Nauru

  

  - darkometer rating:  8 -

 

A small Micronesian island in the middle of the  Pacific, indeed the smallest independent island nation on Earth (and the third smallest of all nations). It was once one of the richest nations on the planet, with the second highest per capita GDP in the world, thanks to huge phosphate deposits. But now it's all but gone. The economy shrank drastically and the interior of the island, strip-mined bare, is an uninhabitable post-apocalyptic wasteland. But therein lies part of the dark attraction … Other than that there are relics from the brief German colonial times as well as war remnants from when the island was occupied by Japan during WWII. A tiny country, but quite a biggie in terms of dark tourism.

  

Nauru remains the least visited sovereign country on Earth. But since learning about it for the first time at school when I was a teenager I had this dream of one day making it out there. In August 2024, finally, I did manage to tag a short visit to Nauru on to a longer trip to Australia …

  

More background info: Nauru originally owes it existence to a long extinct volcanic hotspot that rose above sea level some 30 million years ago. After the volcanic rock had eroded to sea level a coral atoll formed. The island has an area of only 8.1 square miles (21 square kilometres) in total. Beyond the coral the coast drops off sharply into an abyss to the ocean floor some 4000m (2.5 miles) deep below.

  

For millions of years the super-remote island was an important resting and nesting place for seabirds. It is their droppings that gradually formed the thick layer of petrified guano: phosphate rock, which would later come to dominate Nauru’s contemporary history.

  

Human settlers from other Micronesian (possibly also Polynesian) islands are estimated to have arrived around 3000 years ago. Here they lived in isolation for such a long time that a distinct language evolved, which is still spoken on the island today (even though English has taken over as the main language of governance and commerce).

   

The first European to spot the island was one John Fearn, captain of the British ship Snow Hunter, who arrived in late 1798. He didn’t set foot on the island, but apparently he liked what he saw from a distance and gave it the English name “Pleasant Island”.

   

European contacts increased in the 19th century. And with it came trouble. For thousands of years the islanders had led a self-sufficient life; society was divided into about a dozen clans, who coexisted more or less peacefully, except during times of drought, which brought tensions, but the islanders somehow managed to keep a stable balance over a long time.

   

This stability became increasingly fragile with more and more contact with Europeans, mostly traders, whalers and convicts. Escaped British convicts who had fled Australian penal colonies had a particular impact on Nauru, at times ruling the coast as brutal beachcombers. One such figure, one William Harris, however, integrated into Nauruan society and helped it barter with the Europeans.

   

But with that came the bane of guns, alcohol and tobacco. The killing of a chief in a drunken argument sparked island-wide violence that was described as “civil war” even.

   

Yet Nauru, which offered next to nothing in terms of fruit and water or other supplies, was of little strategic importance to the Europeans who were busy “empire-building” in the Pacific.

   

This changed when by chance phosphate was discovered. The story goes that a geologist for the Australian-based British Pacific Island Company inspected a piece of rock brought in from Nauru and used as a doorstop. He found that it was actually phosphate rock of the highest grade. Visiting Nauru he was able to confirm that the island had huge deposits of this valuable commodity, with about 80% of the inland covered by a thick layer of it. Phosphate is a sought-after fertilizer and mining it promised enormous profits.

   

In the meantime, Nauru had been made a colony of Imperial Germany in its late bid to secure a slice of the international colonial cake (see also Namibia and Rabaul). The Germans subjugated the islanders and missionaries converted them to Christianity, but the Germans let the other colonialists do the mining. Following a 1905 deal struck by Germany with the now renamed Pacific Phosphate Company (PPC), proper mining started on a large scale. And with it began the degradation of the interior plateau referred to as “Topside”. Strip-mining removed swathes of former vegetation and the ground left after mining was bare historic coral pinnacles with no topsoil for plants to grow on. In other words: mining turned the inland into a barren, lifeless moonscape.

  

After Germany lost World War One, and with it all its colonies, Nauru became a joint British, Australian and New Zealand territory, later under sole Australian control.

   

In WWII, German warships shelled Nauru and its phosphate loading infrastructure, but real disaster came when Imperial Japan invaded and occupied the island in 1942. The Japanese regime was most brutal. There was forced labour, executions and deportations, namely of a sizeable number of Nauruans to the island group of Truk (aka Chuuk these days). Only a handful of European-descendant people remained on the island – and these were later murdered by the Japanese as soon as the USA went on the counteroffensive in the Pacific and also bombed the airfield the Japanese had built on Nauru. Probably the worst atrocity committed by the Japanese here was the murder of a colony of 39 lepers on 11 July 1943. These people were lured on to a boat with the false promise of being transferred to another island, but then were gunned down and their ship sunk.

