Nauru Island

Nauru Island, Nauru

A view from a rooftop in Yaren looking at the limestone pinnacles of Nauru Island at golden hour, with a rusted water tank in the foreground.

Nauru Island sets a mined limestone plateau, a palm lagoon and a single sandy bay on one small Pacific shore.

The place

Nauru Island is the only land in the Republic of Nauru, a limestone island in the South Pacific, in the Micronesian part of Oceania. The country is also known as Naoero. Eastward, the closest ground is Banaba in Kiribati, a gap of about 300 kilometres. Yaren carries out the work of a capital, but the state has no capital city of its own. 21 square kilometres hold about 12,000 people. On area, and again on population, only two countries are smaller, leaving aside colonies and overseas territories, and no member of the Commonwealth of Nations is smaller on both measures. Nauru also belongs to the United Nations and to the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States. Houses, a ring road and the phosphate port all sit on the coastal ribbon. Inland, the plateau is a stand of limestone pinnacles left after the phosphate rock was dug out, including later secondary cuts. Coral edges the beach. Open fresh water is rare: Buada Lagoon, sunk among palms, is the single freshwater body, so inbound cargo matters more than any river. Loading equipment marks the harbour. The interior looks worked, not wild. Anyone expecting a broad lagoon resort finds a compact, practical island arranged around one loop of road, with a living reef and a mined plateau in the same view.

Its story

Nauru Island was peopled from Micronesia. Settlement is put at 3000 years ago or earlier in one telling, and near 1000 BCE in another; a long isolation after that is the usual reason the Nauruan language stands apart. Polynesian contact is possible. Detail from that early time is scarce. 12 clans gave the island its social map, and each point of the star on the flag recalls one of them. Family lines ran through mothers. Protein came from a lagoon fishery: the young of the milkfish, ibija in Nauruan, were taken out of salt water, eased into Buada Lagoon, and grown on there. Coconuts and pandanus fruit were the crops beside that fish. The first Western report dates to 1798. John Fearn, master of the trader Hunter, saw the island and named it Pleasant Island for the look of it offshore. By 1826, whaling and trading crews were calling regularly for food and drinking water, and that sail-era traffic ended with a final whaler in 1904. A few men who left their ships stayed behind. Provisions were bartered for palm wine that was alcoholic, and for guns, which soon changed how power worked on shore. Annexation by the German Empire turned Nauru Island into a colony. After Australia's occupation in the First World War, the island was held as a mandate under the League of Nations, Australia administering it and New Zealand and the United Kingdom sharing the trust. In the Second World War Japan held the island for 3 years while Allied aircraft kept striking it. A United Nations trust territory followed. Australia stepped back at independence in 1968. From 2001, Australian aid has at times been tied to Nauru hosting the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, an offshore detention site that remains bitterly argued over.

What to see

Culture

On Nauru Island, 26 October is Angam Day, held for the years when war and the 1920 influenza cut the population down and for the climb back afterward. Much older custom gave way under colonial rule and later Western contact. Few of the older customs are still practised in full. Fishing, some music, and a scatter of arts and crafts are what still surface. Song was still being noted in 1970, including the folk piece 'Oh Bwio Eben Bwio'. Celebrations bring rhythmic singing and a traditional reigen, a dance done in a ring. Photographs preserve an older fish dance; dances still known by name include the frigate bird dance and the dogoropa. 'Nauru Bwiema', the national anthem, is the 'Song of Nauru'. No daily paper is printed. Mwinen Ko comes out once a fortnight, which suits a small island whose public memory also lives in a day, a song and a dance. Ask before photographing people, dances or homes on Nauru Island, and do not treat the immigration processing centre as a sight.

What to wear

Nauru Island's sources name no national costume, no ceremonial cloth and no fibre kept for a particular rite. That fits the wider picture: colonial and later Western contact displaced much indigenous daily custom, while fishing and a few crafts carried on. Everyday clothes now follow an ordinary equatorial Pacific pattern of light shirts, cotton dresses, shorts and sandals, for the road as much as for a gathering. On Angam Day, and when the frigate bird dance, the dogoropa or a reigen is performed, dress is neat and present-day, not a rebuilt ancestral outfit. Surviving craft is closer to small made objects and to skill with fish than to a wardrobe. A visitor's clothes should follow sun, coral and limestone. Breathable cotton and a hat suit the open coast and the bare plateau. Closed shoes matter off the road, where secondary phosphate digging left jagged pinnacles that shred thin sandals. Swimwear belongs at Anibare Bay only. Shoulders and knees should be covered at government offices and at a national gathering, with a light layer over beach clothes before walking into Yaren.

What to eat

Plan it

Best time. Nauru Island lies almost on the equator, and no wetter or drier month is named as a better time to visit. October is the month with a public date attached: Angam Day falls on the 26th and remembers a hard-won recovery in numbers. The two lodgings, and seats on the direct Brisbane flight, stay under pressure all year because Australian government staff travel them heavily.

How long. 2-3

Getting there. Direct flights link Brisbane with Nauru Island, and they are the way in. Book months ahead: Australian staff connected with the offshore processing centre take many of the seats. Once down, the ring road is the last leg, reaching Yaren, Aiwo and Anibare. Every foreign visitor needs a valid passport plus proof of lodging or a local sponsor. Citizens holding passports from Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Niue, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, plus Israel, Russia and Taiwan, can be granted a visa on arrival at no charge. All other nationalities must arrange a visa before the trip; send that request well ahead, using the principal immigration address, principal.immigration@naurugov.nr, or the visa address, visa@naurugov.nr, because processing is slow.

Budget. high

Tips

Etiquette

Nearby

Sources