Sources on the Cocos Malays: Reading List / Bibliography

In 2022 I published my book, The Cocos Malays: Perspectives from Anthropology and History. While I was researching it, I tried to keep a list of sources I came across. I've tried to keep adding to this to create the list below. 

William Clunies-Ross with his wife Clara Clunies-Ross and children  [between 1908 and 1921]
Clunies Ross family photography collection.

Sources on the Cocos Malays:
 An Annotated Bibliography

The following reading list is dedicated to sources that might be useful in studying the history and culture of Cocos Malays, specifically of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The referencing style is rigorously inconsistent. For the purposes of this blog  "Primary" includes documents, archives, and self-published works. "Secondary" includes scholarly and works that are not self-published. However, I am certain that my division of "Secondary" and "Primary Resources" is untenable according to a post-structuralist undergrad essay I wrote, but I can't find that essay right now.  Anyway, with so few entries, I need your help. Please send me suggestions!

Audiovisual sources

Many tourism-type videos can be found on YouTube. But there are also some seriously good documentaries:

1. "The World of Cocos Malay Music and Dance". Created by David Irving and Jenny McCallum this provides amazing insight into Cocos Malay music and dance.
2. "Australia's Forgotten Islands". This was produced by SBS. It documents Cocos Malays' attempts to be recognised as 'indigenous'
3. "Cocos Malaise" produced by the Dateline program from Australian broadcaster, SBS. Argues that, through White racism, Home Islanders have been sorely treated after integration with Australia. No longer available on SBS website but can be seen on YouTube.
4. "Dynasties: Clunies Ross". Australian broadcaster ABC produced this documentary about the Clunies-Ross family, which effectively ruled the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for over 150 years. 

The author of the website noted "The road sign reads Sauchiehall. That's also the name of one of the busiest shopping streets in Glasgow!!". The flags are apparently for QEII's 1954 visit.

Secondary Sources: Important Contributions

Here are secondary sources that may be useful, depending on your research direction:

