[1] By the end of 1827 there were two groups of European settlers on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and there was antagonism between the two settlement leaders, John Clunies-Ross and Alexander Hare.

He imposed an imperialist social and political regime on the Islands and managed them as a coconut plantation using non European labour which gave the Clunies-Ross family great power.

He established a contractual arrangement between his family and the Malay and later Bantamese people, who would provide labour for the plantations and for copra production.

Rates of pay were fixed at half a Java rupee for 250 husked nuts per day or reasonable services for labour.

The agreement bound the families and community heads to obey rules and lawful commands or quit the Islands and move elsewhere.

Wharves, store houses, workshops and factories were part of the economy and the system of social control on the islands.

[1] The coconuts were husked, opened and the inside flesh was dried in the sun or later by artificial heat in purpose built furnaces.

Home Island contains the remains of the storage sheds and furnaces required for copra production and export.

New buildings and a jetty to load and unload ships were erected with a series of railway tracks to move produce on the Island.

The cable staff managed to send a message reporting the cruiser and HMAS Sydney arrived and a sea battle ensued.

[1] During World War II, the Islands were occupied by the armed forces and there was open scrutiny of the working and living conditions there.

In the years after the War, the government of Singapore expressed that the paternalistic attitude of the Clunies-Ross family to the Cocos Malay workforce was unacceptable.

The people achieved self government and in 1979 a local council (the Shire of Cocos) was established and a cooperative formed to run the islands.

[1] This Wikipedia article was originally based on Slipway and Tank, entry number 105221 in the Australian Heritage Database published by the Commonwealth of Australia 2019 under CC-BY 4.0 licence, accessed on 15 May 2019.