Australia Takes Over Cocos Islands

Clunies Ross Kingdom Means New Air Route, Greater Security, Phosphate Development

IT was officially announced in June that the administrative control of the Cocos Islands (a group of over 20 atolls in the Indian Ocean, 1,100 nautical miles from Hedland, Western Australia, and 600 miles southwest of the southern tip of Java) has been transferred from the British Colonial office (which exercised control through Singapore) to Australia.

The Australian Department of Terri tories will now have responsibility for Papua-New Guinea, Nauru, Norfolk Island.

Northern Territory and Cocos Island. It is reported that an Administrator and a unit from the Australian Department of Civil Aviation will be sent to Cocos.

There are about 1,400 people in the Cocos Islands. They are described as a mixture of Malay, Zulu, Tamil and Chinese. As the atolls are overcrowded, facilities will be provided by the Aus tralian Government to transfer about 1,200 Malays to North Borneo. The 200 who remain will acquire limited Australian citizenship, similar to that given New Guinea natives.

The move to bring Cocos under Aus tralian control is, of course, the direct result of the nationalistic and Communist flare-up in Asia.

When Australian air-line communication with Europe was first developed, the air liners on the route could land, everywhere, in British or in friendly territory—Dutch East Indies, Singapore, India, Iraq, Egypt.

Italy, France. To-day, as a result of post-war political developments, there is danger along most of that line. None of it is really friendly. By taking the Indian Ocean-Africa route, many dangers can be avoided.

As long ago as 1938-39, the Australian air-navigator and pathfinder. Captain P.

G. Taylor (he who has just blazed a new air trail from Australia to South America, via Tahiti) urged the development of a new route from Australia via the islands of the Indian Ocean, and Africa, to Europe. With the assistance of the American millionaire Archbold, who brought out a big flying-boat to help him collect natural history specimens in the interior of New Guinea, Taylor made a preliminary survey of the Cocos, Chagos and Seychelles groups of islands, in the Indian Ocean.

The Pacific War came, and showed that Taylor was right. Asia could—and did, for a time—interrupt our air communi cations with Europe. When the Japs occupied Java, we were forced to take an alternative route. RAF engineers built a big air-strip on the largest of the Cocos Islands; but the route via the Indian Ocean archipelagoes and Africa, although practicable, was not surveyed and organised, and was not regularly used.

But now, with events pointing towards another war, with Indonesia in the hands of an anti-European mob, and India un friendly, Australia is preparing the “Empire Reserve Air Mail Route”; and the Cocos Islands are a key to that. There are two or three routes which may be followed across the Indian Ocean, further west, towards Africa; but all must use Cocos.

Australia proposes immediately to spend a large sum on the development of the

existing airstrip on Cocos.

THE Cocos Islands are the hereditary domain of the Clunies Ross family.

The first Clunies Ross settled there, with a few Malay servants, over 100 years ago, and established the kind of

patriarchal community which has been found on many tropical islands, and in spired thousands of romantic books. The estate was passed on from father to son; Queen Victoria in 1886 granted to the then reigning Clunies Ross (George) a per petual lease of the little archipelago; and the Australian Government has an nounced that it has no intention of inter fering with the perpetual lease, or the Clunies Ross succession.

The present incumbent of the Cocos Island kingship is John Clunies Ross, who was born about 1929, and educated in England. A few years ago. he threatened the Pacific Islands Monthly with an action for libel, because the PIM rather incautiously printed a report, which had appeared in many British and American newspapers, casting a reflection upon the succession. The PIM explained the source of the rather silly story, and apologised for an inaccuracy, and that was the last of the matter.

The Clunies Ross family has been greatly enriched in recent times because in 1949, the Governments of Australia and New Zealand jointly paid a huge sum for the rights to certain islands in the Cocos area which carry large and valuable phosphate deposits. One of the early members of the Clunies Ross clan shrewdly appraised the value of the phos phate, long before it was generally recog nised, and established rights to the islands.

The extension of Australian authority over the group doubtless will assist in develop ing the phosphate industry in that area.