1. Ackrill, Margaret. 1984. "The origins and nature of the first permanent settlement on the Cocos‐Keeling Islands," Australian Historical Studies, 21:229-243. Purports to identify a "significant historical error". The author clearly has a sharp intellect. 
2. Ackrill, Margaret. 1994. "British imperialism in microcosm: the annexation of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands." Economic History working papers (18/94). Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
3. Adelaar, Sander. 1996, 'Endangered Malayic isolects: the case of Salako, Sri Lanka Malay and Cocos Malay', in JT Collins & H Steinhauer (eds), Endangered languages and literatures in Southeast Asia, Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology, Leiden.
4. Adelaar, Sander. 1996. "Malay in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands" in Reconstruction, Classification, Description. Festschrift in honor of Isidore Dyen, Bernd Nothofer (ed.), Hamburg: Abera Verlag (Asia Pacific).
5. Armstrong, Patrick. 1991. Under the Blue Vault of Heaven: A study of Charles Darwin’s Sojourn in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Indian Ocean. Centre For Peace Studies, Nedlands, WA. As the title indicates, Darwin is the focus of this book. Cocos Malays are, understandably, incidental to the text.
6. Brockman, Rosemary Ann. Captives on Cocos : the origins and evolution of the plantation community of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. M Phil thesis. Murdoch University. 1981. Essential reading. Also available here.
7. Bunce, Pauline. 1988. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands: Australian atolls in the Indian Ocean. I found this book the best starting place for researching the Cocos Islands.  I think this book provides the best overall picture of the islands' geography, history, wildlife etc. 
8. Bunce, Pauline. 1987. Cocos (Keeling) Islands: Cocos Malay culture. West Island, Cocos (Keeling)Islands Department of Territories. Essential reading.
9. Bunce, Pauline. 2012. "Out of sight, out of mind...and out of line. Language Education in the Australian Indian Ocean Territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands". In Vaughan Rapatahana, Pauline Bunce, English Language as Hydra.  Multilingual Matters, Bristol, Buffalo and Toronto, 2012, xxv + 275 . This chapter concerns the status of Cocos Malay language in relation to the education of Cocos Malays students on Home Island
10. Castles, Ian. 1992. First Counts for Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands: 1991 Census of Population and Housing. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra.
11. Dutt, Srikant. "The Cocos-Keeling Islands".  Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Sep., 1981), pp. 476-483. Provides an overview of history from WWI to the 1970s. Thanks to Russel Palmer for sending this to me! 
12. Gibson Hill, C.A.  1947, “Notes on the Cocos-Keeling Islands”. Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Vol. 20. Part 2, p. 162 . Essential reading.
13. Gibson Hill, C.A., 1952, "Documents relating to John Clunies Ross, Alexander Hare and the early history of the settlement on the Cocos-Keeling Islands". Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.  Vol.25 No. 4/5 pp.1-306. Essential reading.
14. 
15. Gibson Hill, C.A.. The Colourful Early History of the Cocos Keeling Islands. Apparently, this is a reprint of "Documents relating to John..." above.
16. Wan Hashim, Wan Teh & A. Halim Ali. Rumpun Melayu Australia Barat.  1999. Penerbit UKM: Bangi. ISBN 967-942-437-5 (paperback). Written in Malay, this book apparently describes the Cocos Malays who have emigrated to Western Australia. Thomas Barker helped me get it from Malaysia, thanks Dr Barker! 
17. Hobson, Valerie (2008) Our island home: the story of the circumstances which led to the Cocos Malays relocating to Western Australia – some via Christmas Island. Sydney: Frontier Services. Since the 1970s,  Cocos Malays have migrated to Western Australia. Some of their stories of relocation are collected in this publication.
18. Hughes, J.S. Kings of the Cocos. 1950, Methuen
19. Hunt, J.G. 1989. The revenge of the Bantamese: factors for change in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands 1930-1978. PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
    Essential reading. This thesis is downloadable in three parts: Part 1 (-p. 86), Part II (pp .87-184), and Part III (p. 185-end).  His bibliography, "The Revenge of the Bantamese" provides some promising theses and other sources.
20. David R. M. Irving (2019) Strings across the ocean: practices, traditions, and histories of the Cocos Malay biola in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Indian Ocean, Ethnomusicology Forum, 28:3, 283-320. David Irving conducted fieldwork on Home Island in the 2010s looking among other things at the violin (biola) and how Cocos Malays have made it theirs. 
21. Irving, DRM 2023, 'Transplanted Musics in a Plantation Society: Performing Arts on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, 1826–1955', in J Sykes & J Byl (eds), Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape, University of California Press, Oakland, California, pp. 251-273. 
22. Kerr, Alan. A Federation in the Seas: An account of the Acquisition by Australia of its external territories."Chapter 11: Cocos (Keeling) Islands)", pp. 267-313. This chapter covers the legal and diplomatic aspects of the transfer of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands from the UK to Australia. This transfer was announced in 1951 and became operative in 1955. Original documents relating to this transfer can be found on pp. 292-313.
23. Keyser, Arthur Louis, 1922. People and places; a life in five continents. Read around pp. 205-206.
24. Lapsley, Tony. 1983. Cocos Malay syntax. Unpublished MA thesis, Monash University, Melbourne. Tony Lapsley was a translator with the Cocos Malay contingent that went to the UN in 1984 to announce integration with Australia. This thesis describes the grammar of the Cocos Malay language/dialect.
25. McCallum, Jenny. 2020. Being Distinctive: Cocos Malay Islamic Music in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Mainland Australia, and Beyond. Musicology Australia, 42 (1), 1–21.
26. Mowbray, Martin (1997) "The Cocos (Keeling) Islands: A study in political and social change," Australian Journal of International Affairs, 51:3, 383-397. Discusses changes wrought by the Australian government and the UN in the 1970s. Essential reading. 
27. Mowbray, M., 1997. Decolonization and Community Development on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Community Development Journal, 32(4), pp.321-331. Covers matters of administration, sovereignty, and law in the period from the visit of a UN Mission in 1974 up to the 1990s. The focus is on community welfare and participation.  
28. Mullen, Ken. 1974. Cocos Keeling--The Islands Time Forgot.
29. Saunders, G. 1980. Seekers of kingdoms: British adventurers in the Malay Archipelago. Brunei Museum Journal  137–54. In the 1800s, various Europeans, and especially British men, decided to set up kingdoms for themselves in Southeast Asia. This article, written for the historian, describes Alexander Hare and his founding of a settlement in the Cocos Islands.
30. Smith, T.E. . 1960. "The Cocos-Keeling Islands: A Demographic Laboratory". Population Studies, 14 (2), pp. 94-130. Written for demographers, this article describes factors which increase and decrease the population of Home Island (e.g. fertility, disease, migration etc.).
31. Sonderberg, C (2014) 'Cocos Malay', Journal of the International Phonetic Association vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 103-107. Provides linguistic analysis of Cocos Malay as spoken on Borneo.
32. Souter, Gavin 'Cocos: a history of the Cocos (Keeling ) Islands and the Clunies Ross Family.' According to the National Library of Australia, "Souter was commissioned by John Clunies-Ross to write a history of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, but it has not yet been published. The series contains the complete handwritten manuscript." I would love to read this unpublished manuscript. Presumably, it is the basis of Cocos Chronicles. 
33. Tahmindjis, Phillip, 1985. "Australia, the Cocos Islands & self-determination." Queensland Institute of Technology Law Journal, 1. In the 1984 Act of Self-Determination, the Cocos Malays of Home Island voted that the Cocos Islands should become part of Australia. Written for a legal studies audience, this article assesses this Act and what it says about the interaction of international and Australian law. Thus it says little about events on Cocos, which only form a background to a technical discussion of law.
34. Tarling, Nicholas. The Annexation of the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand Vol. 8, Iss. 32, 1959. Describes how, in 1857, the British annexed the Cocos (Keeling) Islands by accident.
35. Welsh, A 2001, 'Verbal Affixes of Cocos Malay', Masters (Preliminary) thesis, Bundoora, La Trobe University.
36. Welsh, A 2015 'Cocos Malay Language Since Integration with Australia', Shima: The international journal of research into island cultures, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 53-68.
37. Welsh, Alistair (1999). 'The Cocos Malay Language', Pelangi: An Educational Magazine about Indonesia, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 6-9.
38. Wood Jones, F. (1912)  Coral and Atolls; a history and description of the Keeling-Cocos Islands. London: Lovell Reeve & Co., 1912. Essential reading.

