The choice is the order. Base on the west coast between Aiwo and Denigomodu, where the hotels, shops, hospital and port sit close together. Go south to Yaren, where the ring road crosses the runway at the island’s only traffic lights. Take the east coast to Anibare Bay, the one proper beach. Turn inland for Buada Lagoon and climb to Command Ridge, 65 metres up, with its Japanese wartime bunker. Around all of it is Topside, the mined-out phosphate plateau, and it is the reason to come.
Fun fact
Roughly 80 per cent of Nauru's surface has been strip-mined for phosphate. While it lasted, the money was extraordinary: by 1975 GDP per head was around 50,000 US dollars, second only to Saudi Arabia, for a population under 8,000. The workable deposits were effectively exhausted by 2000.
Stereotypes, sorted out
The realityAround 80 per cent of the surface was strip-mined, and the UN reckons more than 70 per cent of the country uninhabitable. The damage is real. Topside is one of the most legible industrial landscapes on earth, coral pinnacles left where the phosphate was dug. The coast below is green and lived in.
The realityThere is no resort industry, no dive shop strip and, most years, no tour operator at arrivals. Accommodation is a handful of hotels and guesthouses, Anibare Bay is the one beach people swim at, and the rest of the coast is rock and reef flat. Nauru rewards curiosity, not a swimming timetable.
The realityYou cannot. Nearly every foreign visitor needs an approved visa before boarding, with a passport valid well beyond arrival, a confirmed onward ticket and booked accommodation. There is no visa counter at the airport, and airlines check the approval before you fly. Make it the first booking.
The realityOffshore processing has shaped Nauru’s economy and politics on and off since 2001, and it is a live subject. It is not the country. Nauruans have lived here for some three thousand years, through German rule, Japanese occupation and independence in 1968. They are a nation, not a news story.
The realityNauru has no official capital. Parliament, the courts, the government offices and the airport sit in Yaren district in the south, so atlases print the name, but Yaren is a district of a few hundred people. There are no cities at all: fourteen districts, one road around them.
Cultural notes
- Ask before photographing people, houses or Topside workings. On an island of eleven thousand people, a stranger with a camera is noticed within the hour and word travels faster than you do.
- Land here is owned by families, not by the state, and most of the coastal strip is somebody’s. Walking off the road onto ground that looks empty is walking into a garden. Ask.
- Sunday is quiet. Church takes the morning and most things stay shut, so plan the driving and the shopping around it.
- Bring Australian dollars in cash. The Australian dollar is the currency, there is a single bank on the island, and foreign cards are not something to depend on at an ATM or a till.
- Dress the way the island does: modest away from the beach, shoulders covered for church or a government office. Swimwear stays at Anibare.
- If you are invited to eat, go, and take something. Hospitality is offered quickly here and refusing it politely is harder than accepting it.
Famous Nauruan faces
Marcus Stephen
David Adeang
Baron Waqa
Sprent Dabwido
Ludwig Scotty
Marlene Moses
Hammer DeRoburt
René Harris
Kennan Adeang
Itte Detenamo
Yukio Peter
Reanna Solomon
Timothy Detudamo
Must-try Nauruan food
Coconut fish
Fresh tuna cured in lime and coconut cream. Nauru’s own dish, and the test of a kitchen.
Coconut-crusted fish
White fillets rolled in grated coconut and fried. The everyday restaurant version.
Noddy bird
Black noddy caught at dusk as the flocks return, then roasted. Eaten when invited.
Coconut toddy
Palm sap tapped twice daily, drunk fresh and sweet or fermented into something stronger.
Ibija, the lagoon milkfish
Milkfish grown in Buada Lagoon from sea-caught fry. The oldest aquaculture in the Pacific.
Grilled reef fish
That morning’s catch, scored, salted and grilled over coals.
Tuna and rice
The everyday west-coast lunch: yellowfin or skipjack off the boats, rice off the ship.
Pandanus
The fruit is chewed boiled, or dried into cakes. With coconut, the island’s oldest sweet.
Breadfruit
Roasted whole in the coals, then split and eaten hot. Grown around Buada Lagoon.
Chinese fried rice and chow mein
West-coast Chinese restaurants cook for the island, their menus set by the last ship.
Corned beef and tinned fish
A staple on an island that grows little. Nauru’s health statistics argue against it.