Capelles Nauru

Capelles on Nauru.  The biggest and best store on Nauru, complete with bottle shop.  I lived in an apartment behind and above the supermarket. 

Nauru Coast Road

The coast road at Nauru runs all the way around the island, and all of the villages are on it. There is no road running across the island.

Marcus Stephen, President of Nauru

Mr with the President of Nauru, Marcus Stephen. He was a former Olympic weightlifter,  and won seven Commonwealth Gold Medals. He resigned the day after this photo was taken, but is still a Cabinet Minister. 

Green Nauru

Although often described as a sort of post apocalyptic lunar landscape, Nauru is actually very green and lush.   This is down near the coast, just behind the power station.  

further round the Coast Road near the boat harbour is dense green foliage:

And up on the top of this island, there is a  tropical rain forest:

Nauru Sunset

Pacific sunsets are usually spectacular. This was especially true on Nauru, where the sun sets across a beach strewn with volcanic lava shapes. 

Most afternoons after work I would buy a beer from Capelles Store, and walk across the road to the beach to watch these sunsets. 

Nauru Zero

The Pacific is littered with the debris of war.  Mostly rusting away, or in the ocean, and often dangerous.  

On Nauru I found a large section of a Japanese Nakajima Zero in someones garden. The rest is probably somewhere in the undergrowth. 

Nauru was surrendered without a fight, at the end of WW2.  The Japanese were loaded onto boats and taken away, their equipment was left as it was. Apparently until the 1970s there were rows of such Zeros standing at the edge of former airfields. Most have been scrapped or buried now. 

Nauru guns

On the flat top of Nauru, a Japanese 127mmm type 89 anti aircraft gun still points skywards.  Early in the morning of  June 29th 1944 this gun shot down the US Army B25 the "Coral Princess".

The type 89 gun was intended for ship use, but was made in large quantities from 1929-45. Its 5 inch shells had a range of 9500 meters, and it could fire up to 14 a minute. 

These are the tracking and firing controls for the gun. The round things would originally have had dials on them. 

And here is one of the two radial engines from the Coral Princess. 

Mista Piggy, Nauru

Fast food is not unique to Western nations.  It has now spread across the Pacific region, and it is doing great harm.  this is the popular  Mista Piggy Snack Bar on Nauru. 

Nauru has the highest ration of obesity in the world.  To quote from the Independent Newspaper: "The spread of Western fast food was blamed as the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru was named as the fattest in the world. Its average Body Mass Index is between 34 and 35, 70 per cent higher than in some countries in South-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

And yet every day there were big crowds at Mista Piggys.

Nauru deserted mansion

On Nauru a palatial mansion stands deserted and forlorn.   The place was huge, with massive balconies overlooking an incredible view of the ocean.  

Like so many of Nauru's stories, no one could tell me the real truth. Unsafe foundations, embezzled money, land disputes and a host of other stories surround the house.  One thing is obvious,  it was not inhabited for very long. 

It stands on what was originally the second Japanese airfield,  and the white crushed coral  sand are the remnants of the main runway. 

Nauru coastline

Nauru is a small volcanic outcrop that sticks up from the bed of the Pacific. The island itself is quite pleasant – indeed it was known as Pleasant Island before independence, although the colonial powers did their best to change that by taking most of the island away on ships as phosphate.

The flat volcanic reef stretches out for about 300 meters of shallow water, and then takes a sudden plunge of almost 1Km. Swimming in the shallows is tricky, as there are a lot of rough volcanic rocks, but going over the edge into deep water verges on suicide.  There are big waves as the swell hits the reef, there are treacherous rips and undercurrents, and getting back onto the reef is hard going. There just isn’t a safe and graceful way of getting back up onto it, and what usually happens is the waves throw you onto the rocks in a painful manner. The water is however warm, clear and the shallows are very safe.  Swim over the edge of the old volcano however and the sea drops sheer down and the tides pull you away from the island.  There isn't anywhere for a further 1000 km and hardly any shipping, so you will die. 

The island coastline is actually very nice. it lacks the beauty of a coral atoll, but has blue skies, palm trees, deep blue oceans and turquoise shallows. The only road runs around the coast, and is only 17km long and its pretty flat and very boring.

Above the flat coastal area the island rises vertically with cliff faces to a large plateau, covered in trees and dotted with huge holes where the phosphate was.  

Nauru phosphate.....

On Nauru, the last vestiges of a once thriving phosphate industry fall apart.  

Phosphate was discovered here by albert Ellis, who recognised a doorstop at the Pacific Islands Company office in Sydney as being pure phosphate.  By the late 1980s over 40 million tones of phosphate had been exported, and the island had been shaved.  The population were the richest people per capita in the world in the late 1970s, but by the mid 1990s the money had all gone, wasted and stolen by greed, corruption and foolish investments. 

Now the island looks like a lunar landscape, and is littered with old machinery and equipment.  This islanders hope for another miracle, but it wont happen. 

Nauru driftwood

On Nauru,  massive pieces of driftwood that probably drifted thousands of miles across the Pacific wash up on the beach. 

the Coral Princess

Part of a wing off the "Coral Princess".   a USArmy B25, she took off from Makin Airfield  at 8:15am on June 29th 1944, piloted by 1st Lt Karl James. 

Around lunchtime she was hit by a Japanese 127mm anti aircraft shell and exploded over Nauru.  The crew all died in the crash.  Bits of the aircraft still litter the middle of the island.   

Someone had put the crews details in a small memorial book and left it at the crash site:

Pilot  1st Lt. Karl R. James, 

Co-Pilot  Alexander Cheropovich 

Navigator  John Keeling 

Radio  Frank Kapla, 

Engineer  Harry Stockton 

Gunner  Benedict Jasper

Nauru girl at sunset

Early evening and the sun sets off the volcanic outcrop that is Nauru. A young girl makes her way back ashore after cooling off in the ocean, carefully avoiding the razor sharp rocks.