Australia’s most far-flung and freakishly scenic archipelago
I zombie into Perth International Terminal 1 before the rooster clears its maddening throat, earlier than strictly necessary because I’ve been explicitly advised to “duel to the death” for a window seat on this “cinematic” flight to an outlying Australian territory of screensaver writ-large splendour, a place that, bafflingly, has barely pin-pricked our national consciousness.
Statistically, not even your most annoyingly well-travelled, dinner-party-dominating friends are likely to have placed a thong upon the freakishly scenic sands of Cocos Keeling Islands. In an (Indian) ocean of naïveté until recently, I couldn’t have even pinned these 27 islands (spread over two tiny coral atolls) on a map with three million throws of a dart. For the record, it is way closer to Sumatra than Perth, it uses WA postcodes and (some) local laws, but it is federally represented by NT senators.
The leaf-shaped Direction Island.Credit: Christmas Cocos Islands Tourism Association
The tyranny of distance from the rest of the country that romanticises its own relationship with remoteness partly explains the Cocos-Keeling information vacuum. Checking in to the Virgin flight that triangles between Perth, ‘Cocos’ and Christmas Island is an intriguing opening act to the pantomime of quirks and challenges of living in and visiting Australia’s Indian Ocean territories.
Alongside euphoric schools of fisher-humans and scuba divers off to their Promised Land, canoodling honeymooners and well-remunerated essential workers, you’ll spot freight-muling locals dragging colossal tubs, bulging boxes and random appliances. Flights aside, islanders rely on a six-weekly freight ship that doesn’t always arrive every six weeks.
My driver’s licence and boarding pass expresses me through immigration to mingle with actual international passengers; mostly a torment of breakfast-beering, densely inked Bali-bound West Aussies. The 2920 kilometre flight hugs WA’s wild coast northwards, swooping into Learmonth Airport (Exmouth) to refuel after just two hours. Why? When the Indian Ocean weather deities throw squally tantrums, this flight can be diverted to Jakarta.
Today, fortuitously, they grin certifiably, my personal port-hole pageant over-compensating for this government-subsidised route’s dearth of seat-back entertainment and its school-playlunch-like snacks.
West Island eventually bursts my Indian Ocean trance like a palm tree shooting party popper. A sultry 27 degrees for the next week, says the sultry voiced pilot, but my internal thermostat registers early 30s on the tarmac. In the terminal shed, a sandal-wearing federal copper draws lines in the Cocos sand; essentially, the runway is never a beach shortcut and phone reception won’t save you here, so note the emergency box locations.
A room at the Breakers Resort.
A three-minute transfer/saunter takes me to The Breakers, a cute self-contained (accommodation-only) resort whose tropical gardens, louvred windows, air-con and perpetually oscillating fans battle the sticky midday ick admirably. Slender West Island’s midriff is smattered with low-lying beach houses and cottages, and pragmatically minimalist, rust-flecked structures, most within a coconut toss of water. Across the glowing aquamarine inner lagoon, Home Island is the only other inhabited island of the 27, home to around 500 of 600 Cocos Keeling islanders.
The handful of (mostly West Island) restaurants alternate opening days and times so at least one is available for each meal, a matrix best decoded by visitor centre staff (book ahead to avoid hangricity). Fish and chip and pizza nights ($45 for a supreme) at Salty’s Grill and Bakery are like town square gatherings of yore.
The tranquil waters and swaying palms of Home Island.Credit: Cocos Keeling Islands Tourism Association
Alfresco Surfer Girl Brewery serves hearty protein choices with Cocos twists, accompanied by ocean vistas across a sandbag-fortified bay, occasionally stained by a Border Force patrol boat bobbing ominously on the horizon. Sadly, the abundant, ambrosial Cocos Malay buffet at Seafront Restaurant, Home Island, is restricted to Wednesday evenings (currently under renovation).
‘The’ nightlife option is the pub-like Cocos Club (and cyclone shelter) but many visitors seem happily self-contained, stocking up on supplies at admirably but scantily stocked West Island Supermarket, paying desert island prices that made even this Sydneysider wince.
I’m rebuffed with a knowing belly laugh when I ask for a chain to lock up my rusty-chained beach cruiser. I reach either end of West Island in under 30 minutes of slothful pedalling (each way), pit-stopping at dream-like palm coves and surf spot The Shack. With a rusty rental 4WD, you’re 10 minutes from anywhere, once you master playing chicken with crabs scuttling across the sandy road.
Home Island is only a 30 minute ferry ride away, but the cultural contrasts with West Island span oceans and history. The trade winds carry the call to prayer across the buggy-only island, summoning the Islamic population to mosque.
The predominantly Cocos Malay population descends from indentured labourers brought over from Malaya and surrounds to the then-uninhabited archipelago by Englishman Alexander Hare and Scot John Clunies-Ross in the 19th century. The goal? Establish and harvest coconut plantations for the export of copra (dried coconut flesh).