Primary Sources 

1. Clunies-Ross. The Clunies-Ross Chronicle. Published by the last 'King', this book chronicles many of the events during his rule. It was apparently written by Gavin Souter.
2. HMS Beagle, the ship carrying Charles Darwin, visited April 1-12, 1836. Three diarists kept an account of the visit, Darwin himself, Captain FitzRoy, and Syms Covington (Darwin's assistant). This wonderful Blog is essential reading. It lays out the three writer's entries for each place the Beagle visits. This makes it easy to compare their impressions of each place visited.
   You can find the Syms Covington journal by itself online. 
3. Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence Report on UN involvement with Australia’s Territories (1975). Some Senators got together to try to work out how Australians should respond to the pressure from the UN regarding the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and other territories of Australia. They were struggling to deal with the legal and political consequences of UN involvement. This document records their discussions, tables crucial documents (from the UN and other agencies) and presents Senators' findings. It is divided into:
    Part 1 (671 pages). A transcript (i.e. Hansard) of the discussions between the senators at their formal meetings to discuss the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in relation to the UN. Documents they 'table', that set for discussion, are also included; and,
    Part 2 (678 pages). More transcript (Hansard) and documents right up to page 907. After this, the Senators' report begins. 
4. Cocos Capers. A Collection of stories written by residents and visitors, mostly from the Australian mainland. 
5. Bruce Clunies-Ross, Cocos Maritime History: A History of the Ships and Boats of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean. This manuscript is sold at the Cocos Tourism office.
6. Clifford, Hugh (1902) The Romance of a Scots Family.  Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. A gushing fluff piece.
7. Cocos (Keeling) Islands Act 1955.
   http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cia1955198/
   This is the act that enabled "acceptance of the Cocos or Keeling Islands as a Territory " of Australia
8. United Nations Department of Political Affairs, Trusteeship and Decolonization. "Issue on Cocos (Keeling) Islands" No 11, April 1978.
   http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/pdf/decolonization/decon_num_11.pdf
   This provides great insight into how the UN perceived the issues leading up the Act of Self-determination.
9. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands – Fact sheet 103  The National Archives of Australia has prepared this overview of some of the archives possessed by Australia relating to the Cocos Islands.
10. "Chapter 8  Commonwealth Infrastructure On The Indian Ocean Territories"
    https://www.cgc.gov.au/attachments/article/52/Chap%208%20Cwlth%20infrastructure%20.pdf
    Provides useful information on the construction of houses, wharves, roads and other critical infrastructure.
11. Cocos (Keeling) Islands Annual Report 1983-84. Department of Territories and Local Government. Australian Government Publishing Service Canberra 1984.
    I haven't accessed the Annual Reports yet, but they should provide helpful info about the last 3 decades.
12. Bureau of Statistics 2 001 population for Cocos Keeling Islands. Page 12 lists the 1996 population on census night as 655 and then, in 2001, 621.
    http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/90B4C67311FFFBD0CA256C310083BE38/$File/2015.5_2001.pdf
13. Bureau of Statistics, 2011 data on Cocos Keeling Islands. Lists the total population as 550. Some of the census data appear inaccurate; i.e. they are hard to reconcile with my impressions from living here.
    http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/communityprofile/910053009?opendocument&navpos=220
14. Cocos (Keeling) Islands--Interpretation Plan 2008 http://www.ga.gov.au/webtemp/image_cache/GA21022.pdf This document is intended to describe how Home Island heritage might be best displayed to tourists etc. Doing this also provides useful information on Home Island's heritage.
15. Wynne, "When there was trouble in paradise." Reporters write the piece, but editors choose the title.  So don't let the cliched title put you off. This is a superb piece of journalism.
16. United Nations "Decolonization", no. 11, 1978.
17. United Nations "Decolonization" no. 21, 1984.

