Greeting from Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Dear all,

This was written on Sunday the 17th.

It’s about 2:00pm on a hot and humid afternoon and I am on Cocos Island. (The West Island to be precise).

Tropical? You betchya!

I arrived on Valentine’s Day and got here a wee bit early due to the weather. That a curiosity.

Usually when the weather is bad one arrives late! This time however, the National Jet flight which was scheduled to operate Perth, Learmonth (tech stop for fuel), Christmas Island and then Cocos Island, had to bypass Christmas Island due to weather. Apparently the weather there was quite foul with a nearby tropical cyclone causing strong wind, low cloud and driving rain. Usually when they can’t land at Christmas Island they divert to nearby Jakarta, refuel and wait for the weather to clear. This time the weather at Jakarta was also bad, so the option to push on to Cocos was obvious.

It’s a big ocean out there. Lots and lots of blue and very few places to land. We’re pretty fussy about getting our options right.

As it turned out, after we diverted to Cocos Island, the weather at Christmas Island cleared quite nicely. So, after landing at Cocos, the crew took the aircraft on the same afternoon back out of Cocos, to Christmas and returned at about sunset in Cocos to complete the flying schedule for the day. Heroic!

I got off while I had the chance on the first arrival in Cocos. (The novelty of the jump seat had well and truly worn off).

Anyhow, as I said it is now Sunday afternoon. I have been here since Thursday and most of my work is done. I’m now hanging around waiting for the aeroplane to come in at 2:20 completing the same scheduled service. Guess what?

The weather in Christmas Island is yet again foul but the weather in Jakarta is OK, so the flight has diverted there. I’m yet to find out if they will be able to make it back to Christmas Island later today and still have enough duty flying hours left to finish tonight in Cocos. I’ll have to wait and see. In the mean time I can’t have a beer because if they do make it to Cocos tonight, I’ll have to be back on the job.

Well, at least I have a nice air-conditioned motel unit to relax in and I can receive the cricket from Adelaide on TV and on the local radio. I have the lap top, and all the photos that I have taken with three cameras have now been transferred. I’ve been able to get them sorted and most have been compressed down to low resolution images, so I can send you a few nice pix. I’ve also done some good panoramas and I think you’re going to be pretty impressed with this place.

Actually I find it rather novel watching the live TV from Adelaide. We’re 4 hours ahead of Adelaide. I have just seen the sunset over Adelaide oval, and here its still very much SPF 30+.

The sunset scene from my bedroom door.

The good news is that I have managed to get a lot of the work I needed to complete, all done by Friday evening, so yesterday was a total R&R day.

On Thursday night I joined with the flight crew and together we enjoyed a Valentine’s day dinner at the Cocos Island Motel restaurant, the ‘Tropika’. Afterwards, we all wandered over the road to the ‘Cocos Club’ and there was a huge run on the ‘Coronas’. The place was pretty well jumping. I got roped into playing bar billiards with the local Imam who didn’t seem to mind being in the company of so much alcohol. He played like hell, and drank orange juice all night which gave him a distinct advantage. I also managed a game of billards with one of the Clunes-Ross family. The lady beat me most unfairly I thought as she was almost falling out of her Valentine’s Day dress in a normal stance. Leaning over the billiard table left nothing to the imagination (as you might well imagine). I’m rather sorry I didn’t have my camera handy. All in all, the good folk here are extremely friendly.

On Friday I saw off our aeroplane and momentarily, I had this feeling of being stranded on a desert island. I tidied up some loose ends with our local airline agent, and then I managed a good days work with the Shell Aviation agent. I got the grand tour of the West Island from the jetty and bulk fuel store at the North end of the Island, down to Scout’s Park and the ‘Yacht Club’ at the South end of the Island.

I think all up, the total road distance is about 7km. Its too hot and humid to walk. Bicycles are available, but I’m afraid it’s been too many years for this black duck to take up such transport. My thighs started to ache at the mere thought of riding a ‘tredley’.

Geoff the refueler showed me the boat ramp at ‘Rumah Baru’, the surf shack at ‘Trannies’, the Quarantine station, golf club, the ‘secret squirrel’ spy station, and after that we had a lovely cup of tea on his front veranda.

