Australia: A Special Island

Many a pygmy-size paradise of late has attained the badge of nationhood —such as Cyprus, Rwanda, Burundi, Zan zibar. But all stand as giants beside a midget that last week clamored to join the gang: the Pacific island of Nauru.

A coral-and-palm flyspeck 1,300 miles northeast of Australia, Nauru has an area of 8½ square miles and a population of 2,700. Only 100 years ago, it was a virtually unknown battleground of savages who guzzled coconut toddy and sported necklaces of human teeth; in 1852 the Nauruans inhospitably chopped up the entire crew of the visiting American brig, India. Since the turn of the century, however, life for the islanders has been one long enchanted evening.

No Taxes. In 1900 a British engineer assayed a Nauru rock being used as a doorstop in his Sydney office, discovered that the island was richly overlaid with phosphate. With Britain, Australia and New Zealand extracting the deposits, royalties have showered down on the Nauruans to the tune of half a million dollars a year. Today the dark-skinned natives pay no taxes but enjoy schools, hospitals, running water, electric lights and movies.

A few years ago, it became evident that the phosphate would run out before long. Nauru’s three concessionaires and the U.N., of which the island is a trusteeship, rushed solicitously to the rescue. Last year Australia took the natives’ head chief, Hammer deRoburt, to look over Australia’s Curtis Island off the Queensland coast, offered to underwrite a $22.4 million resettlement of the Nauruans there. Curtis Island is larger than Nauru, has abundant supplies of fish offshore, and its wildlife would even permit the Nauruans to pursue their favorite pastime of taming noddies and frigate birds.

Color Bar. But last week the deal collapsed, for the Nauruans were insisting that they get sovereignty over the island in exchange for moving there. Australia had no intention of giving up complete control of a territory so close to its shores. An alternative scheme to resettle Nauru’s minuscule populace in Australia was rejected by the dusky islanders for fear of race discrimination by the Australians, who frankly practice the color bar.

In Canberra, burly Head Chief deRoburt stomped out after conferences with Australia’s Minister for Territories Charles Barnes and Prime Minister Robert Menzies, vowing: “The whole world will know how you’ve treated us!” With that, DeRoburt announced that his people would now remain on Nauru and seek to have it filled with crop-growing soil, take over the remaining phosphate deposits—and become an independent state by 1967. Whether the latter will come to pass remains to be seen. But clearly what the Nauruans want is just what South Pacific’s Bloody Mary recommended—their own special island.