There is Norfolk Island, where nearly half the inhabitants are proud descendants of Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers.
There's Nuaru, a speck on the map just below the equator in the middle of the Pacific. And Vanuatu, a land of coconut oil and leisure in the South Pacific.Or the Falkland Islands, where war is a fresh memory and a 17-year-old boy jumped naked off a pier into the icy south Atlantic to raise money to help send his homeland's four-person team to Victoria.
That's how important it is for these tiny remnants of the British Empire to be a part of the Commonwealth Games.
None has a more colorful past or is smaller in population than Norfolk Island, which rises sharply from the sea 900 miles off the east coast of Australia.
Two centuries ago, it was a brutal penal colony. Now its 1,800 citizens live in almost perfect harmony on an island with only three police officers.
"It's wonderful," said Marie Forsyth, one of 14 lawn bowlers on the Norfolk Island team. "Everyone is very friendly. There's no crime on the island at all. You don't have to lock your house or your car or anything like that. Everybody knows one another."
Forsyth's maiden name is McCoy. She is a direct descendant of William McCoy, a Bounty crew member known for producing an extremely stout home brew.
When Christian and the rest of the crew set Captain Bligh adrift 200 years ago, they first settled on Pitcairn Island.
But the island became crowded. First, some of the settlers went back to Tahiti, but they didn't like it there, either. So finally, in 1856, with the blessing of the British government, the "Pitcairners" traveled 4,000 kilometers to Norfolk.
The island had been a harsh prison for the worst of the criminals shipped by the British government to Australia in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
"It was really the hell-hole of the Pacific," said Tom Lloyd, a Pitcairner and secretary-general of the Norfolk Island Commonwealth Games Federation.
But the shipments ended and the penal colony was disbanded before the Pitcairners arrived.
The tree-covered island covers 8,500 acres. No immigration is allowed. For someone to move in, someone must move out.
Lawn bowling has long been popular at the island's lone club. There also are two shooters on this year's team and attempts are being made to develop other sports.
"We've got some big bruisers down there who can throw the hammer quite well but they're rough as nails," Lloyd said.
Like the Falklanders, Norfolk team members had to raise money to make it to the games. They held fish fries, raffles and cake sales.
Some of the other Commonwealth outposts don't have Norfolk's colorful past.
Sprinter Frederick Cannon, one of three Nauru citizens at the games, calls his homeland "just a flat island."
It's too isolated to draw much tourism. The closest point of any note, Fiji, is a three-hour flight away.
Cannon is a sports hero to his homeland, which has 9,100 inhabitants and covers eight square miles. Friends and relatives saw him off, twice, from the airport when he left for Victoria. The first time, plane trouble out of Guam sent him back to Nauru. The delay forced him to miss Thursday's opening ceremony.
For the Falkland Islands, the Commonwealth Games are an opportunity to provide the world with a refresher course in recent history.
Twelve years after Argentina invaded and subsequently was driven from the islands, there are still 2,000 British troops there. They nearly outnumber the islands' 2,100 residents. There are 118 mine fields left from the fighting.
In addition to the teenager's naked plunge, 50 men jumped into the sea to raise money to get the Falkland team to the games. A horse was raffled off and a baker donated a year's supply of bread to make sure the Falklanders' three shooters and marathoner were in Victoria.
"It's not only important that we're here sportingly but it's also important politically," team manager Patrick Watts said. "It's important that we reminded the 500 million television viewers when we marched out in the opening ceremony that we are still part of the Commonwealth, and therefore are still British."