   

As Japan was losing the war, the USA at first launched air raids on Nauru – despite the heavy anti-aircraft defences the Japanese had installed on the island (one of which managed to bring a US plane down – see Naoero Museum). But as the US progressed through the Pacific, Nauru was bypassed and essentially cut off from supplies. So survival on the limited resources left available became the priority.

   

The Australian Navy recaptured Nauru in September 1945 and the remaining Japanese military surrendered. Korean POWs (see also here) as well as exiled people from Ocean Island/Banaba (see below) were returned home and the Nauruans deported to the Truk Islands returned in 1946 – only half of those originally deported had survived and made it back home.

  

The same year the British Phosphate Commission (BPC, the successor of the PPC) resumed more phosphate mining while the UN put Nauru under British, Australian and New Zealand trusteeship.

   

As the exploitation and concomitant devastation of the island through phosphate mining increased there were even proposals to trensfer the Nauruan people to other islands or the Australian mainland. But the Nauruans were less than keen on such an idea and instead campaigned for independence.

   

Independence was granted in 1968, after a period of self-governance from 1966, and control of the phosphate mining passed into the islanders’ hands in 1970, with the foundation of the new Nauru Phosphate Corporation.

   

With profits from phosphate mining now going into Nauruan hands, the country became incredibly rich, in fact one of the richest nations on the planet with the second highest per capita GDP on the planet (after Saudi Arabia), while nobody had to pay any taxes. A real-life rags-to-riches story. The Nauruans used their new-found wealth to splash out on all manner of imported luxury goods.

 
Meanwhile, however, the islanders enjoyed their riches (and, to this day, no taxes!). A story often referenced in this context is that of a police chief importing an Italian sports car (of the luxury make beginning with “L”), despite there being only a single slow ring road round the island, only to find out on its arrival that he was unable to squeeze behind the steering wheel. Like so many other Nauruans he had become too obese!

  

But then from the late 1980s/early 1990s the inevitable decline of the mining industry began as the phosphate deposits were increasingly exhausted.

   

What investment and planning into post-mining economic options there may have been, was squandered as result of corruption and mismanagement. At least, the island successfully sued Australia for compensation for the environmental damage wreaked by the phosphate mining, while they themselves carried on with it, thus aggravating the damage even further. Yet the Australian compensation was pitifully low compared to the damage done.

   

Investments into property abroad, such as hotels in Australia, all went wrong and the amassed funds from phosphate profits diminished fast. A good example of mismanagement is also Nauru’s airline, initially named “Air Nauru” and founded soon after independence. Assuming that a nation as tiny as Nauru (only ca. 8000 inhabitants at the time) must have a national airline may seem preposterous to begin with, but it was a prestige thing. However, an airline with hardly any passengers is not sustainable. And after years of flying with most seats empty, “Air Nauru” inevitably faced bankruptcy. In 2005 the last plane of the fleet was seized by the banks and that left Nauru without any air connection. With the help of some investment from Taiwan, in return for recognizing that country as China over the PRC (in early 2024 Nauru reversed this and severed ties with Taiwan), the airline was resurrected in 2006 with a single plane under the optimistic (though not 100% accurate) name “Our Airline”. In 2014 it was renamed “Nauru Airlines” and continues to operate in that form to this day. The airline’s recovery was also partly thanks to controversial Australian financial aid – but we’ll come to that later …

   

As Nauru’s economic woes mounted, the country resorted to highly dubious financial deals in the 1990s, basically allowing “banks” to open branches on Nauru without any physical presence. At the same time the government was selling passports for “economic citizenship”. It was a blueprint for what was essentially a large-scale money laundering scam. It brought in some revenue, but obviously attracted lots of international criticism and outrage, so eventually the initiative was ended in 2005.

   

But back to the phosphate mining, the original source of Nauru’s riches: it declined throughout the 1990s and beyond. In 2000 phosphate exports still amounted to half a million tons, by 2004 it had gone down to just a bit over 20,000 tons, a year later to a mere 8000.

   

Predictably, the economy has drastically contracted, unemployment has soared, poverty spread, and social and health problems became rife. The once record per capita GDP has slumped to as low as 2500 USD in 2003 (ranking 135th in the world). You can't help but sensing a certain element of Easter Island Paradigm here …

   

On top of that Nauru has one of the highest diabetes rates anywhere – mainly due to an unbalanced diet of over-processed imported junk food resulting in Nauruans being the world’s most obese people; and the healthcare system is not exactly adequate either. Moreover, Nauru has one the world’s highest proportions of smokers amongst its population (almost 50%). It seems like, in addition to all the economic troubles, the people are also on a course of self-destruction healthwise.

   

But not all was lost.

