter fish served in coconut sauce, caught in the waters at the bottom of the nearby cliff. A fragrant, delicious coconut pie is Emily’s nod to the island’s Polynesian history.

I drive the Moke to pristine Emily Bay, said to be named after a young girl, born in 1803, who was among the first settlers and drowned there. Norfolk Island folklore is riddled with these dark, terrible tales and ghost stories, and locals relish shared tales of haunted houses, tortured prisoners and wrecked fishing boats. The bay is undeveloped and the absence of tourists – not one retiree in a swimsuit here – means I have it almost to myself. Mardi from Picnic in Paradise delivers a basket filled with locally sourced produce: berries, cheeses and a small quiche she’s made. I eat and consider sleeping on the grass under the shade of a soaring Norfolk pine. Mardi reappears after I’ve left to clear the picnic away. I ask locals about the absence of younger tourists on the island, and they seem equally bewildered. There are perfect beaches, even surf, an explorable wilderness, and everyone speaks English. It is Australia, after all. Driving past the prison ruins, I pass another Moke – young tourists! Nearly 1000 prisoners were housed in the prisoners’ barracks and the New Gaol, which stand by the water, among a stunning backdrop.

The roads are notoriously bumpy – “Potholes are heritage-listed here,” jokes a local. Walking after sunset is both an impossible and terrifying idea. By now I’ve heard too many ghost stories, plus even the strongest torch cannot undo the blanket of blackness that falls after dark when the moon is low and the street lights never appear. Instead I find the people. Locals and visitors alike are regulars at the RSL, the Leagues Club, the Bowling Club and a late-night cafe called Rumours, where some of the wild roosters and chickens congregate on the lawn. There’s much life at popular Dino’s, a rambling cottage and former house considered one of the better restaurants on the island. The food is homely; I have local beef ragu with a gremolata, slightly overladen with truffle oil and, strangely, two types of pasta cooked to different bites. The dark wood walls are made from Norfolk pine and covered with eclectic art. Fergie the corgie wanders between the tables.

On another night, I sit under the stars on the large deck at the Castaway Hotel restaurant, which presents a local goat Indian curry served with roti and an exceptionally good housemade cucumber relish. It’s so splendid, I recommend it to a table of locals who sit nearby, then spend the remainder of the evening hearing tales of convicts, shipwrecks and the “inevitable demise” of Norfolk Island now that the Australian Government demands locals pay income and land tax.

Sadly, Norfolk Island’s status as Australia’s only self-governing external territory has been revoked. The government has put the island under the Commonwealth’s tax and welfare system for the first time. Already the changes mean farming is a declining career choice, while locals say many will be forced to leave Norfolk, or cater to tourists instead of one another. Things move slowly here, but change, the good and bad, is occurring in this quaint Pacific speck girt by sea.