Archives

1. The National Library of Australia's Guide to the Papers of Sir John Clunies Ross has a bunch of papers. They  "consist primarily of autobiographical writings of Clunies-Ross referring especially to his relations with Alexander Hare."
2. Singapore Museum interviews with Roderick Maclean, administrator on the Cocos Islands. 
3. In relation to the above, it will be recalled that Charles Darwin visited Cocos.  Darwin's ship captain was a man named FitzRoy. FitzRoy published a diary of his trip with Darwin Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle. Afterward, John Clunies Ross made fun of this, writing what he called an appendix to FitzRoy's book. Because John Clunies Ross is making of Fitzroy, his writing is sometimes called a "Satire" others call it the "Preface". Whatever it's called it is about 87 pages long. In it John Clunies Ross pretends to be FitzRoay. Photos of John Clunies Ross's writing can be found and read online through Trove. The handwriting is hard to read, but luckily it has been transcribed by the Darwin Project. 
4. Raffles papers at British Museum.
5.  Australian National Archives. Go to their photo search and search "Cocos" or similar. Paul Tickell put me onto this great source of digitized photographic images of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. I need to be wary as Christmas Island and Cocos Islands photos are intermingled.

Cocos Malays of Sabah, Borneo

1. On the Cocos Malays in Borneo http://portal.softbox.com.my/v7/kampungkokos/index.php/en/history.html

Noor Aziah Mohd AriffinNurul Ain OsriNurul Hamiruddin SallehNurul Hamiruddin Salleh, Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of Cocos Malays in Tawau, Sabah

Historical Fiction

Mateer, The Quiet Slave recounts the events immediately following settlement on the island in 1826 from the perspective of a fictional female slave

Barley, The Man Who Collected Women

Secondary Sources/
Publications I've been involved in:

Feyrel, R., Saldin, M., Winarnita, M., Thomas, P., Welsh, A., Herriman, N., -"Australia's Malay History and Heritage"

Herriman, N. and Winarnita, M. (2012) ‘Sinetron Keeps Links with Indonesia Alive: Despite Isolation and Multiple Migrations the Cocos Malays Maintain a Resilient Culture’, Inside Indonesia 109: Jul-Sep 2012. This article argues that Home Islanders' connection with Indonesia is facilitated by watching soap operas! 

Winarnita, M. and Herriman, N. (2012) Caring and Family: Marriage Migration to the Malay Muslim Community of Home Island (Cocos Keeling Islands)’, Indonesia and the Malay World, 40 (118), pp. 372-387. In many local marriages, a spouse has had to migrate to Home Island. Written for scholars in the social sciences, this article analyses marriage migration on Home Island.

This  Blog: “Cocos (Keeling) Islands Fieldwork” documents my experience of anthropological fieldwork as a way to approach Cocos Malay culture.  The National Library of Australia (NLA) requested to archive this Blog on Pandora. (As NLA’s website explains “PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, was set up by the Library in 1996 to enable the archiving and provision of long-term access to online Australian publications.”) So my Blog is now available on the PANDORA Archive.

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Self-Determination by the Cocos Malays, I wrote “Australia’s Malay population” (2014). This article describes the historical context in which the local population voted to integrate into Australia in 1984. It was published in ANU’sNew Mandala and attracted a wide readership and numerous historically relevant comments.