   

For one thing, improved mining equipment has brought extraction back to ca. 45,000 tons a year and of harder-to-mine secondary deposits there may still be several million tons. But the phosphate won’t come back and one day it really will all be gone. So the long-term economic outlook has remained bleak.

   

In the early 2000s a new source of income appeared on the horizon: detention camps for refugees! Under the government of then prime minister of Australia John Howard (see also Port Arthur) a scheme was devised whereby, in return for substantial financial aid to Nauru, asylum seekers who had landed on Australia’s shores would be “outsourced” to detention camps on the island while their applications were being “processed”. The scheme was called the “Pacific Solution”. (I for one find that a dodgy term – in fact any names for policies involving the word “solution” feel questionable, even if the word “final” is not explicitly used …).

   

So special fenced-in compounds were constructed for the refugees shipped to Nauru. There these poor souls would languish in the harsh climate of Topside, dusty and hot and lifeless (save for the very sparse vegetation that can survive in this depleted ex-phosphate environment), and muddy and miserable during the wet season. Some stayed for years with no perspective, no legal support, no hope. No wonder the scheme was controversial and came in for severe criticism from human rights organizations.

   

Incidentally, the detention camps were not officially called that, instead the euphemism “Regional Processing Centres” was devised (abbreviated RPCs for even more cryptic terminology).

   

Then in 2007, the detention camps were closed. There had been a change of government in Australia and the new Labour PM evidently wanted to rid his country of this controversial black spot on Australia’s international reputation. The Nauruan authorities weren’t so happy, of course, as the funding through the “Pacific Solution” scheme also went away, and with it unemployment and poverty rose again.

   

Then came 2012, and the detention camps were reopened, due to pressure from the opposition in the light of large numbers of newly arriving asylum seekers in Australia. After another change of government, the new conservative (Liberal) PM Tony Abbott got enthusiastic about the scheme again. At one point in 2013 he even praised Nauru as a “pleasant island” for the refugees to live on. He may have been misled by the original name the first British explorers gave to this island (see above). Unlike those, however, Abbott at least claimed to have been to Nauru. If so the Nauruans must have given him an impressive welcome so that he could see past the reality of the desolate Topside locations of the camps. In fact he was so enthused that he even suggested expanding the camps to hold up to 15,000 refugees (on an island with next to no resources, not least no fresh water supply). That figure would have outnumbered the total native population of the island!

   

It didn’t come quite so drastically, but in 2014 there were over 1200 refugees crammed into the detention camps on Nauru’s Topside, many forced to live in mere tents even, and with limited supplies and poor medical care. Subsequentially there were many suicides among the asylum seekers on Nauru, even among underage refugees. This desperation also led to a riot.

 

Still, the scheme continued, the camps remained in operation for years on end. By the end of the decade it was winding down with refugee numbers down to just a couple of hundred. Many refugees were by then free to move about on the island, and some integrated into Nauruan society, others returned to their countries of origin, yet others were allowed to settle in the USA. In March 2019 the detention camps were empty and closed.

   

But again it didn’t last long. In 2021 a new deal between Australia and Nauru was struck and about a hundred asylum seekers were still detained at the centres. In September 2023 a small contingent of new asylum seekers were sent to Nauru.

   

At the time I started planning my trip to Nauru in early 2024, I was told that there were no refugees at the camps. Only a couple of months later I read an article reporting how around a hundred refugees were back in the camps on Nauru. Apparently conditions were dire, with hardly any medical (let alone psychological) care provided. When I toured Nauru in August 2024, the first camp, “RPC 1” was definitely in operation, heavily guarded and there was a strict no-photography rule (whereas I was allowed to take a quick snap at one of the other, now idle camps).

   

On my departure from Nauru I met some Australians who worked with refugees on the island, and they assured me that conditions had improved and were now “OK”. They came across quite committed to their aid-work jobs, really, so I guess I have to take their word for it.

   

Nauru profits from the asylum seeker camps scheme not only through job opportunities, but also through the fact that Australia pays millions in visa fees for the refugees sent to the island. Given the dearth of other economic opportunities for the island nation you maybe have to try and understand their position on this controversial issue.

   

On the other hand, given the dependency of Nauru on Australia, it has even been said that Nauru isn’t really a sovereign country anyway but rather an Australian “vassal state”. That’s perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but there is an undeniable element of truth in such an assessment.

   

Other than refugees and the remaining phosphate industry (which is unsustainable in the long term), there’s only fishing rights that bring in foreign money.

