Perceptive Travel

Searching for Nauru Tourism on a Troubled Tiny Island
Story and photos by Brandi Mueller

A scuba diver catches an island-hopper flight in the South Pacific to visit a strip-mined hunk of phosphate with a convoluted history that's still continuing.

It was around 6 a.m. as I was walking on the remains of a sidewalk waiting for the sun to rise. Uneven broken concrete made sure I kept an eye on my next step even as my gaze darted around trying to take in this new place. In some places concrete was gone entirely and I stepped gingerly over dirt and rocks, making silly-looking leaps over giant puddles, holding my shoulder bag with my camera gear to my body as I jumped. I should not have been walking in flip flops.

Looking up at my surroundings, on my right was the vast grey ocean just becoming illuminated by the sun still below the horizon. To my left was a road which circled the entire 11 miles circumference of the island and would bring me back to where I started. Staring off into the endless seascape I kicked a piece of concrete and the sharp pain in my big toe brought my eyes back down to my feet. I hadn't slept yet, my flight from Honiara in the Solomon Islands departed around one in the morning and I arrived on the world's second-least-populated country after 4:00 a.m.

The hotel I'd reserved sent a car for me, but I wouldn't check in until the afternoon because otherwise they'd charge me another night at what seemed like the overpriced rate of $220 for what looked in the online images like a small box with a bed. I dropped off my luggage in reception (which was formerly a shipping container) and I started walking. It was getting brighter and the colors of the ocean and the sky were changing from their inky night blackness to lighter shades of blue with a hint of purple at the skyline.

I left the broken sidewalk for the beach and I noticed spikey rocks sticking up everywhere. They stuck out of the low tide too; rough, vicious-looking pinnacles emerging from the mirror-calm water. Past them the giant burning red sphere rose from the sea. I had made it to the island of Nauru.

A Daunting Attempt to Visit

The day before my hopes of getting to Nauru seemed to be fading in a paperwork fiasco. I had filled out the visa application months before and inquired with follow-up emails, some of which were responded to with, 'Keep waiting,' and others went unanswered. Finally, after a strange wire transfer of funds into a Nauru resident's personal bank account in Australia (I was clearly getting desperate) I felt I'd tried every option, but hours from my flight departure I was still without the coveted visa.

Thoughts passed through my mind of what they would do if I showed up without the visa. Would I not be able to get on the plane or would they deny me when I got there? If I showed all my paperwork and emails and wire transfer receipt would they let me in? Bold face type on the application stated that visas were not available on arrival. I also had given a 50% deposit to the extraordinarily expensive but basic-looking hotel, as a hotel reservation was required for the visa, but was nonrefundable if I did not show up. I wondered if I should cancel my flight.

The Nauru Airlines flight schedule was basically a milk run from where I started in the Solomons and flying to Tarawa, Kiribati, Nauru and on to Majuro, Marshall Islands. I knew I could get into the Marshall Islands, so worst-case scenario if they did not allow me to stay in Nauru I could continue to Majuro and either return to the Solomons the next day or abandon this idea altogether and hop on the United flight to Honolulu and onward to the mainland USA.

My desire to visit Nauru was part of a personal project involving visiting countries most likely to disappear or be devastated by climate change. Those low-lying, isolated, and rarely visited islands are hardly heard of by most people. I wanted to see the current state of the environment, do some scuba diving, and chat with the islanders who had done very little to contribute to the current climate disaster but would be some of the first to feel the devastating results of it.

A Short History of Denuded Nauru

Nauru, (pronounced "Naaroo," as the middle 'u' is silent), has quite an interesting history and certain parts of it, if told in the right light, sound almost comical. The small island (which comes in at number seven on the 'World's Smallest Countries List") was first visited by Europeans in 1798 but the Micronesians and Polynesians had been there since around 1000BC. They survived by growing coconuts and used the island's freshwater lake for aquaculture. Outsider contact continued with sailors stopping on the island for freshwater, whaling, and trading. It was nicknamed the "Pleasant Island," and it wasn't only sailors who found it pleasant.

The island was also a favorite travel destination to migratory birds and after hundreds of thousands of years, what the birds left behind became very valuable. In 1906 the Pacific Phosphate Company began to exploit the phosphate reserves. Essentially, bird poop made the tiny island extraordinarily profitable. At the time Nauru had been claimed as a German colony, so profits were going to Europe, but who profited off Nauru would constantly change over the years. After WWI, Australia was given a trustee mandate over Nauru with the United Kingdom and New Zealand as co-trustees. The Japanese occupied the island starting in 1942 until the end of WWII (during which phosphate mining was temporarily halted) and after WWII the island country was liberated but a trusteeship was established by the United Nations giving joint administration to Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, although in reality it was mostly administered by Australia.

Throughout the years, the island's phosphate was extracted from the land by an extremely detrimental process, stripping the topsoil and leaving behind only jagged rocks with little potential for growing much of anything. By the 1960s the island was already decimated.

