Christmas Island Located in the eastern Indian Ocean at latitude 10°30’ south, and longitude 105°40’ east, Christmas Island is 19 km long and 14 km wide, with an area of 135,000 ha. The island was first discovered by Captain William Mynors, of the Royal Mary, who sighted it on Christmas Day in 1643. He was not able to land, however, and the island remained uninhabited until the latter part of 1888, when the first European settlement was established at Flying Fish Cove by George Clunies- Ross from the neighbouring Cocos- Keeling Islands, and Sir John Murray, a British naturalist. They were granted a joint land lease, covering all rights in the island. In the mid- 19th century, the British government annexed the island as a result of presentations made by John Murray, who had examined the specimens of rock and soil taken from the island and found them to be composed of nearly pure phosphate of lime.

On 6 June 1888, Captain William May of the HMS Imperieuse landed at Flying Fish Cove and formally declared Christmas Island to be part of the British dominions, under the jurisdiction of the governor of the Straits Settlements. Subsequently, on 9 January 1889, Letters Patent were passed appointing the governor of the Straits Settlements the governor of Christmas Island, and authorizing the island’s annexation to the Straits Settlements. The Christmas Island Phosphate Company was formed in 1897 to work the island’s rich deposits of phosphate.

A.R. Venning, treasurer of Selangor, who visited Christmas Island in 1893, described the island as rising ‘precipitously from the sea in a series of cliffs which encircles it almost without a break, each cliff surmounted by a terrace overgrown with magnificent trees, the home of countless frigate birds, boobies, boatswain birds, terns and pigeons’. There were also huge crabs swarming all over the island, and these were of a ‘bluish- yellow colour, with large claws and outstarting eyes, and most offensive to look at’.

Christmas Island was occupied by Japanese forces from March 1942 until the end of World War II. With the dissolution of the Straits Settlements in 1946, Singapore was made a separate colony, and Christmas Island came under its jurisdiction. This association was based on administrative convenience.

In 1948, the governments of Australia and New Zealand, and the British Phosphate Commissioners, acquired the rights to the Christmas Island Phosphate Company. In 1957, the Australian government acquired Christmas Island from the Singapore government for £2.9 million, ex gratia compensation for loss of revenue. Christmas Island was administered as a Crown Colony until 1 October 1958, when, with the proclamation of the Christmas Island Act, it was transferred to the Commonwealth of Australia and became an Australian territory.