Cocos (Keeling) Islands

[Alastair]

I've been reading a book in which is mentioned the Rosses of the Keeling Islands. He and his family seem to be very interesting people and I wondered if any of our Australian friends could dig up any information about them? I have searched the Internet and while they get a mention not much detail. I thus wondered if there might be a history of the Cocus (Keeling) islands somewhere?

Alastair

[1938 Observer]

Re: Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Some information for you Alastair

..............................................

COCOS ISLAND MEMORIAL RELOCATION

No.2 Airfield Construction Squadron RAAF



In November 1948 Qantas Empire Airways flew a survey flight from Perth, via Cocos Island and Mauritius to Johannesburg. The results of this survey were analysed by the Department of Civil Aviation whose Minister submitted a proposal to the Prime Minister, Mr. R.G. Menzies, on 27th April 1950 that a direct air service between Australia and South Africa was a viable proposition. An essential element of the project was the rehabilitation of the airfield on Cocos Island. This proposal added weight to the strategic assessment that the Cocos Islands `would be necessary as a staging point on the only alternative route' should the normal air route to the United Kingdom through Indonesia and Singapore is broken.

2ACS was allocated the task.



The first members of 2ACS arrived at Cocos Island on 18th November aboard the Dongala. An officer and eight airmen arrived from Port Adelaide aboard the Canara on the 28th. The third party of 40, led by Flight Lieutenant S.R. Scott arrived at Cocos Island on 25th November

The main body of 2ACS consisted of 444 officers and men who embarked by train at the Woomera Siding on 8th December and arrived at Outer Harbour, Adelaide next morning, where they boarded the Cheshire for Cocos Island.



The men disembarked at Cocos Island on the 19th December.

During February construction began in earnest. The men toiled 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the debilitating climate to remove the old wartime pierced steel planking before preparing the new airfield.

As there were no building materials on Cocos Island it had to be to be imported. The only natural resource, coral, was obtained from `below water level using drag lines, excavators and bulldozers and excavating the coral into big stockpiles from where we would transport it by carry all to the area where we were excavating the runway'. To obtain clean coral aggregate for concrete work, a gravel washing and screening plant was improvised to remove silt. Four or five hundred thousand coconut palms had to be removed before the construction of the runway could commence. Work progressed steadily and the first aircraft to use the new airstrip was a Qantas DC 4 courier, which flew three test flights from the new strip on 18th July. The main runway was completed on 26th July, enabling a Constellation flying the route proving flight to Johannesburg to land and depart for Mauritius next day. The inaugural flight on the route passed through Cocos Island on 1st September. To make this possible, the men of 2ACS had unloaded 19 ships, constructed a 3,048-metre runway, a control tower, permanent buildings and roads in addition to maintaining its own installations and equipment. Individuals worked six days before being given a day's relaxation.



The western foreshore of Cocos West Island consists of a coral shelf extending 180 metres seaward before falling away steeply into the ocean. At this point there is always a heavy break and a very dangerous undertow. Because of these dangerous conditions swimming near this area was forbidden.



On Sunday, 6th April, HM ships Zeebrugge and Narvick were anchored off shore, and the Commanding Officer of 2ACS Wing Commander Lings invited officers and men to spend the afternoon ashore to be entertained by members of 2ACS the intention was for the men to engage in sporting contests and social activity, but the sporting contests was cancelled due to heavy morning rain. The visitors from the two ships arrived at mid afternoon and other ranks were welcomed at the airmen's beer garden overlooking the reef. Although the senior naval officer, had been advised that swimming was not allowed on West Island five members of the naval party did not heed this advice, or that of 2ACS members on the safest areas to swim, with disastrous results.



Read a lot more ...see photographs at the link below :smile:

http://flyingshovels.homestead.com/COCOSMEMORIAL.html

[1938 Observer]

Re: Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Ross Family.........