With the "easy to get" phosphate being long gone, continuing strip mining required far more work and environment disruption with less to show for it. The landscape was so damaged that it was thought the island would be uninhabitable by the 1990s. Nauru tried to take legal action against Australia and in 1963 the Australian Government tried to make things right by offering the Nauruans to relocate to Curtis Island in Australia (which was larger than Nauru) with the understanding that the Nauruans would become Australian citizens. But understandably, they did not want to become Australian citizens and asked for sovereignty over Curtis Island to make themselves an independent nation. This was turned down.

In 1966 Nauru became self-governing; and independent in 1968. As the tiny island nation got its independence it also bought the assets of the British Phosphate Commissioners. In 1970 control passed to the Nauru Phosphate Corporation. Even with so much phosphate already removed, the remaining phosphate deposits made Nauru one of the wealthiest countries in the world at that time, second only to Saudi Arabia.

The ancient submerged volcano started to look more like a jagged moon-scape or volcanic crater than a lush, "Pleasant Island" as British sea captain, John Fearn first described 1798. But the people of Nauru were getting extraordinarily rich, so it didn't matter their island could no longer produce food to feed them; they could import it. It didn't matter if the center of the island was a desolate wasteland; they would move closer to the coastline, or to Fiji or Honolulu.

But they weren't oblivious to the idea that phosphate would not last forever, so they started making investments for the future. In 1975 the country made profits that would be more than US$1.8 billion today. If you consider that their population was only about 10,000 people, it was the equivalent of around 18 million dollars for every person in the country, in one year.

Unfortunately, the investments were not the safest or smartest. For instance, they decided to invest in a musical on Leonard da Vinci's life. If you have never heard of, "Leonardo the Musical," you are not alone; I had to look it up too. The Nauru president enthusiastically supported this idea and along with 100 Nauruan dignitaries they took a (not-so-private) Nauru Airlines plane to London for opening night. It sounds like the people of Nauru were not impressed with this particular investment as they mobbed the runway to try and prevent the plane from leaving, even hanging onto the aircraft. The dignitaries made it to London to watch the musical and read the terrible reviews the next day. It lasted less than a month and lost more than what would be $7 million today.

They also invested in fancy island resorts (but none on their own island). They bought expensive property around the world and had their own airline (the one the president took a plane to London on) with seven airplanes, which could have transported the entire population at once, although often scheduled commercial flights could not depart because some big wig had taken a plane or two to wherever they wanted.

As the people became accustomed to being rich, these enterprises started to fall apart. Retrieving what little phosphate was left was becoming more expensive. With profits low, the planes started to be seized and overseas real estate repossessed, so they sought out other ways to continue to bring in money.

The country became a tax haven in the 1990s and a place for money laundering. Some sources estimate something like a billion dollars of Russian mafia money was washed through the country. From 1998 to 2003 they even sold passports until pressures from international crime agencies and the USA made them stop. Members of al-Qaeda had Nauru passports. But now it is one of the poorest countries in the world, made worse off by the environmental destruction for the past 120 years.

The Unwilling Islanders Stuck in a Strange Land

The sun had risen and the temperature increased as it climbed. I kept walking. So much of the island was postcard-perfect. Blue waves lapped white sand and palm trees dotted the edges of the island. But along the beach were those ragged rocks that looked like they would slice skin if touched. On the other side of the road were walls of the pocked rocks. It reminded me of the entrance to a forbidden forest, but it was all that's left of an island after phosphate mining.

It was still quite early when I heard someone behind me. Glancing back, a man was on the sidewalk, walking fast towards me. I hate to admit this, but as a single female who often travels alone, I'm always on alert for someone following me. I wasn't sure if he was simply walking down the same road as me or pursuing me. I kept walking the same speed, seeking comfort that we were on a main road and maybe someone would drive by if needed.

When he was right behind me and I turned around to see his face. I had a fight or flight moment. Should I run? Should I say hello? I again hoped daylight and the road would protect me. I stopped and he approached me and asked me where I was from.

He was shorter and skinnier than me, looked to be maybe 50-55 with a graying beard. His dark-colored t-shirt and shorts looked over-warn, material thin and faded. I told him I was from America. He said, "I thought so, I love Americans." This statement shocked and confused me, I was not used to people saying they loved American travelers, usually it was quite the opposite. I found his assumption that I was American strange, Americans seemed to rarely visit...in fact no one from anywhere seemed to visit.

I started walking forward again, him at my side, both of us glancing from the street in front of us to the other and to our feet avoiding the broken bits of sidewalk.

I did not inquire about his story, but he began to tell me. He was from Afghanistan, he loved Americans and they had trained him during the war, but when the Americans started to leave, he and his family were left in danger. He had fought alongside the Americans and now those he fought wanted revenge. He packed up and left the country, headed towards Australia where he might be able to work and make enough money to bring his family, but instead he ended up on Nauru. Now he hated Australia and he hoped to come to America. If there was truth to this story, I will never know.

