Cocos (Keeling) Islands

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands are two tiny coral atolls far out in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Australia and Sri Lanka. An Australian territory, they have only about 600 people, living mainly on two islands: West Island, home to a small, mostly European community tied to the administration, and Home Island, where the Cocos Malay people, the Muslim majority, live. For more than a century the islands were the private property of a single family, the Clunies-Ross, who ruled them almost like feudal lords. Covered in coconut palms and ringed by lagoons, they are among the most isolated inhabited places in the world.

The Cocos Islands are made up of two coral atolls: the main one, an almost perfect ring of twenty-seven small islets covered in coconut palms around a wide turquoise lagoon, and a second, tiny and remote in the north, North Keeling, an uninhabited nature reserve. The land is low, barely above the water, all white sand and palms, with no hills or rivers, and very exposed to rising seas. The clear water of the lagoon and reefs is full of marine life (rays, reef sharks, turtles) and draws divers and kitesurfers. The climate is tropical, hot and humid, cooled by the trade winds.

Uninhabited until then, with no native population, the islands were taken over around 1826 by European adventurers, among them Alexander Hare and the Scottish sailor John Clunies-Ross, who brought Malay workers from the Indonesian archipelago to produce copra (dried coconut flesh). The Clunies-Ross family ruled the islands as a private kingdom for five generations, employing, in conditions long close to serfdom, a Malay population that became the Cocos people. Britain annexed the islands, which were transferred to Australia in 1955. In 1978 Australia bought the land from the family, and in 1984 the Cocos Malays voted in a referendum for full integration with Australia.

People speak Cocos Malay, a Malay dialect handed down from the workers brought from the Indonesian archipelago in the 19th century, as well as English, the official language. The Cocos Malays are Sunni Muslims; the Islam their ancestors brought shapes community life on Home Island, with its mosque and its festivals. This Malay and Muslim identity, rare in Australia, sits alongside the small European community on West Island.

The culture of the Cocos Islands is that of the Cocos Malay people, Malay and Muslim, shaped by isolation, the sea and the coconut palm. It shows in religious festivals, traditional weddings, Malay music and dance, and the building of jukong, small sailing boats unique to the islands, whose regattas are a highlight of the year. Life revolves around fishing, the lagoon and the close-knit community of Home Island. The cooking is Malay: fish, rice, coconut and fragrant curries.