Trips in motorised canoes, which are dictated by the tides, give travellers access to smaller islandsCredit: Jaxon Roberts
The extant cultural split between West and Home islands is a hangover from the 150-year Clunies-Ross era (Hare didn’t last long), which endured until the mid-1980s, despite the territory being granted to Australia in 1955. A 1970s UN report described the workers’ conditions as “feudal”. Home islanders voted for full integration with Australia in a 1984 referendum.
Evidence of the multi-generational Clunies-Ross fiefdom pervades, from ubiquitous overgrown palm plantations to the incongruous Glaswegian-bricked Oceania House. Today, you can stay in the Big House (and sleep where Queen Elizabeth once did) for $200 to $250 a night. The legends of New Year’s parties in its Malaysian-teak ballroom still circulate; family and workers drinking and Scottish dancing together furiously.
They were “Muslims who didn’t know what to do,” says tour guide Ossie Macrae, who translates for 81-year-old Austin, a living database of those days. He still collects sea salt, deftly weaves palm fish baskets in minutes and husks coconuts effortlessly on a ground-mounted metal spike that could effortlessly sever a novice’s bicep.
Oceania House … You can stay in the island’s “Big House” where royalty once slept.Credit: Maui Pando
Austin would collect 600 coconuts a day, paid modestly in Cocos rupees, redeemable only in the Clunies-Ross store. Many friends were crippled by the back-gnarling work or maimed when ankles twisted down crab-holes fully loaded but Austin remains conflicted. He says no one said integration meant no longer being able to freely collect turtles and seabirds for food and having to pay for housing and electricity. (Today, Home islanders can only lease houses.)
Twice weekly, the ferry delivers travellers to Cocos Keelings’ scenic luminary, leaf-shaped Direction Island, where Esky-laden pleasure-seekers claim secluded shelters that dot dazzlingly white Cossies Beach until the afternoon boat retrieves them.
Lush West Island.Credit: Jaxon Roberts
Confident swimmers ‘drift snorkel’ The Rip, a less-threatening-than-it sounds current funnelling people into the lagoon through a channel awash with humphead wrasse, blacktip reef sharks, and shocking-pink tagliatelle-textured nudibranch eggs.
The Direction Island Heritage Trail (3.5 kilometres, wear shoes) uncovers Cocos Keeling’s obscure modern history as an undersea telegraph-cable hub and setting for a WW1 sea battle and pops out on secluded ocean-side beaches, where shameful layers of plastic water bottles, fishing netting and the detritus of everyday life from faraway (much of it from Indonesia) wash in on tides faster than locals and volunteers can clear it.
Cocos Islands Adventure Tours’ canoe safaris give travellers access to smaller islands, like Pulu Blan Madar, where a colony of Christmas Island blue-tailed skinks have been released to counter extinction. Owners Kylie and Ash James host a drinks-and-nibbles-fuelled hermit crab race, encouraging guests to pick up rogue plastic bottles; fatal torture chambers for the shelter-focused crustaceans.
Malay cooking on Home Island.Credit: Cocos Keeling Islands Tourism Association
On West Island, “retired winemaker” Tony Lacy established Cocos Artisans Collective last decade to foster local jobs and to keep “handcrafted, long-shelf-life natural health food and products going sustainably”. The Wild Coconut Discovery Centre tour traces the eight stages of production of products like lip balm and coconut chips (only the latter currently makes it to the mainland, due to remote island logistics). You can taste their fresh coconut water (in smoothies), coconut cream (in ice cream) and pressed desiccated coconut (in chicken rendangs) in the island’s eateries.
Over the road, Big Barge Art Centre and Sula Sula Servery resides in a funkily restored 1970s iron-wood barge, which Emma Washer and her father had dragged onto her backyard/beach in the noughties. The impetus behind both the gallery and Emma’s mixed-media art is the washed-up ocean plastic, which has been a “problem for as long as I can remember”. Emma runs art workshops using “found objects” like thongs and rope to make jewellery and baskets so visitors think about this otherwise-pristine paradise from “an environmental point of view”.
Marine encounters … turtle spotting on a snorkelling tour.Credit: Cocos Keeling Islands Tourism Association
If not for its relative anonymity and the sublimity of distance, Cocos Keeling Islands may well be inundated with the generic over-water bungalow resorts that often distance travellers from a place and its people. Instead, it remains a small-scale (therefore relatively expensive) destination that infinitely repays curious, adventurous and forgiving travellers. Especially when you engage with Cocos Keeling’s relaxed, self-reliant and happily marooned souls.
Just remember, when you fill in the annoying little yellow Incoming Passenger Card as you circle back into Perth, tick ‘returning resident to Australia’ and nominate ‘Australia’ as the place where you spent most time ‘abroad’.
THE DETAILS
Fly
Virgin Australia flies a triangle route twice weekly from Perth, first stop Cocos Keeling on Fridays, first stop Christmas Island on Tuesdays. See virginaustralia.com.au
Stay
Secure your stay before buying flights because capacity is limited. Steve stayed in a self-contained queen bungalow at The Breakers. See thebreakerscocos.com.au
More
The writer was a guest of Tourism Australia and Cocos Keeling Islands Tourism Association.
Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter
Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.