One of the first settlers was John Clunies-Ross, a Scottish merchant; much of the island's current population is descended from the Malay workers he brought in to work his copra plantation.

[21] Wealthy Englishman Alexander Hare had similar plans, and hired a captain – coincidentally, Clunies-Ross's brother – to bring him and a volunteer harem of 40 Malay women to the islands, where he hoped to establish his private residence.

[22] Hare had previously served as resident of Banjarmasin, a town in Borneo, and found that "he could not confine himself to the tame life that civilisation affords".

[22] Clunies-Ross returned two years later with his wife, children and mother-in-law, and found Hare already established on the island and living with the private harem.

To the naturalist Charles Darwin, aboard the ship, the results supported a theory he had developed of how atolls formed, which he later published as The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs.

[26] Darwin's assistant Syms Covington noted that "an Englishman [he was in fact Scottish] and HIS family, with about sixty or seventy mulattos from the Cape of Good Hope, live on one of the islands.

The Australian warship broke to pursue Emden's supporting collier, which scuttled herself, then returned to North Keeling Island at 16:00.

Sydney had orders to ascertain the status of the transmission station, but returned the next day to provide medical assistance to the Germans.

The German survivors were taken aboard the Australian cruiser, which caught up to the troop convoy in Colombo on 15 November, then transported to Malta and handed over the prisoners to the British Army.

Emden was the last active Central Powers warship in the Indian or Pacific Ocean, which meant troopships from Australia and New Zealand could sail without naval escort, and Allied ships could be deployed elsewhere.

[33] Allied planners noted that the islands might be seized as an airfield for German planes and as a base for commerce raiders operating in the Indian Ocean.

Despite the importance of the islands as a communication centre, the Japanese made no attempt either to raid or to occupy them and contented themselves with sending over a reconnaissance aircraft about once a month.

[36] Later in the war, two airstrips were built, and three bomber squadrons were moved to the islands to conduct raids against Japanese targets in South East Asia and to provide support during the planned reinvasion of Malaya and reconquest of Singapore.

356 RAF squadrons arrived on West Island, they brought with them a daily newspaper called Atoll which contained news of what was happening in the outside world.

Run by airmen in their off-duty hours, it achieved fame when dropped by Liberator bombers on POW camps over the heads of the Japanese guards.

[27] The legal steps for effecting the transfer were as follows:[40] The reason for this comparatively complex machinery was due to the terms of the Straits Settlement (Repeal) Act, 1946.

In 1974, Ken Mullen wrote a small book[43] about his time with wife and son from 1964 to 1966 working at the Cable Station on Direction Island.

Under guidelines developed by the UN Decolonization Committee, residents were to be offered three choices: full independence, free association, or integration with Australia.

While the Home Island Council stated a preference for a traditional communal consensus "vote", the UN insisted on a secret ballot.

The referendum was held on 6 April 1984, with all 261 eligible islanders participating, including the Clunies-Ross family: 229 voted for integration, 21 for Free Association, nine for independence, and two failed to indicate a preference.

In 2023, the Australian parliament approved plans to extend the airstrip by 150 metres so that it could take Boeing P-8 Poseidon aircraft capable of low-level anti-submarine warfare operations and high-tech military surveillance.

[15] Prior to the upgrade, the United States had been using the airstrip for several decades as a stopover point between Diego Garcia and Guam, and as a partial alternative to the Paya Lebar Air Base.

The islands are administered from Canberra by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts through a non-resident Administrator appointed by the Governor-General.

The Cocos Islands remain constitutionally distinct from Western Australia, however; the power of the state to legislate for the territory is power-delegated by the federal government.

[63] At the 2022 Australian federal election the Labor Party received absolute majorities from Cocos electors in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

[77] Euronews described the plan as Australian support for an increased American presence in Southeast Asia, but expressed concern that it was likely to upset Chinese officials.

Although it is an Australian territory, the culture of the islands has extensive influences from Malaysia and Indonesia due to its predominantly ethnic Malay population.

[92][93] The site includes the displays on local culture and traditions, as well as the early history of the islands and their ownership by the Clunies-Ross family.

[98] After months of consultation with local people, both parks were approved in March 2022, with a total coverage of 744,000 square kilometres (287,000 sq mi).

The park will help to protect spawning of bluefin tuna from illegal international fishers, but local people will be allowed to practise fishing sustainably inshore in order to source food.