 

I was interviewed for five radio segments by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). These were broadcast through the Australian state of Victoria on successive weekdays in 2015 (if I remember the year correctly).

La Trobe Asia interviewed me on their Asia Rising podcast about Cocos Malay culture and relations between Cocos Malays living on mainland Australia and in Malaysia. I talked specifically about the exchange of fresh seafood from Cocos Islands for sate from Katanning, Western Australia. I called it an “esky economy” because these products are sent in Styrofoam iceboxes, which are called ‘eskies’ in Australia. df

 

I expanded the “esky economy” idea in the Asian Studies Association of Australia’s Asian Currents Blog. My article was entitled “Seafood, sate, and spouses—giving and receiving among the Cocos Malays” (2015).

 Herriman, N. and Winarnita, M.  (2016) ‘Seeking the State: Appropriating Bureaucratic Symbolism and Wealth in the Margins of Southeast Asia’, Oceania, 86 (2), pp. 132-150. This article is a theoretical analysis that further the debates between Foucault’s ‘art of government’ and James Scott’s 'art-of-not being-governed' ideas. The argument is based on fieldwork in the Cocos Keeling Islands and two other South East Asian locations. The article elicits the different ways that the Cocos Malays bring the State into their everyday lives.

I worked with a number of scholars on the political aspirations of Cocos Malays.  The resulting piece: “A group of Southeast Asian descendants wants to be recognized as Indigenous Australians” (2018) was published by The Conversation in both English and Indonesian. 

 

Thematic guide to sources

Alexander Hare.

Hare was the first 'king' of the Cocos Malays from c. 1812- c. 1830, information can be found in dedicated articles and in passing in books including the following.

Gibson-Hill, C.A., Raffles, Alexander Hare & Johanna van Hare. Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1955, Vol. 28, No. 1 (169), pp. 184-19. Useful info regarding Hare before his time on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Irwin, G. (1955). Nineteenth-Century Borneo A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry, Brill. Useful info on Hare can be found in chapters 1 & 2 of this book, which is available free online. 

Hannigan, Tim. Raffles & the British Invasion of Java. Prof Adrian Vickers suggested I read this. According to the cover, the book describes "Nineteenth-century Java as seen through the eyes of a soldier of the British Empire". Chapter 9 is entitled "Mutiny and Mangos" and describes Raffles' relationship with Alexander Hare, who first settled on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Oats, David. 1999. "Alexander Hare in the East Indies: A Reappraisal". The Great Circle, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1999), pp. 1-15.  (Published by: Australian Association for Maritime History). Extremely useful. Seeks to show that Hare wasn't as bad as he has been painted. Also provides useful detail about Hare's life. 

Runciman, Steven. 1960.  The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946. 

Smith, Andrew. 2013. "Borneo's first "White Rajah": new light on Alexander Hare, his family and associates" Borneo Research Bulletin. Prof. Gerrell Drawhorn alerted me to this article. Extremely useful. As a bonus, it has great info on archives at the end.

Christmas Island

Burstyn, H. L. (1975) ‘Science Pays Off: Sir John Murray and the Christmas Island Phosphate Industry, 1886-1914’, Social Studies of Science, 5(1), pp. 5–34. Some useful information about the discovery of phosphate and the formation of the phosphate company can be found in this article. 

Gibson-Hill, C. A. (Carl Alexander) 1949, "The early history of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean," Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, March 1949, Vol. 22, No. 1 (147) (March 1949), pp. 67-93

Hunt, John, 2011. Suffering through strength: the men who made Christmas Island

World War II

Crusz, Noel, The Cocos Islands Mutiny, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, WA, 2001. This probably relates to the isolated Ceylonese mutiny in WWII. If so, I expect it would have little information regarding the Cocos Malays.

Rossam, Ken. Operation Pharos: A History of the Allied Airbase on Cocos (Keeling) Islands During World War II. Woodfield Publishing (Oct 2000)

Spirals of community life

I am holding onto two of the spikes of the spider shell's shell.
It is cracked open so you can see the spirals leading up to the top of the shell.

The spider shell is a marine animal whose shell has a line of 7 spikes sticking out. The shell and the animal inside spirals up to a pinnacle.

Spider shell visible at the top of frame. This
underwater photo was taken around high tide.

The animal has two long, flexible shafts that can protrude out of the shell and retract. At the end of these are eye balls. Spider shells also have one leg which they stick out of the shell and use to move, quite effectively.  On February 13, I helped our neighbours prepare this delicacy as part of long and ongoing preparations for an April wedding.