But I wondered, America? How would he get there? I knew very little about what was going on in Nauru during the time I was visiting in 2018. Later I would hear of a deal that had been made at the end of the Obama administration to resettle refugees being held by Australia in offshore detention centers (Nauru and Manus Island) in the United States in exchange for American-held refugees currently in Costa Rica for resettlement in Australia.

But in 2018 Donald Trump had become the American president. He was quoted as saying the deal was "Stupid." After leaving Nauru, I couldn't find any information about this or what happened to those supposed to be resettled in America. Doing research in 2020 I found a few articles, mostly out of Australia, that suggested only about 300 refugees from Nauru were resettled by 2018.

At some point, my walking mate asked me, "Will you choose me to go?" Again, I did not understand. He told there were people from America (he knew I was one of them, even though I was not) who had come to pick the people who would be resettled in America. This was later confirmed, but I could not help him. I don't think he believed me. He got upset and started walking faster, leaving me behind to dodge the sidewalk cracks on my own and to think about everything I didn't know about this tiny island.

I continued to walk and the sun had worked its way up to the top of the sky. I was soaked in sweat, my water bottle empty and hardly a car had passed me. (Later I found out Nauru has only one taxi.) I had the names of a few restaurants and saw one of them on the side of the road. Stopping for lunch, never in a million years would I have expected to be feasting on lamb kabobs, falafel, and pita bread in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a waist high shisha pipe in the corner.

Reading a book called The Undesirables, by Mark Isaacs, I learned that like the man who had walked with me, the majority of the refugees on island were Middle Eastern men who had made their way across Europe and Asia and usually via Indonesia they attempted to get to Australia by sea. Their goal was to make landfall in Australia and make a protection claim that would allow them to seek refuge in Australia. This is highly contested in Australia and some argue that asylum seekers are jumping the line of others seeking citizenship via the proper channels and processes. To prevent this, the Australian Navy was patrolling the waters close to the coasts, plucking them out of the water and sending them to Nauru for "processing."

In Australia's defense, they said they were worried about how dangerous these sea journeys were. The refugees paid exorbitant amounts to be piled into small and unsafe boats where many did not survive the trip. Australia claimed it was, "trying to prevent loss of life by trying to stop people from making these trips in the first place."

Completing the island circle, I went to bed early. I spent the next three days scuba diving the crystal-clear waters of this equatorial ocean paradise and hiking the jagged, sheer rocks hoping I didn't fall and slice open every inch of skin on my body. I visited a WWII gun, although Nauru never saw any active fighting, and the remains of a crashed B-25. On the back of a motorbike, I saw the freshwater lake in the center of the island and passed the actual refugee camp in the middle of the island, which felt more ominous due to the Mars-like surroundings: dry, dusty, strip-mined remains of land.

When it was time to leave, my flight was delayed for two days and it felt like an eternity. I wanted to leave this place, which made me realize I couldn't imagine how the asylum seekers felt. I simply had to wait a few extra days for a flight (and pay the ridiculous costs of staying in my mini-prison hotel). To have no idea when you can leave or where you might end up, the holding process must be an unfathomable mind game. Particularly when these people left their homes in search of something better and their long and arduous journeys were not finished yet.

When the plane had finally landed, a driver took me to the airport and asking me where I was from, I replied unceremoniously, "America," looking straight ahead to try and discourage conversation. His eyes got big and he looked right at me (and not on the winding road in front of him), "I am going there." He was Iranian. He had been on Nauru for almost five years.

I admired his determination and optimism, but it also made me sad. I could not see a joyous outcome for him. His happiness hung on to a hope I thought was unlikely. But who am I to judge, having no idea what this person had gone through or would go through? Why shouldn't anyone have the right to their own American dream?

As I was in this man's makeshift taxi in 2018, Trump was fighting for his Muslim Ban, which excluded people from Iran and many other countries migrating to the USA. I wondered even if my driver got to the USA, would he be welcome and accepted? I had no idea, but I felt the prospects were grim. In a country ravaged by racial profiling and misunderstood stereotypes, I didn't have much faith that his potential new community would accept him, but I hoped they would.

I wished him the best of luck and gave him my business card and told him to email me when he got to the USA. I hope someday I get a message from him. I really do.

When my plane took off, I looked back at the small circle of green and brown surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean on all sides. The scars of environmental damage could be seen, but how can we see the damage of human rights from far away? It would be months, maybe years, before I would begin to process this short trip to Paradise Island.

Brandi Mueller is an American writer and photographer based in Micronesia who focuses on travel, wildlife, and all things underwater. She is the author of the book The Airplane Graveyard: The Forgotten WWII Warbirds of Kwajalein Atoll.

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See other South Pacific and Micronesia stories in the archives.