This is the Commonwealth of Australia, the 6th largest nation on the planet with an area
of 7.7 million square kilometers.
However, this is not a full picture of the nation.
While the mainland of the Australian continent and Tasmania form Australia almost entirely,
the nation also owns six external island territories.
Three of the six territories are inhabited, Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, and the
Cocos Keeling Islands.
The three remaining uninhabited territories are the Ashmore and Cartier Islands, the Coral
Sea Islands, and the Heard and McDonald Islands.
But how did these islands become territories of Australia?
In order to understand this we need to look at the history of each island.
Norfolk Island, the most populated of Australia’s external territories with a population of
over 2,200, has an area of 34.6 square kilometers and is located 1,412 kilometers east of the
Australian mainland.
The territory consists of three islands, Norfolk Island, the territory’s namesake, Phillip
Island, and Nepean Island.
These three islands together have an area of 37 square kilometers.
Captain James Cook was the first European to have sighted and landed on Norfolk Island
on October 10th, 1774.
This was during his second voyage around the world sponsored by Britain aboard the HMS
Resolution.
He named the island for the Duchess of Norfolk, which was, at the time, Mary Howard, not knowing
that she had died after he had set sail.
When he first came across Norfolk island, he was struck by the large pine trees that
covered it.
He believed that they would be suitable for the masts of ships and cloth, going so far
as to return to England with samples.
Cook sailed on shortly thereafter however, leaving the island to remain uninhabited until
January of 1788.
This was when Lieutenant Philip Gidley King returned to the island with fifteen convicts
and 7 free men.
This was in order to stop the French from claiming the island, who had already shown
an interest in territory in the South Pacific.
The island quickly became a farm with it’s main purpose being to provide food for Sydney,
which, along with surrounding settlements, had been experiencing devastating starvations.
Lieutenant Philip Gidley King left Norfolk Island in 1789, later suggesting that the
island be closed as a penal colony due to it’s remoteness.
Despite this, in March of 1790, Norfolk island received a ship of 300 new convicts, which
helped relieve the pressure created by the Sydney crisis.
In 1803, Secretary of State Lord Hobart called for the removal of the Norfolk Island settlement
due to the same reasons stated by Lieutenant King previously.
This process took place slowly, but by 1825 the island was once again completely abandoned.
The island experienced a second wave of settlement later in the same year, now a final place
of punishment for reoffenders, holding an average of 1,500 to 2,000 prisoners at any
given time.
This ended in 1855 when deportations fell out of favor in England and the prisoners
were evacuated to Tasmania.
A year later, on June 8th, 1856, 194 people from Pitcairn Island arrived on Norfolk Island.
This day, now known as Bounty Day, is still celebrated on Norfolk Island.
In the years following, several groups of the settlers returned to Pitcairn Island,
leaving 43 people to remain on Norfolk Island.
In 1897, Britain granted administration rights of Norfolk Island to the governor of New South
Wales, though the island remained a British colony.
The Norfolk Island Act, effective 1914, changed this however, making Norfolk Island a territory
of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Christmas Island, the largest of Australia’s external territories land wise with an area
of 135 square kilometers, has a population of over 2,000 and is located around 1,500
kilometers Northwest of the Australian mainland.
The island was first included on European navigation charts by the British and Dutch
in the early 1600s.
Captain William Mynors named the island Christmas Island when he first encountered it on Christmas
day, 1643.
The island did not, however, appear on common maps until a map by Pieter Goos, a Dutch cartographer,
was produced and published in 1666.
The earliest known people to set foot on the island were two of William Dampier’s crew
members, sailing on the British ship Cygnet.
They found the island completely uninhabited.
Dampier had been attempting to sail from New Holland, the term used for the Australian
mainland at the time, to the Cocos Keeling Islands, however his ship was pulled off course,
leading him to the island 28 days later.
The next visit was by Daniel Beekman, who described it in his 1718 book titled “A
Voyage to and from the Island of Borneo, in the East Indies.”
The first attempt to explore Christmas Island was by the crew of the Amethyst in 1857.
They attempted to reach the summit of the island, but found the steep cliffs impassable.
During the 1872 to 1876 Challenger expedition to Indonesia, Dr. John Murray, a naturalist
from Canada, carried out extensive surveys of the island.
The following year, 1887, Captain Maclear of the HMS Flying Fish, discovered a bay which
he coined Flying Fish Cove.
This is the location and namesake of the modern day capital.
In 1888, Pelham Aldrich of the HMS Egeria, visited Christmas Island for ten days and
gathered a larger amount of minerals and specimen.
Many of the minerals brought back were nearly pure phosphate of lime, a discovery that led
the British Crown to annex the island on June 6th of 1888.
The same year, a small settlement was established in Flying Fish Cove by George Clunies Ross,
the owner of the Cocos Keeling Islands at the time, to collect supplies for the growing
settlements on the Cocos Keeling Islands.
By the 1890s, indentured servants from Singapore, Malaysia, and China were being brought to
Christmas Island to work in Phosphate mining.
The mining industry on the island continued to thrive, with Japan as its biggest customer,
until the first World War.
After the war, mining companies were having difficulties mining and selling at prices
similar to pre-war conditions.
21 years later, the second World War broke out.
Christmas Island became a target for the Japanese due to its rich phosphate deposits.
A naval gun was installed under the command of a British official and Indian officers.
