There are two atolls. One has only one island which is gradually losing its lagoon, as there are now no external entries. This is North Keeling Island. It’s a fair way from the other atoll (about thirty five miles from memory), and has a lot of original fauna and flora as it was never inhabited.
The other atoll has 27 islands. The largest two are inhabited - Home Island where the Cocos Malays live, and West Island where the airport is and most of the administrative facilities are, including most tourism facilities.
In the 1820s, two completely different men decided to claim the islands and live here. The first to settle was Alexander Hare, who had been a colonial governor in Borneo who brought 40 mainly Malay women to be his harem although he stopped in South Africa along the way. About a year later, a staunch Presbyterian, John Clunes-Ross also decided to settle here with his family and some sailors and workers from the Malay area. You can walk between the islands at low tide as long as you don’t mind wading. So fairly shortly, the ladies of the harem and the men had become involved with one another, and Hare left. Many years later, Clunes-Ross persuaded Queen Victoria to give the islands him and his heirs in perpetuity, and five generations ruled the islands as a coconut plantation, with the indentured labourers they imported to provide the labour to produce copra. The Cocos Malays developed their own language and customs, mainly based upon Indonesian Muslim traditions, although some traditional Scottish dancing and music are part of the mix. The islands of the atoll were all planted with coconut palms.
The islands were quite strategically important, and an undersea cable went through the islands to connect Australia to the rest of the world, the first Australian navy engagement was here, and in the Second World War an airstrip was built on West Island (where administration now is) and the had thousands of allied troops stationed on it.
After the Second World War, the straights settlements became independent from Britain. Until then, both Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island were administered by Britain from Singapore. So at that time Britain transferred both settlements to Australia. The United Nations had a list of 24 places without independence, and Cocos (Keeling) Islands were one of them. An investigative team decided that the islanders were little more than slaves, and Australia was under pressure to do something about it. They bought most of the land (except 5 acres surrounding Oceania House - the Clunes-Ross mansion) from the current John Clunes-Ross, and stopped the copra plantation production. In 1984 the islanders voted to become part of Australia by a resounding majority (88%). They are the most north westerly part of Australia.
Most of this I already knew, but sat next to a lawyer who had represented John Clunes-Ross during the land acquisition and the vote when I was flying from Canberra to Melbourne on the way to Cocos (Keeling) Islands today. He’d been there four times, and we had a really interesting discussion.
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