   

And then there’s tourism. There seems to be vague recognition that this could mean opportunity too. Yet tourism is still not really developed – even though there is a Nauru Tourism website that paints it all in rosy colours as if it really was a dream destination. It doesn’t tally with reality at this point, but it may be a sign that things are slowly, slowly changing. Indicators for that are also the fact that the once super-strict visa regulations (see below) have been relaxed somewhat in recent times. However, it would take more incentives, and also better infrastructure, to attract visitors in numbers that would make a real economic difference. As things stand at the time of writing in 2024, Nauru remains the least visited country in the world. Whether that’s going to change at any point in the future remains to be seen.

   

Finally a note on language: the pronunciation of “Nauru” is a little uncertain. I had always pronounced it as “NOW-roo”, i.e. with the stress on the first syllable (as I had heard it in school and also internationally, including from New Zealanders), but when I got to Australia and then to Nauru itself I was told the stress is actually on the final “u” (i.e. “now-ROO”). Wikipedia, in turn, claims that the main stress should be on the first “u” separated from the preceding “a”, so that “the sequence <a-u> is not a diphthong, so it should be “nah-OO-roo”. I’ve never encountered it pronounced like that, though. And to make matters even more complicated, the native name for the island in their own language is “Naoero”, which could be pronounced “na-o-E-roo” (as may guide did) or indeed “Na-OO-ru” (where the letters <oe> become /u/, as in Dutch). I’m not in a position to settle this matter. Take your pick. 

  
What there is to see: Probably the main attraction for the dark tourist is the barren inland, called “Topside”, i.e. the wasteland left behind by the phosphate strip-mining – about 80 % of Nauru’s territory. Parts of it are being reclaimed by plants, others feature up to 50 feet (15m) high limestone pinnacles left after the phosphate was stripped away from the land. Other than that there are a few remains left from the brief German colonial period and remnants of the Japanese occupation during WWII, such as old gun positions and bunkers.

   

Only one place deserves its own separate subchapter here, the local museum:

   

- Naoero Museum

   

   

This was indeed the first stop on my tours with a local driver-guide when I visited in August 2024. Here’s a description of the rest of what I saw:

   

After visiting the museum we had a look around some sports facilities behind the museum building, a huge empty hall with basketball courts and so on, though the main sport on Nauru is supposedly weightlifting (not surprising, given the typical physique of Nauruans) and also Australian Rules football.

   

After that we headed back up north on the ring road and stopped by the World War II Memorial Monument. It’s a simple but sombre affair. Behind the main sign is a flat area made of coral rock into which the shapes of Nauru and the Truk Islands are set. A large memorial wall at the rear lists the names of all the Nauruans who perished in WWII, either through deportation to Truk (see above) or on Nauru itself. There’s a separate section for those lepers murdered by the Japanese in 1943 as well as a smaller section listing the Europeans who lost their lives at the hands of the Japanese, including two priests and the crew of a USAF plane shot down over Nauru.

   

Looming large in the background behind the monument is what is perhaps the most iconic sight of Nauru: the phosphate loading cantilevers used for transporting the processed phosphate on to ships moored just beyond the coral fringe of the island. I personally find the aesthetics of such industrial structures quite appealing, but I am aware that this is very much a niche appreciation. Indeed, in most other places such cantilevers wouldn’t receive much positive attention at all. Here, however, their image even features on postcards and other souvenirs! They are Nauru’s No.1 landmark! … if that’s not saying something …

   

There’s a second set of cantilevers a bit further south on the west coast. These are the older ones, called Cantilever No.1, that have collapsed into the coral reef. What brought them down isn’t entirely clear. My guide claimed it was bombing during WWII (see above) – and indeed the phosphate infrastructure was a target of German shelling early on in the war. Yet it’s less likely they would have been a target for the Allies in their later air raids. From the museum I learned that Cantilever No. 1 was actually repaired in the late 1940s and only began deteriorating and eventually collapsing in the 2010s, so not due to any WWII bombing, but simple neglect after Cantilever No. 2 had taken over the active ship-loading role. Anyway, these gigantic steel girder structures, lying broken just off the coastline, are perhaps the most impressive thing to behold on Nauru. They certainly were for me.

   

We also made a stop near the older phosphate processing plant that the still operational cantilevers are connected to. Here we explored an abandoned former phosphate storage hall, with still quite a heap of old phosphate powder in situ, now slowly growing a green veneer of moss on top. Urbexing in the Pacific tropics – marvellous!

   

Then we drove back to the southern end of the island to explore the government district a bit. This lies along the southern side of the airport runway in a string of buildings including Parliament House and the Government Office (with the President’s Office). The area is the district of Yaren, which is hence sometimes regarded as the “capital” of Nauru (though officially it doesn’t have one).

   

Outside the Government Offices Building stands a monument dedicated to casualties of WWII, including those Europeans murdered by the Japanese (see above), as well as to volunteers from Nauru who fought in WW1. This is flanked by some historic guns, and complemented by a series of further memorial plaques, including one for the first president of independent Nauru. A large banner along the front of the roof of the building proclaimed “Happy Constitution Day”.