Cracking open part of the shell reveals the spirals inside.

As the trailer load of shells indicates, we were preparing the meat on bulk.  Apparently, the spider shells had been gathered at low tide, a long way out on the reef. 

Once brought back to the land, the preparation process begins with [ketuk] breaking open the shells in order to expose and extract the animal from the shell. 

 We got the spider shells out of buckets (see blue bucket full of spider shells and empty red bucket). We held them on the anvil ( Nek As is wearing a glove to hold the spider shell) and then bashed (ketuk) them with the hammer. Then we threw the shells onto the trailer in the foreground.

Extracting the meat

The shell is extremely strong. Even experienced hands like Nek Neng and Nek As required at least 2 or 3 very sharp hammer blows to break a shell open. With this number, I could crack open the small shells, but I needed generally at least 4-6 blows for the larger shells.

After cracking open the shells and taking out the animal inside, the women cleaned off (rawat [sic.]) the ‘crap’ [tahi]; and finally rinsed [bilas] the white meat.

Rawat (taking care of) the meat, involving separating entrails etc.

Rawat: the white meat is kept, while the entrails etc. are pushed
 into the hole in the middle of the table, so they fall ino the tray below.

The two women dressed in blue to the left of the frame are rinsing (bilas or cuci) the meat.
The pink and blue house in the background, Ocean Villa, is where I'm staying.

Spider shell meat has many uses.

Shell

Nek As told me they also used to get the shell of a young spider shell, clean it and polish it, and sell it to white people (orang putih) on West Island for 3 ringgit.

Gong gong just taken out of the cauldron and
 strained of the water in which they were boiled.

(“Ringgit” could refer to the currency during the Clunies Ross times, but, seeing as it sold to ‘foreigners’, as it were,  it probably refers to “pounds” or “dollars”. Indeed, people still use the term “ringgit” for dollars”.)

Food and bait

Male spider shells are not consumed but can be used for bait.My Blog “Teach a man to fish” shows how spider shell meat and entrails are  used for bait. The entrails, by themselves can be used to attract fish while angling (in Australian English this is called "burley"). 

Female spider shells we were preparing are specifically referred to as female spider shells.

The legend of gong-gong

...here's some they prepared earlier. From boiled to dried gong gong.

So how did Cocos Malays find out spider shells are edible? Nek Iwat (owner of a local store) related a local legend to Monika. Originally, he said, locals had only used spider shell for bait. An Indonesian told the locals on Home Island that humans could eat spider shell too. And that man’s name was “Gong Gong”. It didn’t sound like a common Indonesian name, so Monika asked if the man might have been ethnically Chinese (as some locals claim they were descendants from the Chinese Indonesians). No, she was told, he was an Indonesian from Banten.

Fried gong gong makes a nice, crunchy snack.
It tastes very similar to crackling.

Another version of the story comes from Haji Wahid. According to him, "Gong Gong" is the name of a Singaporean Chinese who came to Home Island. He was connected with Clunies-Ross (the last 'king' of Cocos), as Clunies-Ross shipped the coconuts to Singapore.

Finally, Nek Kaya told Monika that it was a visitor or visitors from Australia who first started eating gong-gong. Home Islanders learned from them. Whatever the origins, it happened that we were extracting the meat for food.

Ways to prepare gong-gong

As food, gong gong has many uses, people happily listed to me. You can use gong gong for soup. You can dry it for later use. You can also fry it.

A line from the Cocos School Song, recited at school assemblies, extolls spider shell soup.

Gong gong Crackers (Kerupuk gong gong)

Gong gong Crackers (Kerupuk gong gong)

We were extracting gong gong for use later as sate (little bits of meat speared on wooden stick and barbecued over a fire). The meat was then frozen to be defrosted and cooked later.

Preparation of gong gong is labour intensive. Harvesting it at low tide, hauling it back to land, cracking it open, cleaning, to washing takes a lot of time and energy. Monika heard that there is a local couple who actually specialise in doing it, and sell it for $25/bag. They go further out to get big gong gong. So why didn't the people who taught me to crack open gong gong shell just buy it?

Onions, carrots, rice, and spider shell meat. Put them
 together, and you've got gong gong soup.