These Indian officers held a mutiny against the British on March 31st, 1942, leading to
the Battle of Christmas Island in which the Japanese occupied the island with little resistance.
They forced the inhabitants to begin mining phosphate once again, some of which was loaded
onto Japanese transport ships.
They also used the island to repair some of their broken military equipment.
Following the war, Singapore was made a separate Crown Colony, which simultaneously transferred
ownership of both Christmas Island and the Cocos Keeling Islands to Singapore.
Singapore was still owned by Britain, so this act basically added a second layer of administration
to the islands.
The Prime Minister of Australia raised the question of Christmas Island’s sovereignty
and Australian interest in the island in discussions with the British government in 1955.
This was controversial however, as some took it as empire building on Australia’s part,
something which is not popular in modern times.
Eventually it was decided that Christmas Island would transfer from British ownership directly
to Australia.
This was announced in British parliament on June 6th, 1957.
The Christmas Island Act of 1958 was passed in September, making the island a part of
the Commonwealth of Australia on October 1st, 1958.
The Cocos Keeling Islands consists of 27 individual islands and 2 coral islands which have a total
land area of 14 square kilometers and a population of nearly 600.
This territory is located around 2,100 kilometers Northwest from the Australian mainland.
Cocos refers to the significant amount of coconut trees on the islands, while Keeling
refers to Captain William Keeling.
Keeling was the first European to encounter the islands in 1609, discovering the Cocos
Atoll while sailing for the East India Company.
At this time, the islands were completely uninhabited. 196 years later, James Horsburgh
charted the islands and named one individual island after himself.
He was the first to coin the name the Cocos Keeling Islands.
20 years later, Captain John Clunies-Ross, a Scottish trader, arrived at the islands
after being unable to land on Christmas Island due to poor weather.
He instead surveyed the Cocos Keeling Islands.
John Clunies-Ross would later be known as “the King of the Cocos Keeling Islands”
due to his large influence on the islands.
The following year the first settlement on the Cocos Keeling Islands was established
by Alexander Hare and his slaves, under the orders of Robert Clunies-Ross.
This settlement was on Home Island and had a population of 98 people, most of which being
of Malay descent but some of Dutch, Chinese, and African descent.
The next year, John Clunies-Ross returned and established another settlement on South
Island.
In 1829, the first coconut oil was exported to England by Hare.
By 1831, tensions between Hare and Clunies-Ross were high and Hare was experiencing financial
difficulties, leading to Hare’s return to the Netherlands.
3 years later, Hare died in Europe, allowing Clunies-Ross to assume full control of Hare’s
settlements.
Seeking British annexation of the Cocos Keeling Islands, Clunies-Ross traveled to British
controlled Mauritius in 1836.
In 1854, Charles Darwin, most notably the creator of the theory of evolution, visited
the islands and created his theory of atoll formation.
Also in 1854, John Clunies-Ross died, handing control of the settlements to his son John
George Clunies-Ross.
I will now refer to John George Clunies-Ross as Clunies-Ross for simplicity.
3 years later, in 1857, the islands were annexed by the British Empire as Clunies-Ross had
wanted.
This made Clunies-Ross the governor of the islands.
However, in 1871, Clunies-Ross died, handing over control of the settlements to his son,
George Clunies-Ross, who I will refer to as Clunies-Ross from this point on.
In 1886, Queen Victoria granted legal control of the islands to Clunies-Ross.
In 1901, a relay cable station was established on Direction island which travels to Western
Australia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, South Africa, and Mauritius.
The relay station continued operation for 65 years, being shut down in 1966.
9 years after the establishment of the relay station, a wireless station was established
to communicate with nearby ships.
On the morning of November 9th, 1914, the Battle of the Cocos began, one of the earliest
naval battles in the first World War.
The crew of German Cruiser SMS Emden dismantled both the wireless station and the relay station,
however were not quick enough as islanders were able to transmit a distress signal.
The HMAS Sydney, an Australian ship, was sent to the islands after receiving the signal.
The ship intercepted the German cruiser and prepared for combat.
After heavily damaging the Emden, the Germans were forced to beach themselves on North Keeling
Island.
Shortly thereafter, the Germans raised a white flag.
134 Germans on board the Emden were killed and 69 were wounded, while 4 Australians were
killed and 16 were wounded.
The remaining Germans were loaded onto the Sydney and sent to the British controlled
island of Malta to be held as prisoners of war.
During World War two, the Cocos Keeling Islands were once again an important link.
Following Japan’s entrance into the war, Allied forces were worried that Japan would
occupy the islands, as Allied troops already occupied surrounding islands.
To avoid attracting Japanese attention, the cable station and wireless transmitter ceased
operation temporarily.
After the fall of Singapore, the island was placed under Allied administration.
In May of 1942, 15 soldiers stationed on the island held a brief mutiny against their captains,
however this was crushed before they ceased control.
In December of the same year, the islands were bombarded by Japanese submarines, however
no damage was caused.
Following this, two airstrips were constructed on the islands with intentions of raiding
Japanese targets in Southeast Asia.
After the war, the islands were placed under the administration of Singapore, a British
colony.
Ownership of the islands was later transferred from the United Kingdom to Australia on November
23rd, 1955.
So that’s Australia, 6 states, 2 internal territories and 7 external territories, 3
of which aren’t desolate and have a deeper history than you may have previously thought.
And as always, thanks for watching.