   

The next day of touring was devoted to the “Topside”, i.e. the heavily strip-mined central plateau (see above).

   

Before we got there we had a brief intermediate stop at the Buada Lagoon, the only inland body of water on Nauru (though no longer filled with potable fresh water and no longer supporting edible fish). The lush green scenery around this lake even includes mango trees. This is probably the only place on Nauru that faintly resembles the Pacific tropical island paradise cliché … if only just.

   

The first stop in terms of dark tourism that day, however, was at a historically significant site: relics from a former communications centre and later prison built by the German colonial forces on Nauru in the early 20th century and later reused as a prison during the occupation by Japan in WWII. The bunker-like ruins are slowly being reclaimed by vegetation, the site is totally uncommodified and many of the walls are covered in random graffiti. There are two concrete structures with steel doors so that they look like they may have been prison cells. One may even have served as a gas chamber, as a couple of sources claim (allegedly to execute natives who refused to work for the German masters – though I haven’t been able to unearth any solid evidence for this, so the claim remains rather contentious). It’s certainly an eerie and darkly atmospheric place to visit and one of the principal dark sites on Nauru.

   

Next we stopped to hike to what’s known as Command Ridge. This is the highest point on Nauru, some 70m (230 feet) above sea level, and indeed commanding good views over the western coastline. The highlight here is a rusty but otherwise quite well-preserved Japanese twin anti-aircraft gun turret. These are the very guns that shot down a USAF plane over Nauru, some wreck pieces of which are now on display in the museum. Also at Command Ridge is a Japanese bunker and dotted around are said to be more gun relics, but these are too hidden in the barely passable undergrowth so the tour did not include any of those. We did however explore some of the “Arches”. These are gaps hewn into the larger limestone pinnacles to allow for transportation of phosphate ore mined beyond (they are quite low and naturally, being quite tall, I banged my head on one of them on the way back). The guide also pointed out what was supposed to be the remnants of a railway line constructed for phosphate ore transport, but to be honest I wasn’t able to see anything.

   

From Command Ridge we also got some of the best views of the moonscape-like strip-mined surface of Topside, with its many limestone/coral pinnacles stripped bare of their phosphate. Some of these tower 30-50 feet high (10-15m), but most are between one or two metres high. They cover most of Topside, except where there is still active mining, a rubbish dump, a solar energy farm (or those detention camps …) and of course the dirt tracks that criss-cross Topside. Some vegetation has grown back on this otherwise utterly destroyed landscape, but it still remains totally unsuitable for any agriculture and is regarded as uninhabitable (except if you are a refugee, apparently).

   

We also made a stop at the current phosphate mining operation in the centre of Topside. Here large trucks ply the dusty dirt tracks, kicking up polluted dust in the process, to cart raw phosphate rock to the crushing and treatment plant. Activity at the plant was not exactly frantic and we briefly talked to a rather relaxed security guard who turned out to be actually quite friendly and at the end of our short visit even thanked us for coming here.

   

Afterwards we drove around Topside a bit more and doing so also passed a couple of those infamous refugee detention camps, euphemistically dubbed “Regional Processing Centres” (RPC). The then active RPC 1 was heavily guarded and the guide made it quite clear that taking photographs was most strictly forbidden. I’m not surprised. The operators of such camps certainly don’t want any outsiders to collect photographic evidence. At one of the other RPCs not actually housing any refugees and just laying idle at the time (but still well maintained) I was allowed to snap a quick photo of the entrance (see gallery below). Similarly as we drove past what used to be another, high-security camp. This has meanwhile become Nauru’s own main prison, the Nauru Correctional Facility.

   

Dropped back at Ewa Lodge (see below) at the end of this day’s morning tour, it was time to pick up the arranged hire car and go exploring independently in the afternoon. Again I concentrated first on Topside, driving amongst the RPCs, the prison, the phosphate mining, the island’s main rubbish dump – and nearby: a kind of car cemetery. I had spotted this from the drive with our guide, now I made it a proper destination. It’s quite a sight: dozens and dozens, possibly hundreds of car wrecks simply dumped by the roadside and beyond, sometimes piled four high. I presume it’s just too expensive and too much hassle to get cars that are no longer used off the island, so they are simply left here to rust away. It’s quite a dystopian thing to behold.