I think it is because the gong gong we were preparing will be used for the wedding. This wedding often comes up when people talk to me. The wedding they refer to is the wedding of Ashari, the grandson of Nek As, in April. With preparations starting at least two months earlier, this wedding (like most first marriages apparently) will be a huge event for the community. The celebrations, I’m told, will last a week. So, everyday, close friends and family are helping out at Ashari's parents house, giving their time and energy to  prepare for the festivities. In 'return', they are given drinks and, if they happen to be around in the evening, fed. Giving and receiving is already occurring on a large scale at this house and it will increase as we get closer to the wedding.

The spirals of the spider shell might make a good metaphor for the wedding preparations. Initially involved in the preparations are family and close friends. As the wedding approaches, more people will help out. Before the wedding, many Cocos Malays who have emigrated will also return for the rituals. Eventually, the whole community will be involved.

Teach a man to fish

Haji Wahiib teaching fishing, Cocos-style 

 We know this planet as EARTH. But over 70% of the surface of our planet is water and within that water exists 90% of all living creatures. Life on this planet began in the water and the oceans of this world are vital to our existence. Our planet should be called OCEAN. (Glen Cowans, Beyond the Edge, 2009)

Sundays on Home Island are seemingly devoted to relaxing. The ferry doesn’t run and the lagoon is criss-crossed by fishing boats. The upshot of this for me is that while Saturday might have been more cement (see Blog “Laying some foundations”), Sunday was fishing. Haji Wahiib, who is also a captain on the ferry,  had taken me under his wing and invited me to accompany him fishing. This was a great privilege, as tourists pay a lot for this kind of experience. It would also be my first fishing trip on a boat. “Where will we go?” I asked. “I’ll wait and see; it depends on the wind and the tide”.

Fishing was very relaxing but eventful. Everyone knows, it appears, that you shouldn't take bananas on boats. I won't dwell on how bananas are successfully transported around  the world and accept the taboo as fact. In any case, I hadn't heard about it and transgressed the rule by taking a banana on the boat. As a result, apparently, the boat almost capsized. I stood up to cast my rod just as a 1ft wave came from nowhere to slightly upset my balance. I tumbled and the boat almost came on top of me, taking our catch, fishing gear and Haji Wahiib with it. Thankfully Haji Wahiib responded quickly and righted the balance. Then, we spotted turtles. Jumping in to photograph them, I got quite close and could see the head and shell but none of the pictures could be found when I got home. They also swam off extremely quickly. Obviously, they were hantu (ghosts).

Back to more worldy matters...As I walked home through the village, Nek Kyya called out "balek mancing" (finished from fishing)--it's a kind of idiom.We ended up with quite a bounty, most of which will be placed in the freezer for dinners during the week. Haji Wahiib’s wife, Hajah Atie, is a talented cook and we have engaged her to prepare meals for us. A few guys I have spoken to say they have large freezers full of fish, obtained from angling around the lagoon, and I have noticed these large freezers in a couple of houses. I’d like to see how common this is.

The photographs below document the day, while AV footage combines two separate incidents--a reef shark that got away and a sweet-lipped emperor that didn't.

Connecting boat trailer to 4-wheeler

Lowering boat at ramp 

Kepiting ketam balong (land crab) to attract fish

Spreading land crab to attract fish.

Hook has octopus for the littler fish to nibble on. Then gong-gong (spider shell) for the larger ones

Ikan gerapu (Rock cod); meat is soft and great to make ikan sambal (a spicy condiment) but scaling is difficult, so we returned these to the lagoon.

Ikan babi (trigger fish)

Ikan kakap kuning (Sweet lipped emperor)

Ikan mak keripuk (wress)

 Later on...Haji Wahiib and his wife Hajah Atie, who turned part of the catch into a delicious dinner

Fishing has contributed significantly to the diet in the past and today. PJ recalled to me that in his youth:

[We fished] on the lagoon mainly. Most men went every weekend because every single weekend we had to go to South Island to feed the chooks [chickens] because we had a pondok [beach shack]. So on the way back we would fish. We would anchor the boat to fish. Once you got extra you share it around. And when you cook it you put extra oil it will last a couple of days. My parents said as long as you don't touch it [the fish], it will last.... [We did] not fish for fun that time. 

When, in mid-February 2014, volcanic dust from an eruption in Indonesia saw flights to Cocos Islands cancelled, Pak Imannya said even if there are no shipments, and fresh food doesn't arrive, he joked "don't worry, here in Cocos we have plenty of fish". But I think this reflected a truth, fish are truly plentiful. But fishing is not just about survival, it also says a lot about society and culture.

