At an age where he could be forgiven for sitting at home with his feet up, 84-year-old Dick Whittington is making a long journey, to a place he hasn't seen in nearly three decades.
DICK WHITTINGTON, FORMER COCOS ISLAND ADVISOR (Translation): I feel like crying, coming back after so many years.
How are you?
Dick was the Cultural Adviser to the Cocos Malay community in the run-up to the Cocos Islands' integration into Australia.
MAN (Translation): How long is it since I saw you last? I think it must be 30 years since we met.
He's back, not just to meet old friends, but to once again fight for their rights.
ISLANDER (Translation): If I took your house, wouldn’t you be angry? You’d be angry, right?
DICK WHITTINGTON (Translation): Right. This is the homeland of the Cocos Islanders, not the homeland of the whites! But the whites have the power here. It’s not right. It’s not fair.
ISLANDER (Translation): No, it’s not.
DICK WHITTINGTON: Inside each heart is a resentment that they have been lied to, that the promises have not been kept. And it is high time for the Australian Government to start to clean up this mess.
The Cocos Islands have a peculiar history, a past which in many ways defines the present.
NEWSREEL: Life in the Cocos is utopian, infectious diseases are almost unknown. Life is so pleasant that most are content to end their days there.
For 150 years, this speck in the Indian Ocean was the private fiefdom of the Clunies-Ross family who brought in hundreds of Malays to harvest their coconut plantations.
NEWSREEL: These girls are not wearing their Sunday best - this is their normal work attire as they skilfully slice up the coconuts.
It was a unique remnant of colonialism, out of step with the modern world.
NEWSREEL: According to all accounts the islanders favour integration, not independence. It won't mean much of a change, except that they will have all the rights of Australian citizens.
So, in 1984, in a UN-sponsored vote, the Cocos Malays chartered a new course. As far as the elders who negotiated the agreement to integrate with Australia are concerned the past 28 years has been littered with broken promises. They say the assurances they received in the run-up to the vote were not worth the paper they were written on.
DICK WHITTINGTON (Translation): We have fought many battles together. Keep fighting. Lots of things still aren’t right.
CREE BIN HAIG, ELDER (Translation): Lots of things. It’s true.
Cree Bin Haig is one of those elders, he and Dick helped draw up the deal to join with the mainland
TOURIST: You are so lucky mate. To know that this is part of Australia is unbelievable and we’ve got you to thank for it. Thank you.
The tourists are appreciative and there was a time when the Australian Government was thankful, too. Both men were awarded the Order of Australian Medal for their efforts but Cree thinks his people have been short-changed.
CREE BIN HAIG, ELDER (Translation): What I’m worried about now is education and employment, which hasn’t progressed much in the Cocos. There’s still a lot of outside influence.
The act of self-determination was based on a promise that the islanders' Islamic faith and customs would be respected and that they would be given ownership of the land.
DICK WHITTINGTON: Land is central to the whole argument. The Cocos Malays were told by the United Nations - the UN said, "This is your land".
They confirmed that much in a letter to the then Minister for Territories, Tom Uren.
EXCERPT FROM LETTER: “The Cocos Malay people were all very happy to hear that it is the government’s intention to give all of the land of the Cocos Islands to the Malay people…….we are also pleased to know that the government will ensure that no outsiders are allowed to settle here and that no outsider will be permitted to buy our land.”
DICK WHITTINGTON: It was in black and white. It was quite clear - no equivocation, no ambiguity about it at all - those words meant what they said. That is what the Australian Government promised.
But that is not how it turned out. The territory eventually was split between Trust and Crown land, creating two distinct communities on two separate islands, one pious... the other less so. The laid-back lifestyle and the duty-free alcohol a draw card for 150 mainly white islanders who live on West Island, some of whom have now bought their homes in contravention of the promises given at the time of integration.
While just half an hour's ferry ride away, on Home Island, 450 Cocos Malays live on Trust land in rented home they can never buy.
REPORTER: It's not really like that, it’s not the fact that the whites are here and the brown people are there.
PAULINE BUNCE, AUTHOR: Well they are, and of course, if you don't bump into the other side of things every day, then people have gone in their own directions.
Pauline Bunce is a former teacher in Cocos. She wrote a book on the islands' history. She is disturbed by what she says is a growing divide between the two communities.
PAULINE BUNCE: In terms of emotional distance, or cultural appreciation, I think the two have got further apart in the last five or six years. It's ironic perhaps that the nearest community to the Cocos Malay community probably has the least respect for it.
Those divisions were widened recently when the leading tourist operator on West Island accused the Cocos Malays of being lazy dole bludgers. With chronic unemployment and underemployment, less than half of Home Island's residents are working. Those that are, are employed in largely menial jobs.
In the 28 years since the Cocos Malay population voted to integrate with Australia, not one Cocos Malay has managed to make it to any position of influence. The nurses, teachers, senior administrators at the shire council are all white and always have been, even the manager of the co-operative, set up to benefit the Cocos Malays, is a white Australian.
In relative terms, Nore Guyu is a Cocos Malay success story. A student nurse in Perth, she's back home visiting her family but she hopes one day to return for good.
NORE GUYU, STUDENT NURSE: The permanent nurse here, she was telling me, that yes, you will get employed later on in the years, after you graduate, but you have to gain your experience.
Like many in her community, she complains about the existence of a glass ceiling on Cocos.
REPORTER: When a job comes up, do you think it's easier for a white person than it is for a Cocos Malay?
NORE GUYU: Um, I'm not saying that it's easier, but usually they get put forward, like, they get put first. It's not that my own opinion, but it has happened so many times.