   

Back on the coastal ring road I was also keen to stop and explore the Menen Hotel that I had read about in the Nauru chapter of Tony Wheeler’s “Dark Lands”. He already described it as pretty run-down and desolate when he stayed there many years ago. When I started planning my Nauru trip in early 2024 I was advised that the Menen was by now largely abandoned, possibly awaiting renovation, but wasn’t a real option for visitor accommodation (see below). So I was intrigued. When I got there I found it indeed largely deserted. The reception area, the bar, and shop were empty and dark, the waterfront and most of the hotel-room blocks abandoned with no sign of life whatsoever, just crumbling away. The hotel swimming pool was still waterless (as when Tony Wheeler visited). Yet there were a couple of cars parked outside and on two or three of the hotel-room balconies I saw washing drying. So maybe some contract workers or so are still using some parts of the hotel for longer-term accommodation. But there was certainly no tourism here at all. It’s not too surprising. The complex is totally oversized, with 119 guest rooms – in a country visited by a mere 200 people annually. It could never have been economically viable. The views out over the Bay were quite nice, though.

   

A bit further up the ring road I made a stop at the boat harbour. There were no boats here, but a group of kids enjoying a swim in the fairly secure harbour basin, with the ocean swell coming in on one side, but calm waters for the rest of it. Next to the harbour is the Nauru Fish Market – but again there was no indication of any life here (whereas I saw plenty of signs outside private homes advertising the sale of fresh tuna). In between the market and the harbour stands a memorial cross. A plaque at the bottom explains that it is dedicated to the people who lost their lives due to rip tides in the previous boat channel that was here before the construction of the harbour basin.

   

Just to the north I came across the Bay Restaurant and decided to have some lunch here, as it was praised as the only proper restaurant on the island. It turned out to be a very casual place frequented by expats and locals alike and the food served was indeed quite decent (see also below).

   

The final stop of the day was at those tall coral pinnacles at the northern end of Anibare Bay (see below), but I did not wade into the shallow coral waters to get closer to them.

   

On my final day on Nauru, the tour programme had just one more dark site scheduled for the itinerary. This was a cave that was allegedly used as an underground hospital during the Japanese occupation of Nauru in WWII. Nothing concrete of that remains, and in fact the guide said that the cave was shrinking due to the growth of the limestone. All there was to see in the gloom, which I illuminated with the strong torch I had brought along, was, again, graffiti. Most of this was boring stuff, but one skull-and-crossbones graffito I found quite fitting (see gallery below).

   

We also made a short stop at another cave, this one close to the airport and full of people. That’s because inside is a freshwater underground lake – and it was clearly a popular Sunday activity to go in there and cool off in the water. It was too busy for us to even contemplate joining in.

   

On my request we also made a stop again at the old phosphate processing plant at Aiwo on the western side of the island. It was a Sunday, and on Nauru that’s a day when life stands still and almost everything is shut (except for the churches, which are super busy on Sundays). So I reckoned there may be no guards at the entrance to the site now. And so it was. My guide kept looking for someone to ask for permission to enter the site. But nobody was there so we just went in and explored a bit – again, some cool urbexing in the Pacific tropics.

   

Also on my request we made two stops at the two Japanese-era pillbox bunkers on the east coast that I had spotted from driving past before.

   

And that was it. Another option could have been trying to locate more of those Japanese war relics and rusting guns dotted around the more inaccessible parts of the island. But that would have been an expedition, really. And by then I'd had my fill of hot, humid, sweaty Nauru. So after cooling down a bit in the air-conditioned room at Ewa Lodge (see below), I got ready for my transfer back to the airport.

   

Departing from Nauru airport was also quite an experience in itself. First there’s all the bureaucracy with immigration and customs, with yet more forms to be filled out (the smaller and more insignificant a country is, the more it loves these things, so it seems), then waiting in the lounge together with mostly other westerners (Australians and Americans, for the most part). Some of them, it became clear, worked at the refugee centres, so it was interesting to listen to them. There was also a small souvenir shop that eventually opened, causing a rush of attention in the departure lounge. Most customers were interested in purchasing Nauru stamps. But I got myself a Nauru Island T-shirt instead.

   

After boarding, looking out of the plane window there was quite a spectacle to behold. On a viewing platform next to the terminal a large crowd had gathered to watch the departure of the plane. The kids were almost uncontrollably boisterous in anticipation. A plane landing or taking off is clearly still a very special event here (see also St Helena).

   

After take-off I was able to catch a brief glimpse of Nauru from the air and over the barren Topside, then we were off over the empty wide Pacific, only broken by flying over the Solomon Islands en route back to Brisbane.

   

All in all: I found Nauru very special. Not only was it a fulfilment of a crazy schooldays dream to one day come here, it was also rich in terms of dark tourism, if all a bit raw. So I’m glad I made it here. But would I come back? No. Quite definitely not. I’ve exhausted it, there is no reason for a return visit.