Tuesday, 16 November 2004: Episode 2 —
Clunies-Ross


Key Dates
1609 Cocos Islands discovered by Capt. William Keeling of the East India Company. The sighting was never officially recorded but his name was given to the islands' official name "Cocos (Keeling) Islands" to distinguish it from other Cocos Islands in the Bay of Bengal
1825 Scottish seafarer Capt John Clunies Ross visits the Cocos and plants trees on uninhabited islands.
1826 Alexander Hare settles on Cocos with about 100 Malays - the women were his harem.
1827 John Clunies Ross returns to Cocos to settle with his family. Relations between Clunies Ross and Hare become hostile.
1831 Alexander Hare departs for Singapore
1836 Charles Darwin visits in the Beagle and describes conditions of slavery on Cocos.
1854 John Clunies Ross dies, aged 68, succeeded by his eldest son, John George. John George had married a local girl S'pia in 1841.
1857 Capt. Fremantle arrives in HMS Juno to plant the Union Jack. The Cocos become part of the British Empire by mistake - A navigational error by Fremantle put him on the wrong Cocos Islands
1872 John George Clunies Ross dies, succeeded by the eldest of his seven sons, George.
1878 Administration of the Islands passed to British governor of Ceylon.
1886 Queen Victoria grants all of the Cocos Islands to the Clunies Ross family in perpetuity.
1888 Construction begins on Oceania House, the family mansion on Home Island
1896 George Clunies-Ross marries his second wife Ayesha, a local girl.
1897 George Clunies-Ross enters partnership to exploit phosphate deposits on Christmas Island. Joshua Slocum (Sailing Alone around the World) visits.
1901 Cable station established on Direction Island
1903 Islands become a protectorate of Singapore
1909 Cyclone destroys 90 per cent of houses and palms.
1910 George Clunies-Ross dies, succeeded by his eldest son John Sidney.
1914 HMAS Sydney sinks German light cruiser 'Emden' off North Keeling Island.
1925 John Sidney Clunies-Ross, aged 56, marries Rose Nash, 22, in London.
1928 John Cecil Clunies-Ross born
1936 Captain P G Taylor flies to Cocos on Trans-Indian Ocean Survey Flight.
1940 John Sidney Clunies-Ross returns to the Cocos leaving his wife and children in Britain.
1942 Japanese bomb Christmas and Cocos Islands
1944 Japanese bomb Home Island. John Sidney Clunies-Ross dies not long afterwards.
1945 6000 Commonwealth military personnel arrive on West Island to build airstrip.
1946 Rose and her children return to Cocos. John Cecil Clunies-Ross becomes "King of the Cocos", aged 18.
1949 Christmas Island Phosphate Company wound up. Clunies-Ross estate receives 250,000 pounds.
1951 John Cecil Clunies-Ross marries Daphne Parkinson in London.
1952 Qantas begins regular service to South Africa via Cocos.
1954 Queen Elizabeth visits Cocos.
1955 Sovereignty over Cocos passed from Britain to Australia.
1957 Paul Hasluck, Australian Minister for Territories visits Cocos. He reports that Clunies-Ross does not regard himself as subject to the Australian government.
1959 Daphne Clunies-Ross takes children to Ireland.
1963 Daphne Clunies-Ross and children move to England
1966 John Clunies-Ross establishes school at Oceania House.
1968 Cyclone Doreen devastates Cocos. John Clunies-Ross visits Canberra to put forward plan for home rule.
1972 Leaked government report describes conditions on Cocos as "slavery". Minister Andrew Peacock visits.
1973 Whitlam government in office. UN mission visits Cocos. Recommends purchase of land on Home Island by Australian government.
1975 Senate Committee visits Cocos, recommends purchase of land, free association with Australia. Whitlam government dismissed.
1976 Senator Reg Withers, new minister for Administrative Services visits the islands. Supporting Clunies-Ross he says "anyone who goes around stirring up trouble will be in bother".
1977 Senator Withers is defeated in Cabinet, Fraser government decides on purchase of Home Island and threatens compulsory acquisition.
1978 Government buys Home Island for $6,250,000. Clunies-Ross retains ownership of Oceania House.
1979 Cocos (Keeling) Council formed.
1981 Relations between Council and Clunies-Ross deteriorate.
1983 Hawke government in power. Tom Uren, minister for Territories and Local Government, tells Clunies Ross that the government will resume Oceania House and that he should leave the Cocos.
1984 Uren orders that no government business was to go to the Clunies-Ross shipping company. Islanders vote in UN referendum for integration with Australia. High Court holds that resumption of Oceania House was unlawful.
1986 Clunies-Ross shipping companies declared bankrupt. Oceania House sold by trustee to Australian government. John and Daphne Clunies-Ross leave Cocos.
The Clunies-Ross family
John Clunies Ross

John George Clunies Ross

George Clunies-Ross

John Sidney Clunies-Ross

John Cecil Clunies-Ross

John George Clunies-Ross

Dynasties in print
The books Dynasties and Dynasties 2 are available from ABC Shops Dynasties 2 »

Dynasties »

Dynasties on DVD
Dynasties series one and two are available on DVD from ABC Shops»
Anthony Lee Frank Ashton Clunies-Ross Street Series 1 Series 2 This is the story the Clunies-Ross family who ruled the Cocos Islands for more than 150 years. :cool::cool:

For more information go to the link

http://www.abc.net.au/dynasties/txt/s1227294.htm

[1938 Observer]

Re: Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Ian Clunies Ross 1899-1959


By A. I. Clunies Ross
When the Australian fifty-dollar note was issued in 1972, it bore the heads of two scientists. On one side was Howard Florey, co-discoverer of penicillin. On the other side was Ian Clunies Ross. Clunies Ross, though active for some years in productive research, had no major scientific advance to his credit. The strange honour of being imprinted on the currency-in company with Macarthur and Farrer, Greenway, Henry Lawson, Caroline Chisholm and Kingsford Smith-came to him because of the special public position he had come to occupy by the time of his death as spokesman for Australian science, champion of research and promotion for the wool industry, and steady advocate of an open and generous view of Australia's destiny. These three roles are remembered in the naming after him of the National Science Centre in Melbourne, a sheep and wool research laboratory in Prospect, NSW, and the original wing of International House in the University of Melbourne. A long road in Canberra skirting Black Mountain also bears his name. His reputation was due in part to concrete achievements, but also to the fact that, with a distinctive appearance, personality and style, he caught the imagination of many of those who met him or heard him speak.

Ian Clunies Ross was born on the 22nd of February, 1899, in Bathurst, New South Wales, the fourth and youngest son of William John Clunies Ross and his wife Hannah Elizabeth. Ian's father was himself a scientist, with wide scholarly interests both within and without the natural sciences, and at the time of Ian's birth he was head of the Technical College at Bathurst. He had been born and reared in London, where he had as a young man been a lecturer in geology at Birkbeck College, and he had travelled to Australia at the age of thirty-three in a sailing-ship of which his brother Alfred was master. Ian's mother was Australian-born and had been a schoolteacher before her marriage. Her father, Charles Tilley, born of farming stock at Hinton Admiral in Hampshire, and possibly also her mother, who came of distressed Irish Protestant gentry from co. Tipperary, were apparently professional evangelists. Ian's father's father, Robert Clunies Ross, a sea-captain born in Shetland in 1790, was a brother of that John Clunies Ross who settled with his family and crew on the Cocos-Keeling Islands in 1826-7 and founded a tiny Malay kingdom. Another colourful relative was Ian's mother's brother, William Tilley, who migrated as a young man from Sydney to Berlin and there established a notable school where, with Prussian thoroughness and some eccentric rules, he exposed English-speaking students systematically to the German language.

When Ian was four years old, his father was appointed lecturer-in-charge of the Department of Chemistry and Metallurgy at Sydney Technical College, and the family moved across the Blue Mountains to Sydney, where they settled at Summer Hill in the western suburbs. In a passage on his childhood (published after his death in his Memoirs and Papers), Ian describes the free and varied life which he led, especially after the family had moved to more spacious quarters in nearby Ashfield. For three years, until he was about nine, he and his brother Rob, who was two years older, received all their schooling from their parents, and, as they had lessons only in the mornings, they had plenty of time at their disposal. At Ashfield, they were close to paddocks and to scrubby bushland. Their mother, who always imposed considerable trust in her children, let them roam very much as they liked and tolerated their keeping fantail pigeons and bringing home a variety of insects, frogs and reptiles, though, as he says, she 'drew the line at poisonous snakes in the house'. They counted over seventy species of birds near their home. Ian also had an early love for horses and dogs, and he describes his attempts, at first unsuccessful, to adopt a dog of his own.