PETER CLARK, CEO SHIRE COUNCIL: If there are jobs available, I'm sure that they'd be filled, but obviously, you know - on a small islands like these, there's just not the amounts of jobs available.
Peter Clark is the CEO of the shire council, one of three mainland Australians who run the islands. He says he's keen to see more Cocos Malays in positions of power.
PETER CLARK: We'd encourage people to take up positions in local governments on the mainland, learn the ropes, and then have the ability to come back here and take up those senior roles in time.
REPORTER: Are people doing that now?
PETER CLARK: Not that I'm aware of. We had a person apply for a position as Deputy CEO. I would have loved to have employed him, but he just needed that experience out in the industry.
The man in question thinks there is more to it than that.
MADI SIGMA: Personally, I think it comes down to racial discrimination.
It's the annual football tournament for Cocos Malays who now call the Australian mainland home. More of them now live and work in WA than on the islands themselves. But some would desperately like to return. Madi Sigma is the first born and bred Cocos Malay to graduate from university, a public servant on the mainland. He's found it impossible to secure a similar position in Cocos, despite repeated attempts at trying.
MADI SIGMA: Why are we able to get jobs that are equivalent to the senior positions on the island over here on the mainland and yet we're not good enough for Cocos? I just think nepotism is rife on the island. No-one wants to say that it actually exists, but, you know, if you speak to Cocos Malays off camera, they will say that to you.
REPORTER: By nepotism, you mean white people who have already got jobs helping their friends and families to get jobs?
MADI SIGMA: Correct.
KARTINI, MADI’S WIFE: There is still the white master in many different facets and many different faces.
Madi's wife, Kartini, is a qualified teacher with ten years experience - she, too, has tried and failed to get a job on the islands.
KARTINI: We've always been in a position to assist, Education Assistant, Medical Assistant, Admin Assistant. We're never good enough, except to assist. There will always be some white guy ahead of us and it's not because we're not as good as them, it's just because that's the way it is.
Even when opportunities arise, the Cocos Malay community feels frozen out. In the past few years, the Federal Government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading the infrastructure here. This jetty has only recently been completed. Now the airport runway is going through a major upgrade, both contracts awarded to Australian companies. The workers were flown in from the mainland to do jobs that the Cocos Malays say they could easily have done themselves.
MADI SIGMA: What sort of specialised skills would you need to lay asphalt on the runway? I sincerely think that those are the decisions that condone Cocos Malays to become Centrelink dependent.
For the most part the community's specialised skills are no longer needed or valued, except by visiting tourists. Ozzie's cultural tour, giving expert craftsmen a rare chance to show off their talents.
OZZIE: We have a saying here about the tradition, or the custom. It is okay to lose your children, but it's not okay to lose your custom.
The Cocos Malays have retained their customs but they say they have lost their influence. They used to have their own council and their own cultural adviser but are now represented by a council that serves both communities, which does its business in English and is managed by mainland Australians.
PAULINE BUNCE: What they're missing is a sense of direction, that there's a captain to this ship that the place is going somewhere, that someone knows where's around the corner. There is no on-island leadership.
TONY LACY: There's just a lack of care, really, a lack of interest in a multicultural community.
A relative newcomer to the islands, Tony Lacy is trying to change things for the better, working with Cocos Malay elders, he's planning to resurrect this overgrown farm to grow products both for local consumption and for export. It's a myriad of projects that he says could be set up to ease the unemployment crisis.
TONY LACY: There's a lot of red tape. There is red tape in any Federal system for necessary reasons, but this is just a bit too much. Hence the reason there nothing happens here.
Education is another area of contention. Although young Cocos Malays speak their native tongue at home, at school they are taught in English from day one.
PAULINE BUNCE: If the prevailing attitude is that language, that home language, their core language, is somehow their worst enemy, and the biggest deficit they could have in learning English, then that undermines their whole self-confidence.
REPORTER: Is it a contributing factor for why, perhaps, the Cocos Malay population have not done as well through the education system as they might have?
PAULINE BUNCE: I think so. I think they're caught between the two languages.
It's hard to define the impact, but since Australia took responsibility for education, just 11 Cocos Malays have gone on to graduate from university.
STEVE CLAY, ACTING ADMINISTRATOR: The WA Department of Education, on our behalf, provides that curriculum and that is the appropriate one for that community.
The island's Acting Administrator, Steve Clay, insists the approach to teaching English is not an issue and he is surprised when he tell him about the growing animosity between the two communities.
STEVE CLAY: Really there must be a concerted effort to make sure that doesn't occur. If that's the case, then I'm really disappointed. We need to do better than that.
It's a 600 kilometre journey to get someone to talk about Cocos. The islands are administered from Christmas Island - part of the problem, according to some.
DICK WHITTINGTON: Everything that happens here shows the duplicity, the double-dealing, the lack of respect.
CREE BIN HAIG, ELDER (Translation): At the end of our journey I want our youth to be able to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility in the Cocos Islands. If this does not happen, you could say it’s as if we islanders have gone back to being….under colonial rule. People who are ordered around, like we were in the past. A colonial people.
MADI SIGMA: They're living in a time warp, you know. They're constantly drifting in a doldrum, so to speak and I think all we need is a slight wind of change to be able to push us forward, empower us. That's all I'm asking, it's about helping my community prosper.
YALDA HAKIM: Brian Thomson in the Cocos Islands and the long-held grievances of the Cocos Malays. There's more reading about the islands on our website, including a look at some of the other challenges currently facing this remote community.
Reporter
BRIAN THOMSON
Camera
JOHN PODOLSKI
Producer
GARRY MCNAB
Editors
PETER TODD
DAVID POTTS
Translations/Subtitling
ROBYN FALLICK
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN