The bitter taste of paradise

Patrick Barkham on Nauru, the tiny Pacific island transformed by a century of indiscriminate mining from tropical beauty spot to plundered wasteland
The moonscape of limestone pinnacles left behind by phosphate mining

The bitter taste of paradise


One of the (very few) disadvantages of being based in Australia is that colleagues and friends in Britain assume that you are some kind of holidays correspondent, bronzing yourself on Sydney's glittering tiara of beaches in between jetting off to the south Pacific for a spot of investigative tanning.

A trip to Nauru, a speck of a island lost in the vastness of the Pacific just south of the equator, and the world's smallest independent republic, is a case in point. Even though its status as little more than a near-exhausted phosphate mine is well known, this island, one third the size of Guernsey, is still assumed to be a little piece of tropical paradise.

It is not. For that, you can blame the British, who discovered phosphate on the island at the start of last century. Greedy colonials and capitalists collaborated to plunder the island of its good stuff and fill it with weeds and rubbish.

Nauru was under German control until the end of the first world war, after which it was jointly held by Australia, Britain and New Zealand - all desperate to strip the island bare of its fossilised bird droppings and undersea life, which made excellent fertiliser. Eight square miles of tropical rainforest was ripped up.

The island's phosphate will all be mined by 2005. Production is dwindling, but giant corrugated-iron industrial buildings continue to straddle much of the island, alongside huge rusting cranes which reach out over the grey reefs in the surrounding sea. Blackened stumps of coral rise up from the shallow water.

You can swim in the azure sea at little landing jetties, which cut through the coral. There are glorious fish underwater, but it is no Great Barrier Reef. The coral is colourless - dead or dying - and old sacks, rubbish and drain pipes spill out across the ocean floor.

The island exports a bit of coconut, and the islanders catch fish, but all other food - as well as diesel to power the electricity generators required to produce fresh water - is imported from Australia. You can enjoy a huge Chinese lunch for 80p, but it is fried up from Australian beef and various imported tins. Nauru seems to be able to import all it wants, but unfortunately lacks the money to export its rubbish.

Up in the hills inland are the remains of the mines. The land has been dug out in such a way as to leave behind gaping 10m chasms and pinnacles of rock. The chasms are choked with weeds and rubbish - 20 years' worth of Coke cans - and the land is impossible to walk across.

Beset by the diggers and the phosphate dust that the scorching tropical wind spreads across the island, native species have taken a hammering. Even the frigate bird, the national symbol of Nauru which swoops across the island at dusk and is used by crafty islanders to do their fishing for them, is declining in number.

But it is unfair to kick a place when it's down. Nauru already has a bad rap, dissed by the Lonely Planet and shunned by all air traffic except for Air Nauru's only plane, a 737 which was grounded by Australian aviation authorities this year for failing safety tests. Officially, the country gets exactly 0% of its income from tourism. It is hardly surprising: it takes seven hours to fly to the island from Sydney.

Nauru's natural beauty has been spoilt, but it still has a lot going for it. The sun shines every day. The people are as friendly as anywhere else in the South Pacific and impossibly laid-back. They sing beautifully as well.

For a third world nation that attracts very few tourists, it is perhaps surprising that visitors are not harassed or intimidated. All those years of industry, during which workers were drawn from China, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, have created a place genuinely multicultural community which is remarkably easygoing with outsiders.

Nauru could try marketing itself as the safest tropical tourist destination in the world (subject to Air Nauru keeping its planes in the air). Unlike many tropical islands, Nauru keeps its crime strictly white-collar and non-violent (the island is desperately trying to shed its reputation as the favourite location for money-launderers). It is also thousands of miles from any war zones or nuclear targets.

There are few tropical nasties. Cockroach-infested hotels, sure, but the Nauruans have no word for "snake" in their language.

While the phosphate dust might not do much for your lungs and the lack of fresh fruit may not be kind to your complexion, you are unlikely to die here. But you really wouldn't want to either.