Cocos Islands or Keeling is a group of 27 small coral islands
located in the Indian Ocean. It is the External Territory of
Australia under the name Territory of the Cocos (Keeling Islands).
Area - 14 km². The population is 596 people. (2014), about 80% of
them are Malays (coconut Malays). Administrative Center - West
Island is located on the West Island. The official language is
English. 80% of the population professes Islam.
The archipelago is located approximately 2930 km northwest of Perth, 3685 km west of Darwin, 960 km southwest of Christmas Island and more than 1000 km southwest of Java and Sumatra. The closest mainland point to Australia is Cape Low Point on the North West Cape peninsula at a distance of 2109 km.
In 2006 the population was 572 inhabitants, by August 2011 it had
fallen to 550. The 2016 census listed 554 people.
The total land
area is 14.2 km². Among the residents are more than 400 Cocos Malays, an
ethnic group that formed on the islands throughout history.
The
main island with an airport is West Island. About 130 residents live
there, about 420 live on Home Island. The remaining islands are not
permanently inhabited.
The Cocos Islands consist of two atolls, North Keeling and South
Keeling, formed 25 kilometers apart on the tops of 16,000-foot submarine
volcanoes known as Cocos Rise. They are part of a mostly submarine ridge
that extends to Christmas Island. The atolls are connected to a plateau
that lies at a sea depth of 700 to 800 meters. Charles Darwin visited
the atolls in 1836 (the only ones he ever examined) and developed a
theory of their formation that is accepted to this day.
The
atolls have a total land area of about 14 km². They are flat and flat,
with the highest point only nine meters above sea level. The tidal range
is no more than two meters. Both atolls are coral islands that rise an
average of three to five meters above sea level and enclose a shallow
lagoon in a ring. While they rise relatively steeply out of the sea on
the outer sides, they drop gently towards the lagoon.
The smaller northern atoll, North Keeling, consists of a single,
C-shaped island approximately 2.0 km long and 1.3 km wide. It has been
under strict protection since 1986 and is part of the Pulu Keeling
National Park.
The southern atoll, South Keeling, consists of 26
islands surrounding a pear-shaped lagoon about nine kilometers in
diameter and up to twenty meters deep. The largest island, West Island,
is about ten kilometers long and half a kilometer wide. There are no
rivers or lakes on the islands. The only freshwater resources are
shallow subterranean duckweed formed on some of the larger islands by
rainwater floating on the heavier salt water.
The Cocos Islands
are almost antipodal to Cocos Island (Costa Rica).
There were no land mammals on the Cocos Islands before human
settlement due to their remote location. Seabirds are plentiful: 24 bird
species have been recorded in Pulu-Keeling National Park, including the
red-footed booby with more than 30,000 breeding pairs, great
frigatebird, ariel frigatebird and the endemic Keeling's stone rail.
There are green turtles and hawksbill turtles. The only species of sea
snake that has been sighted on the southern atolls is the platelet sea
snake. Numerous mollusks, fish species, crustaceans, echinoderms and
reef-building hard corals are found in the sea around the islands.
Since the Cocos Islands were never connected to a mainland, plant
seeds could only be carried by wind, water or birds before human
settlement. Relatively few plant species evolved in a geological
environment characterized by volcanism and coral growth. 61 species of
plants have been counted on the Cocos Islands. Pisonia, coconut palms,
velvetleaf, tea plants and grasses of the purslane-quesseria grow on the
atolls and in the waters of the atolls weed forests, seagrass meadows
and tropical sea plants.
discovery
The islands are said to have been discovered in 1609
by William Keeling, a captain in the British East India Company.
However, evidence for this thesis is lacking. Only in a Dutch atlas
from 1659 is the "Cocos Eylanden" mentioned for the first time, in
1703 the British hydrographer Thornton called them "Keeling
Islands". A first detailed description can be found in 1753 in the
book "Zeefakkel" by the Dutchman Gerard Hulst van Keulen. The
British hydrographer James Horsburgh made detailed nautical charts
of these waters in 1805 and referred to the islands as
"Cocos-Keeling Islands". In the years that followed, several ships
stranded off the islands (1825 the Mauritius from France and 1826
the Sir Francis Nicholas Burton and 1834 the Earl of Liverpool from
Great Britain).
Start time
In 1826 the Dutch settled the
former British commissioner of Borneo, Alexander Hare, with his
entourage and Malay serfs on the islands off their colony of Java.
He cultivated West Island, Horsburgh Island and Direction Island
where he produced coconut oil. In 1831 Hare left the Isles and died
en route to Britain. His administrator John Clunies-Ross from
Scotland then appropriated the islands. He also produced coconut
oil, which he successfully sold in Dutch Java. The islands also
served as a stopover for whaling ships en route to Antarctica.
Clunies-Ross established an authoritarian rule in the islands with
its own laws and its own island-only currency, which was only
abolished in 1978. A British commission should examine the
conditions on the island. However, the British found no reason to
intervene. However, the British rejected Clunies-Ross's desire for
British rule over the island. In 1841 he therefore hoisted the Dutch
flag because of his good trade relations with Java, but this was
forbidden by the Dutch government.