Woman (left) and man (right) fishing at beach

Fishing plays an important role in the reciprocal economy. I will explain, in another Blog, that an economy of gift giving sits alongside the capitalist economy on Home Island. Cocos Malays returning, taking the flight to mainland can often be seen carrying eskies (large Styrofoam boxes) full of fish, I think to give to relatives. In this gift-giving economy, fish are crucial. Put another way, fish are often gifts.

Fishing reflects a gender divide. Angling is largely undertaken by adult men. You can see women and children fishing, casting from the shore sometimes. I've also been told that women do go fishing on the boats. However, I have seen no women fishing out on the lagoon. While women are highly integrated into the capitalist labour market (see the photos in Blog “Earning a Living”), fishing seems to be something of an obsession for men. This might compare to rearing roosters for Balinese men, surfing for surfers, or motorcycle maintenance for bikers.

Fishing is a meaningful activity. Getting money from the ATM is not something about which much significance is placed. It is mostly an ends oriented, instrumental action. For people on the mainland, when you add the cost (petrol, bait etc.) and effort (usually several hours) involved, fishing makes no sense. It would be more efficient in time and money to buy fish from a professional fisherman. But a different kind of rationality dominates in angling. The point is to do things the right way, and the right way is for a man to go and fish for his family. From this perspective, fishing is eminently sensible. On Home Island, it might also make sense from a 'rational' economic perspective, as meat is dear and fish are plentiful.

None of this, of course, is exotic. Fishing resonates in many other cultures, as books, magazines, and a huge international industry attests to. History supports the point; we could look to the Christian tradition. Aspiring to escape what they saw as religious persecution,the Puritan forefathers approached King James I to endorse their project of settling in the New World. When his royal majesty was told the little band proposed to support itself by fishing, he exclaimed : "So God have my soul, 'tis an honest trade! 'Twas the Apostles' own calling." James was probably alluding to Matthew 4:18-20, one of my favourite New Testament passages:

Now as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. And He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."  Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.

The symbolism wouldn’t have worked if Peter and Andrew had been butchers or mowers! While the specific symbolic significance clearly differs between cultures, looking at the Christian tradition shows that the appeal of fishing as a symbol is clearly not limited to the Cocos Malays.

Finally, in the broader context of human culture, oceans have played a crucial role. Incas and Aztecs built civilizations in mountains. The Mongols built a civilisation on grasslands. Generally, however, civilisations have been developed in river valleys (Ancient Egypt on the Nile; Mesopotamia built around the Tigris and Euphrates). Sometimes these are a fair way up river, such as Indus and Angkor. Others are near the sea. The Indian Ocean has provided a freeway of sorts for trade in goods and ideas for two millennia. It was in this context that the Cocos Keeling island were inhabited in 1826. Through the fish and trade the Indian Ocean has supported the Cocos Malays and peoples on its shores in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

In sum, fishing for Cocos Malays, as in many other societies, is much more than an activity sourcing fish from the sea. However, to understand what fishing means among the Cocos Malays, I need to go much deeper than these opening observations. I feel confident that, if I can explain fishing better, I’ll be able to explain Cocos Malay culture better too.

(For anglers who might be reading this Blog, I am learning about fishing as we go. Anyway, in the fishing excursion pictured above, we used mono line. We used no sinkers and, after we lost our rigs on the bombies (protruding reef and coral), no swivels; just the hook and bait. The idea was to get the bait to move around, attracting the smaller fish, and then the sweet lips we were after. Haji Wahid used a hand line; I used a small rod. The boat was anchored and the water was probably 2-4 foot in depth on the mid-tide.)

Postscript March 8: Fishing is real

After I wrote the blog, Monika posted it on Facebook. Hajah Atie was kind enough to comment "this is real":

On a subsequent fishing trip, I also found myself thinking, without reflection, "this is real". 

Haji Wahiib was idly sketching this while passing time. It's a drawing, but fishing is 'real'. You think about fishing even when you are not fishing. It is a deeply meaningful activity.

On the one hand, of course it's real, like your experience of your nose or my experience of the laptop I'm writing on. But there are experiences that strike us humans as much deeper--the kinds of experience or behaviour people are referring to when they say "keep it real" or "the real thing". Haji Wahiib has invited me on another fishing trip, "but no camera" he insists. And now I understand. The camera just gets in the way--on the boat, when I cast the rod, and stop to take photos. It's just a distraction from what really counts; the fishing.