Yes, I could sing about ‘My Island Home”.

The houses front right onto the airport, just outside the runway strip. There is no fence, and the golf course straddles both sides of the runway at the Southern End. They have 9 holes. The runway is treated as a water-hazard, so if your ball hits the bitumen, you take a penalty stroke and play from the nearest edge of the bitumen. Don’t worry about aeroplanes. The NJS flight is the only aircraft activity since I have been here.

They care a lot about our NJS flights in this part of the world. It’s the only relatively quick and reliable way out – although tickets are mighty expensive.

I find it all rather amusing as the aerodrome has the same security classification as Perth or Adelaide airport. Can you imagine playing golf across the runway at Adelaide?

Its such a casual place though. Everything runs on banana time. The shops are only open for a few hours each day. Pretty much everything shuts down at 2:00 pm. The club is quite reliable though and is well patronized.

Down at ‘Trannies’, the locals leave their surf-boards in a beach-side shelter. Such is the trust and mutual respect on the island, they leave a gentle notice for the tourist to not borrow a surf-board with out the owners permission.


Would you kindly not borrow a surf-board without the owner's permission?

Oh, and they don’t much lock doors or their cars here. You will always find the keys in the ignition. No point in stealing a car - no where to go!

On Saturday (yesterday) some new friends and I went over to Direction Island on the local ferry. I teamed up with a visiting school teacher and a couple of Marine Safety Investigators who arrived with me on Thursday. We all decided to have a delightful picnic lunch on the island, try some snorkel diving, and just kick back. What a great day out.


Ready to go snorkel diving at Direction Island.

The round trip on the ferry, including the connecting bus cost only $5 per person. Julie, the visiting school teacher, scrounged an esky and ice. Jose’, the local chef arranged some fruit, drinks and chicken and salad rolls for us, and we all hired some snorkel gear.

Well, I can tell you it was just the most perfect day out. We met some other folk as you would expect, and in particular we teamed up with a young grazier and his wife and two young kids. They were on holidays from near Ravensthorpe in WA which is another place National Jet fly to. They get about 4 weeks between the end of the last harvest, and having to be ready for the opening rains next month. Tough life.

We swam and dived at the yachties corner on Direction Island for most of the day. There is a swimming pontoon, fresh water in tanks, long drop dunnies, and nice hammocks slung between coconut trees. Just super.

There is a beaut little shelter which has obviously been set up by the local council and is obviously well patronised by boaties. The place is festooned with memorabilia from visiting yachts and as soon as I saw it, I recalled images of the place having popped up in travel shows on TV and magazine articles. I know there are some good pictures on the internet – probably on Google Earth, and certainly in ‘Panoramio’.


With friends on "DI". L-R Neville, Julie, Greg, Mark.

The big highlight of the trip to ‘DI’ was the snorkel dive opportunity in ‘The Rip’.

‘The Rip’ is the channel at the South Eastern end of Direction Island, between ‘DI’ and ‘Home Island’. It’s called ‘The Rip’ fairly obviously because there is a strong tidal flow into the lagoon. As the afternoon wore on, it lived up to its name and the current became too strong to cope with comfortably. Because we were a little bit too unsure of local conditions to trust the idea of being swept into the lagoon and wade back through the shallows we took the conservative approach and stayed upstream and relatively close to shore.


‘The Rip’ at DI. Home Island in the distance.

‘I can’t say the coral was much to write home about. The variety of fish was good though, and I loved the abundance of the coral trout. I was a little alarmed by the curious black tip reef sharks which circled around (menacingly so I thought because they were very inquisitive and very close), but I was assured they’re quite harmless. They were probably up to 2m long, always on the move, and cruising near the surface. Hmmm. I was more than ready to punch one on the snout if it got too close.

Anyhow, thats enough for this blog.

The aeroplane did make it in to Cocos Island late on Sunday afternoon after the diversion to Jakarta then returning to Christmas Island. I indulged in a few drinkies at the Cocos Club with the crew before giving it away early enough to get a good nights sleep before the jump back to Christmas Island on Monday morning.