As far as a childhood can be made so by external circumstances, Ian's seems to have been a secure and happy one. He had the companionship of Rob and the varied contributions of his two much older brothers: Allen, gentle and studious, with a universal thirst for knowledge like his father's; and Egerton, wild and imaginative, full of romantic stories and adventurous games. For his father, forty-eight years older than himself, Ian had feelings, he says, 'rather of respect than deep attachment', but his mother was at all times a stronghold; his relationship with her was to continue close and untroubled until her death less than twelve years before his own; and she was undoubtedly an important influence upon him. she had in fact some of the qualities of personality that he was to display. While maintaining a certain dignity, she showed a considerable zest for life. she was a good story-teller, with plenty of anecdotes to tell, and a natural teacher, who treated children with respect. Her interests were literary and historical rather than scientific, and she wrote verse in the style of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Though she was conscious of class in the sense of caring about accents and certain details of behaviour, she showed an almost unvarying kindliness and courtesy and conversed easily with everyone she met. Her rule over her family was permissive in many ways and she imposed great trust in her children, but behind this outward relaxation there were very firm views on manners and morals which could not easily be ignored and were sometimes forcefully expressed. Ian seems to have absorbed many of his mother's assumptions and values, and it is likely that her calm assurance of her place in the world, and the devotion, heavily tempered with good sense, that she had for her children, helped to give him a sense of confidence against which his natural ebullience could have full rein.

Much more at the link


Australian Academy of Science
Biographical Memoirs of Deceased Fellows
Originally prepared for publication as part of Bright Sparcs by the Australian Science Archives Project.


http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bspar...moirs/ross.htm

[1938 Observer]

Re: Cocos (Keeling) Islands

HMAS Sydney (1) against German ship Emden WW1 off Cocos Islands



http://www.navy.gov.au/Sydney_-_Emden_battle

[Alastair]

Re: Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Thanks for this Gordon.

I was reading "Sailing alone around the world" by Joshua Slocum. He has a chapter devoted to those islands and Captain Ross and his sons seem to have done a great job settling those islands so I was keen to learn more about them and to see if anyone had written a biography or something.

Alastair

[1938 Observer]

Re: Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Alastair,

This may help regarding a biography/history..

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The Cocos Bookshop

The Clunies-Ross Cocos Chronicle
$39.00
History of the Clunies-Ross family and their settlement on the Cocos Keeling Islands in 1827

Add to Cart:

•Shipping Weight: 0.603lbs
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http://www.clunies-ross.com/zenshop/...569fb7406524c7


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If you are not comfortable with ordering from a web site, please feel free to email or telephone us.



Joy Clunies-Ross
Tel: (+61) 0419 919 749
email:joyross@iinet.net.au

http://www.clunies-ross.com/zenshop/

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This is about the item i could find

[Ranald]

Re: Cocos (Keeling) Islands

I ordered the book on Monday and it arrived today. Therefore not had time to look at it as yet.

I noted it was normally on sale at £7.99, but from www.thebookpeople.co.uk, as a special offer as follows:

South! - Sir Ernest Shackleton normally £9.99

Sailing Alone Round The World -Joshua Slocum normally £7.99

Travels With A Donkey In The Cevennes - Robert Louis Stevenson normally £6.99

All three in paper back covers.

ALL THREE at £4.99 Plus Post and Packing. I had another three books, and the TOTAL P&P was £4.99.

Remember the P&P above is for delivery in UK

Two of the other books I purchased within the order were:

The - Natural Navigator - Sir Ranulph Fiennes (hard back cover) - Listed at £14.49 - cost me £3.99

and - The Landscape Man - Making a Garden by Matthew Wilson (hard back cover) - Listed at £20/00 - cost me £5.00

I have purchased quite a few books from this firm, all new, and in first class condition.

Ranald