The Norfolk Island Museum complex is located in Kingston, one of the most historic sites in Australasia.

Recent excavations have confirmed that Polynesians settled on Norfolk Island some 800 years before Captain James Cook set foot ashore in 1774. The first period of European occupation began in 1788, six weeks after the founding of the infant colony at Sydney Cove, when a party of convicts and soldiers established an agricultural settlement. The produce of this settlement probably saved the Sydney inhabitants from starvation. However by 1804 it was no longer needed and it was progressively evacuated, the last prisoners leaving in 1814.

In 1825 the British Government established the island as a place of extreme punishment for secondary offenders - those considered to be the worst type of convicts. In 1852 Bishop Wilson found conditions so bad on the island that he recommended closure of the settlement and most of the Island's population was removed between 1847 and 1855.

The third period of occupation began in 1856 when the whole community of Pitcairn Island, some of whom were descendants of the Bounty Mutineers and their Tahitian wives, arrived on Norfolk Island. Today one third of the population is of Pitcairn descent.