   

Should others visit? Well, if you share my weird fascination with remote isolated islands with a dark history, and can cope with the hassle, costs and the inconveniences of going to and being on Nauru, then by all means do. It’s quite an experience. Otherwise, I guess for most people Nauru has little allure if any at all. Tony Wheeler in his book “Dark Lands” quoted someone who placed Nauru even below Afghanistan on his personal “shithole scale”. That’s going a bit too far in my eyes, but make no mistake: Nauru is a hard-core destination, not a tourist hotspot by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m so happy I’ve done it. 

 

 
Location: remote ... extremely remote!!! In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just south of the equator, ca. 180 miles (300 km) from the nearest islands (Banaba of the Kiribati group of islands, see below) and about 2000 miles (3200 km) from Brisbane in Australia.

   

Google Maps locators:

   

WWII monument: [-0.53058, 166.9101]

   

Government district: [-0.5473, 166.9174]

   

Phosphate cantilevers [-0.5311, 166.9091]

   

Older collapsed cantilevers: [-0.5366, 166.9092]

   

Abandoned phosphate storage hall: [-0.5352, 166.9127]

    

Buada Lagoon: [-0.5346, 166.9224]

   

Colonial/Japanese prison remnants: [-0.5359, 166.9178]

   

Command Ridge with old anti-aircraft gun turret: [-0.5338, 166.9165]

   

Current phosphate mining and processing plant: [-0.5261, 166.9372]

   

Older phosphate plant: [-0.5358, 166.9141]

   

Former high-security detention centre, now National Prison: [-0.5351, 166.9421]

   

RPC 1: [-0.5406, 166.9312]

   

Car cemetery: [-0.5427, 166.9174]

   

Semi-abandoned Menen Hotel: [-0.5429, 166.9506]

   

Boat Harbour, fish market and monument: [-0.5367, 166.9503]

   

Japanese cave (approximately): [-0.5369, 166.9421]

   

Japanese pill-box bunkers: [-0.51506, 166.95807] and [-0.52818, 166.95267]

   

Tall coral pinnacles: [-0.5256, 166.9548]

   

Bay Restaurant: [-0.5351, 166.9502]

   

Airport: [-0.5448, 166.9174]

   

Ewa Beach, Lodge and supermarket: [-0.5034, 166.9385] 

  

 
Access and costs: very remote, not easy to get to and expensive – but not impossible!

 

Details: the only realistic way of getting to this very remote island is flying in. At least Nauru Airlines now runs a fairly regular service, usually twice a week from Brisbane, Australia. There are also flights to other Pacific islands, but unless any of those happen to be of interest to you or provide useful onward connections, none of these will be useful to people visiting Nauru. The schedule from/to Brisbane changed during time I was planning my trip and of course it can change at any time again, without warning. I was fortunate that an extra night flight was put on that still enabled me to get to Nauru to get to my accommodation and touring. But it was a little nerve-wracking. The schedule at the time was that the flight from Brisbane to Nauru was on a Thursday and the return on Sunday.

   

The fares charged by Nauru Airlines are very steep indeed. I had to fork out just shy of a whopping 1700 AUD for a return ticket (that’s over a thousand US$ or euros). A flight from Europe to the USA usually costs far less than that, for at least twice the distance! But I guess Nauru Airlines can get away with such inflated prices because most passengers will be aid or contract workers and/or those running the refugee camps, so will have their expenses paid for. For a mere tourist having to meet all costs themselves, this is a major factor … a deterrent even.

   

Another stumbling block is visas. Almost all nationals (except for a few chosen ones mostly from other Pacific islands) will need a visa and they’re not easy to obtain. That said, though, it got a lot less complicated during the time I was planning my trip. Initially, they wanted documentation such as a certified criminal record and a lung scan (for ruling out TB). They still demanded a Covid-19 vaccination certificate and I had to submit a notary document certifying the authenticity of my passport, in a certified translation. It took a long while to come through, but it did. At least since Nauru opened a visa processing office in Brisbane, it’s not as fickle and unreliable as it used to be before.

   

Getting around on the island is mostly by car, though given the small size of the territory you could even walk the entire circumference of the island in less than half a day. Cycling would take at best a couple of hours, driving a mere half an hour or so.

   

When I went I had a couple of half-day tours arranged with a local driver-guide, but also had a hire car for individual explorations for the rest of my time there. This was hired out by the place I used for accommodation as well, and they also provided airport transfers.

   

All this was put together for me as a package by an Australian tour operator/agent with a truly off-the-beaten-path portfolio (contact me for details if you’re interested). They also looked after booking accommodation for me. The total package price was in the region of 1100 AUD pp. For an extra fee (of 50 AUD pp) they also offered visa support, which also took a lot of hassle out of the equation. All I had to do myself was book the flights (Nauru Airlines flights are not bookable by agents; you have to use their online booking engine yourself – but that at least was fairly easy and user-friendly.)