British seizure
After
the death of John Clunies-Ross in 1854, his son John George took
over the islands. In 1857, Britain accidentally took official
possession of the Cocos Islands. The colonial administration ship
was actually supposed to occupy the Cocos Islands north of the
Andaman Islands. John George Clunies-Ross brought more workers,
mostly prisoners from Java, to the islands. There were numerous
uprisings and looting.
After his father's death, the new
owner, George Clunies-Ross, abolished forced labor in 1871 and
replaced the prisoners with Malay labourers. In 1876 a cyclone
destroyed more than half of the coconut plantations. Clunies-Ross
rebuilt the islands' infrastructure. In 1901, the Eastern Extension
Telegraphy Company set up a relay station for their submarine cable
network on Direction Island. Another cyclone in 1909 completely
devastated the islands, destroying 90% of the palm trees and 95% of
the houses. His life's work destroyed, George Clunies-Ross died in
1910 and his son Sydney Clunies-Ross took over the dominion of the
islands. He had two Malays, who are said to have murdered a
compatriot, sentenced to death and dumped alive in the sea with
weights on their feet.
First World War
A radio station was
also built on Direction Island in 1910. During World War I, cable
and radio stations on the island were the target of an attack on
November 9, 1914 by a German landing company from the light cruiser
SMS Emden. During the attack, the SMS Emden was spotted and attacked
by the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney. The small remaining
German crew returned fire and the Sydney even turned away, but
turned back as soon as it became clear that the Emden was not
following and fired again at the Emden, on which there were
casualties. The ship was so badly damaged in this battle that it had
to be set ashore and abandoned by its own crew. The Emden landing
corps, which had stayed behind in the battle of the warships,
crossed to Sumatra with the schooner Ayesha and later, with
extraordinary difficulties, reached the Arabian coast with the
German steamer Choising and from there via Constantinople (Istanbul)
home.
Second World War
After the First World War all the islands were settled and the
population was 1450 people in 1940, the supply of which became
increasingly critical due to the Second World War. Due to the living
conditions on its islands, Sydney Clunies-Ross narrowly avoided
indictment by the British Anti-Slave League.
Coastal artillery
was stationed on Horsburgh Island and infantry on Direction Island to
protect the cable station from the Japanese. Despite this, a Japanese
warship shelled the islands in 1942, and numerous air raids followed
until the end of the war. On the night of May 8-9, 1942, Ceylonese
artillerymen from the garrison on Horsburgh Island mutinied. Their
leader was the artillery sergeant Gratien Fernando, who persuaded his
comrades that Asia should be reserved for the "Asians". Their action,
known as the Cocos Islands Mutiny, was crushed and three of them,
including Fernando, were sentenced to death. They were the only British
Commonwealth soldiers executed for mutiny during World War II. In the
heaviest air raid in August 1944, 27 houses were destroyed and several
people died. Sydney Clunies-Ross died shortly thereafter. From March to
May 1945, the Allies built an airstrip on West Iceland. 8,300 soldiers
were stationed on the Cocos Islands.
Australian takeover
In
1946 the runway was closed and the military withdrew. The economic
situation of the islands worsened. Sydney Clunies-Ross's son,
John-Cecil, took over the islands but struggled to stem the exodus of
workers despite new homes and electricity. The runway was reopened in
1952 as a stopover for civilian air traffic. In 1955, Australia
incorporated the islands into its territory through the Cocos (Keeling)
Islands Act 1955. In the years that followed, cyclones destroyed the
coconut plantations that had been rebuilt after the war. It was not
until 1968 that the Australian government became aware of the feudal
conditions on the islands. After a visit in 1971, a member of the
government prepared a report on the grievances on the islands. In 1974,
the UN requested Australia to report on the Cocos Islands.
Finally, in 1978, the Australian government bought most of the islands
from John-Cecil Clunies-Ross for AUD 6.25 million. Democratic elections
were held for the first time and the Clunies-Ross island money was
abolished. A school was built and medical care was provided. In the 1984
referendum, a majority of islanders voted to remain with Australia. The
copra production had to be stopped in 1987 due to inefficiency. The
population now hopes for tourism. Former island owner John-Cecil
Clunies-Ross also sold his last property on the islands in 1992 after
becoming bankrupt after a failed investment in ships.
The Cocos
Islands are within Australia's migration zone. This means that boat
people who land on the island cannot apply for asylum in Australia and
are held in immigration detention in Australia.
A post office was established in 1979 to issue postage stamps and
generate revenue for the island community. In 1987 the production of
copra and coconut oil, until then the main source of income for the
islanders, was stopped. Local fishing and the cultivation of bananas,
vegetables and papayas contribute to the diet, but most food, like all
other goods, has to be imported. In 1999 imports amounted to AUD 2
million, in 2002 to AUD 11 million; they were not matched by any
exports. In 2000, the Australian and regional governments supported a
research project to produce high quality carbon fiber from coconut
products. In 2000, the island's Internet top-level domain .cc was sold
to a private investor, who resold it to the Network Information Center
Verisign; the Cocos Islands generate regular income from this sale. The
unemployment rate of 11.3% in the 2006 census is probably
underestimated; Estimates go up to a rate of 65%. A relaxation of the
local labor market is expected from the establishment of a center for
Muslim tourists from the Pacific region, which should offer 79 jobs.
Miscellaneous
The state law of Western Australia applies on the
territory. There are four police officers stationed on the archipelago.