How the 'kings' of the Cocos were dethroned
For 150 years they were the undisputed overlords of a coral kingdom, white rajahs of a turquoise lagoon enclosed by sun-baked islands and powder white beaches in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
A British dynasty of merchant adventurers, the Clunies-Ross family styled themselves the 'kings' of the Cocos Islands, one of the strangest offshoots of the British empire.
Originally from the frigid Shetland Isles in Scotland, they established a plantation society cocooned from the rest of the world, importing hundreds of Malay workers to harvest coconuts for their copra and oil. But demands for democracy and the intervention of the United Nations brought their Somerset Maugham lifestyle to an abrupt end.
Today the man who would have been king, Johnny Clunies-Ross, finds himself eking a modest living breeding giant clams for aquariums.
His 80-year-old father, the islands' last 'monarch', lives in suburban exile in Perth, Western Australia.
Johnny Clunies-Ross, 49, recounted his family's remarkable riches-to-rags story from his bungalow home overlooking the Cocos Islands' tiny airport terminal.
'At the time I was very disappointed,' he said. 'I was 21 and I'd been groomed for the job - I was apprenticed to the mechanics' workshop, the boat handlers, the bush crew who maintained the plantations. Everything I did was with that future in mind. But it had become anachronistic. It had to change.'
He is the inheritor of a dynasty which began in 1827, when an ancestor, a Scottish seaman and colonial adventurer, first arrived on the uninhabited islands.
After bringing in Malay workers, generations of Clunies-Ross proceeded to build up a business empire based on copra, the dried flesh of coconuts which is pressed for its oil.
The family's tenure over the remote atoll was confirmed in 1886, when Queen Victoria granted them the islands in perpetuity.
Johnny's millionaire father, John Clunies-Ross, strode around the islands in a bush shirt and trousers, with a dagger strapped to his belt. But his son now prefers shorts and a faded T-shirt. And instead of coconuts, he is forging a future on another island resource - giant clams. He breeds young clams in seawater tanks and exports 2,500 a month to aquarium dealers in Britain, Germany and the US.
Despite his family's dramatically reduced circumstances, memories of the miniature monarchy they established remain sharp.
'We were quite pukka - we'd come in from a day's work and dress for dinner,' said Mr Clunies-Ross, drinking a can of beer at the island chain's only bar, the Cocos Club.
'Dad considered himself a Cocos Islander first and foremost, then an English gentleman. Friends of mine call me up when they've had a few beers and call me 'prince'. They still find it funny after all these years.'
He owns a rusting four-wheel-drive vehicle and lives in a modest one-storey house decorated with a ship's wheel and old bottles. It is a far cry from the 19th century mansion he and his siblings grew up in, just across a lagoon full of sharks, turtles and manta rays. Oceania House, which is now owned by a former taxi driver from Perth boasts teak-panelled walls, a stone Celtic cross and walled gardens befitting an English country house. It is located down a frangipani-lined lane on Home Island, which is home to 350 Malays, the descendants of the original plantation workers.
Under the Clunies-Ross, the Malays were paid in Cocos Island rupees, an invented currency which was redeemable only at the company store. Any islander who chose to leave the atoll, which lies halfway between Sri Lanka and Australia, was barred from returning.
Such draconian conditions prompted the UN and the Australian government to condemn the Clunies-Ross regime.
The UN's Committee on Decolonisation criticised the 'anachronistic, feudal' set-up in a report in 1974.
Under enormous pressure from Australian unions and politicians, John Clunies-Ross eventually sold the islands to Canberra in 1978 for A$6.25 million (HK$40.4 million at today's rates). He invested the money in a shipping line but later went bankrupt.
In 1984 the Malay islanders voted overwhelmingly to join Australia, and as Australian citizens now enjoy all the trappings of modern civilisation, from electricity and television to quad bikes, their preferred mode of transport. The coconut plantations have been abandoned due in part to a drop in world copra prices, and 65 per cent of the Malays are unemployed. Even after 30 years, the community argues over whether the Clunies-Ross were benevolent dictators or exploitative colonialists.
'When I started working for Mr Clunies-Ross I was only paid 3 rupees a week, but everything in the island store was very cheap,' said former carpenter Jim Ben Janin, 88. 'He was a very good man. But now we have more money and the government built us a cyclone shelter.'
Cree bin Haig's forebears arrived on the Cocos Islands from Java in the 1820s and the family worked for the Clunies-Ross for a century and a half. 'We have better houses and food,' the 67-year-old said. 'But we also have modern problems like diabetes, heart disease and high cholesterol levels.'
Jen Roberts, from the Cocos-Keeling Islands Historical Society, said: 'The reason it lasted for so long was because of the islands' isolation. But eventually the UN came in and said, 'This is not on in this day and age'. It was the end of an era.'