   

Accommodation options on Nauru are very limited indeed. The two longer-established hotels are hardly operating any more and couldn’t currently be recommended if they did. I visited the formerly No. 1 option, the totally oversized Menen Hotel while I was exploring the island and that felt decidedly dead and abandoned (see above). These days by far the best option is Ewa Lodge, which consists of a few double en-suite rooms and a couple of apartments located above the island’s main supermarket, run by the omnipresent Capelle & Partner company. The room was adequate enough with working air-conditioning (except when there’s one of the frequent power cuts), a fridge, a working shower and everything you need. The TV, however, was not connected and the cable plug broken, so I couldn’t even check what channels there would have been on (presumably all Australian).

   

As for food & drink: also run by that same company is the only decent restaurant on the island, called Bay Restaurant, located on the eastern side of the island at Anibare. They do pretty good curries and also pizzas and grills. Other than that (or just self-catering) there are only a few informal joints, mostly run by Chinese, and serving basic Asian fare. The supermarket at Ewa also has a self-service food outlet that seemed very popular with the locals. The only real bar catering for visitors is also at the Bay Restaurant, but the supermarket at Ewa also has a bottle shop attached.

   

Nauru doesn’t produce much of its own, other than coconuts, a few mangoes and copious amounts of tuna caught in the waters around the island. But everything else is imported. That includes all drinks, and also drinking water, which is very scarce on the island, so you have to resort to bottled water. Annoyingly that mostly comes in those small half-litre plastic bottles only, so you are forced to produce a lot of plastic waste (and you need to drink lots of water in this hot and humid climate). And Nauru already has a plastic waste problem.

   

Language: although Nauru has its own distinct language (Nauruan), English is widely spoken by all people you are likely to encounter.

   

Money: Nauru may have its own airline, government offices and whatnot, but it didn’t go as far as introducing its own currency. Legal tender in Nauru is (what else) the Australian Dollar. And it’s a cash economy, don’t expect to be able to pay for anything on cards. Ideally bring enough cash as you may need, since there are hardly any ATMs and you wouldn’t want to have to rely on the one or two you may track down (one is located by the Ewa shopping complex).

   

Weather: Nauru is extremely tropical, humid and hot, year round, due to its location so near the equator. The rainy season, when monsoons can reach the island, is between November and February, so it’s best to avoid that time of year. The rest of the year is much drier but rains can hit at any time and are not predictable. While I was there in late August, not a single drop of rain fell.

 

 
Time required: A couple of days would actually suffice to see all the essentials, but flight schedules dictate that you usually have to spend four nights on the island and hence will have some time spare. Those who might want to dig deep into all the WWII relics, many of which are in rather hidden and overgrown locations, will need more time, though.

 

 
Combinations with other dark destinations: none anywhere near – but Brisbane, Australia, from where you will have to fly to Nauru, offers a few darkish attractions of its own.

   

Not really visitable by tourists, but sharing the core of Nauru’s plight is the island nearest to it, formerly known as Ocean Island, but now given its local name Banaba. It too had the sort of phosphate deposits that made Nauru (temporarily) rich – but unlike Nauru it never enjoyed any of the proceeds of the mining. Instead the entire inland of the island was stripped bare by mining between 1900 and 1979. The native islanders were screwed over repeatedly by the westerners and most natives were gradually displaced (especially to Fiji).

   

As with Nauru, the worst period was that under Japanese occupation during WWII, at the end of which the Japanese murdered almost the entire remaining local population.

  

Independence, as Nauru achieved, was never granted to Banaba, which is similarly isolated as Nauru and even smaller. It was integrated (against many of the islanders’ wishes) into the state of Kiribati as the mining shut down in 1979. Today only about 200-250 islanders still live there on the narrow coastal strip (all of the inland, as on Nauru, is uninhabitable), but there’s a diaspora of a few thousand Banaba-descended people living mostly in other parts of Kiribati and Fiji.

   

I’m just bringing the Banaba case up here to demonstrate that if you thought Nauru had it bad, oh no – it could get even worse. 

 

 
Combinations with non-dark destinations: Nauru is a tropical island ringed by coral reefs, and there are some beaches along the green coastal ring (around the barren inland) but they are not really suitable for swimming. For that the only options are the boat harbour at Anibare or a hidden cave with an underground lake near the airport, which however is mostly used by locals.

   

The one place most visitors go to to have their photo taken are some exceptionally high coral pinnacles close to the shore at the northern end of Anibare Bay on the east coast.

   

Scuba diving and deep-sea fishing are other tourist offerings. But resources are very limited. Make no mistake: Nauru is not a Pacific holiday paradise! But at least that also means no tourist crowds …