Cocos (Keeling) IslandsCocos (Keeling) Islands

Cocos (Keeling) Islands

The island group is named after the coconut, Cocos nucifera, which grows in profusion, even before the deliberate planting of almost all of the southern atoll as a part of the Clunies-Ross estate.

Captain William Keeling of the Dutch East India Company is believed to have been the first European to sight the islands in 1609 on his return from Bantam in the Dutch East Indies, though there is no record of that sighting.

In his 1805 sailing directory for this region of the Indian Ocean, the British hydrographer, James Horsburgh, called these atolls the Cocos-Keeling Islands, and named one of them after himself. After settlement the early inhabitants called them the Borneo Coral Reefs after the supply vessel, the Borneo, owned by John and Joseph Hare and Co, and captained by John Clunies-Ross. They were also known as the Keeling-Cocos Islands until 1955, when they officially became the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Despite knowledge of the existence of these islands for 200 years or more, it was not until the early nineteenth century that they were settled. Interest developed because they were situated on a trade route from Europe to the Far East. The first settlement was accidental; Captain Le Cour and the crew of the ship Mauritius lived on Direction Island in the southern atoll for several weeks after they were wrecked on the reef in 1825.

On 6 December 1825, Captain John Clunies-Ross, a Scottish trader sailing the Borneo for Alexander Hare’s company, made a brief landing on the islands. In the following year a settlement was established by Alexander Hare. John Clunies-Ross and his family returned in 1827 with the intention of commencing a settlement on the islands.

The history of this time is particularly colourful. The relations between Ross and Hare were poor. Initially both claimed ownership of the islands, but in 1831 Hare finally left the atoll. The Clunies-Ross family, who became known as the ‘Kings of the Cocos’, reigned over the islands for more than 150 years (Hughes 1950). Their family papers contain detailed information on the history and use of the islands during this time.

In 1857, the islands were declared a part of the British Dominions by Captain Fremantle who arrived aboard H.M.S. Juno, having misread his directions which instructed that he annex another Cocos Island in the Andaman Islands (Gibson-Hill 1947). In 1886 Queen Victoria granted in perpetuity all of the islands, under certain provisions, to John George Clunies-Ross. Responsibility for supervision of the islands was transferred over the years to the Governments of Ceylon (1878), the Straits Settlements (1886), Singapore (1903) and Ceylon once again (1939-45). They became a Territory of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1955, and in 1978 Australia purchased all of the lands, excepting the family home, from the Clunies-Ross family for $6.25 million. The family home and the Clunies-Ross collection of historic books, documents, furniture and paintings were purchased by the Australian Government in 1993 for $1.2 million. In 1984, through the United Nations supervised Act of Self Determination (ASD), the Cocos-Malay population voted to integrate with the Australian community. The ASD process instigated a commitment by the Commonwealth to raise services and standards of living to comparable Australian levels within 10 years (Carlsen 1995).