The Nauru Island Guide

At International Islands we tend not to feature that many sovereign states, but when said state can be walked around in less than 4 hours and it is the most remote and least visited country on earth, then it deserves an entry.

To read about the least visited countries in the world click here.

What’s the story with Nauru

Nauru is a Pacific island that is so remote it has spent thousands of years having birds literally crap on it. Now whilst this might sound like a bad thing, bird makes phosphates, which it turns out are valuable. This will come in handy later in the story.

Settled mostly my Micronesians and with some Polynesian influence the island has been settled for over 3000 years. And largely everyone lived happily until colonial times.

Originally discovered by the British it came home to many deserters, as well as a trading post. This meant Nauru got guns and booze, which led to the 10 year Nauru Civil War in 1878, where an amazing 3rd of the population were killed.

This was sharply followed by German colonisation, which at least gave some stability. Phosphates were discovered in the early 1900’s which was great for Germany until World War 1 when it was captured by Australia.

This led to the island becoming a joint Aussie-kiwi and British colony, although the main activity was draining the country of its phosphates, thus enriching everyone except the people of Nauru.

Nauru hits the jackpot!

Realising that Nauru had pretty much been raped of its resources Australia offered to rehouse the people of Nauru and give them a new island. They instead declined and opted for independence in 1968. Phosphates were nationalised and for a few years at least things went gangbusters.

Nauru for a brief period became the richest country on earth per-capita and went about spending it on embassies, airlines and the like. Much like Norway they also set up a sovereign wealth fund, but unlike Norway this was not managed that well.

Essentially over the next 30, or so years the fund was to put it politely “pissed up the wall”. Bad investments were made in property, and even bad musicals and by the end the fund was worth very little and the island was on the brink of bankruptcy.

To read about independent tours to Nauru click here.

Nauru and the Australian refugees

Tired if having Nauru as a place it constantly needed to bail out as a pseudo-colony Australia decided it had a great idea, why not set up detention centres and process illegal migrants arriving by ship here.

Sound familiar? Well yes the UK are trying to do the same in Rwanda, which you can read about here.

The plan and its implementation got a lot of bad flack, but in actuality most of refugees lived in open houses and could even work and set up businesses on Nauru Island.

The main issue was in essence that they found it boring. Fair enough as Nauru is quite boring, but if you are fleeing persecution then it is at least a safe place. This brings up the whole refugees rather than economic migrant question, which we will very much leave alone today.

Fora while at least though, at least from my experience it improved the food a whole heap and I am sure injected some much needed DNA into the islands population. Now though the refugees are by and large gone, as is the phosphate industry, which means the island not having all that much money again.

How do you get to Nauru and what is there to do?

Freighter ship, or Nauru Airlines who run an island shuttle service. This generally Getting includes Australia, Marshall Islands, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands, although this can and does change.

Getting freighter ship is not a great option as Nauru is in the middle of nowhere. For context its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Kiribati, 300 km (190 mi) to the east. Not the most remote island on earth, but by far the most remote country.

What can you do in Nauru?

There are exactly 4 bars on Nauru, as well as seemingly endless Chinese restaurants. The Chinese restaurants are really not very good, nor is the cuisine of Nauru. Nauru is also the most obese country on earth, partly understandable when you see their fabulous spam aisle at the one supermarket.

To read about Nauru cuisine click here.

There are though WW2 wrecks, some caves and well that is pretty much it. Why do they not build a beach resort? Because Nauru is surrounded by hard rocks that destroy the “beaches”, lucky Nauru is not.

Can you buy Nauru?

Russia once lend them $50,000,000 after which they recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia, read into that what you will. They also briefly decided to be a tax haven,until it was realised that Al Qaeda were their main customers.

In the interests of this we will say Nauru is not for sale per-se, but influence can certainly be brought.