Kathy Marks on new findings of how native people fared in Australia after their terrifying initial contact with Europeans

Norfolk Island, a small volcanic outcrop in the Pacific Ocean, has always jealously guarded its way of life. There are no traffic lights on the island, cows have right of way and the local phone book lists the 2,000 or so residents by their nicknames.

As it happens, everything I knew about travel as a boy, I learnt from Alan Whicker – starting with the extraordinary black-and-white footage of an Englishman with the moustache and the manner of an Army officer lost in the wintry wastes of America's biggest state. "After stopping a train in Alaska, the rest of your life is an anti-climax," says Whicker, raising his right arm. The powerful locomotive hauling a train that seems to be the length of the Yukon River, harrumphs to a halt to allow him to climb aboard – and deliver another brilliant piece-to-camera, as precise and clipped as his trademark moustache.

It struck in Chile, wrecking hospitals, roads and homes, but it was so massive that the tidal wave it unleashed prompted evacuations thousands of miles away in Hawaii

The sea was a long way from my childhood. It was another country, one we went to once a year for the whole of the summer holidays. For 12 years it was always the same place, always the same way of getting there: a series of blunt-nosed buses that smelt of oil and damp plush. You get the same sort of smell in small- town cinemas on a rainy Saturday night.

Family celebration

The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish In the Old World and the New by Thomas Keneally, Chatto pounds 25

BY THE age of 55, most sports players have long since joined the gerontocracy and lapsed into "it weren't like this in my day" mode. Margaret Johnston, five times a world champion, is a shining exception to this rule.

Zephyrine Barbarachild runs a one-woman gardening business from a base in Lancashire. She talked to Anna Pavord about her circuitous route to the business that gives her satisfying work all the year round.

Bowls

----------------------------------------------------------------- COMMONWEALTH GAMES FINAL MEDALS TABLE ----------------------------------------------------------------- G S B Australia 84 53 41 Canada 38 41 49 England 31 41 47 Nigeria 12 13 13 Kenya 7 4 8 India 6 11 6 Wales 5 6 6 Scotland 5 3 10 Northern Ireland 5 2 3 New Zealand 4 16 17 Nauru 3 0 0 South Africa 2 4 5 Jamaica 2 4 2 Malaysia 2 3 2 Cyprus 2 1 2 Sri Lanka 1 2 0 Zambia 1 1 2 Namibia 1 0 1 Zimbabwe 0 3 3 Papua New Guinea 0 1 0 Western Samoa 0 1 0 Pakistan 0 0 3 Hong Kong 0 0 2 Trinidad and Tobago 0 0 2 Uganda 0 0 2 Bermuda 0 0 1 Guernsey 0 0 1 Tanzania 0 0 1 Botswana 0 0 1 Ghana 0 0 1 Norfolk Island 0 0 1 Seychelles 0 0 1 Tonga 0 0 1 No silver or bronze medals awarded in men's pairs running target-shooting; no bronze awarded in women's 50km team cycling time- trial and 4 x 200 freestyle swimming. Disabled medals are not included. -----------------------------------------------------------------

TEN YEARS ago, Sujit Sopon came across an obscure entry in an encyclopaedia about a rather bizarre game played by people in faraway countries.

TONY ALLCOCK and John Ottaway suffered an unexpected setback in their quest for the Woolwich world pairs bowls championship when their winning run was ended at Worthing yesterday. The English partnership lost 24-17 to South Africa's Bill Moseley and Neil Burkett.

ENGLAND picked up where they had left off in the pairs and triples at the Woolwich World Championships in Worthing yesterday. John Ottaway and Tony Allcock beat Thailand's pair 22-13, and John Bell's triple overwhelmed Guernsey 24-8.