A Tight Little Isle, With Life-Insured Style

Nauru is no Bali Ha'i, but it suits its 2,700 inhabitants down to the ground. Since the ground is almost solid phosphate, the natives support themselves by selling it off at the rate of some 1,800,000 tons a year. The only cloud on the horizon is the fact that by 1995 the 5,263-acre island will be stripped of phosphate (used for fertilizer), leaving a big, barren pothole in the Pacific, 2,500 miles northeast of Sydney. Then Nauru's dark-skinned population will have to move to another, less tight little island.

At any rate, they will leave in style. Last week Nauru's elected chieftain, Hammer deRoburt, finished hammering out a contract with its principal phosphate customers--Australia, New Zealand, Britain--that will assure the island's 500 families a kitty of $225 million by the time the phosphate runs out. Under the agreement, deRoburt, 42, more than trebled his people's royalties (to $1.50 a ton, retroactive to July 1, 1964) and extracted yet another price boost (to $1.97), effective next year. The Australian government, which administers the island as a U.N. trust territory, will hold most of the islanders' cash in trust until the time comes to move.

Meanwhile, Nauruans have little to complain about. With 95% literacy, little or no disease, no taxes, and a per capita income of $1,800 a year (v. $1,350 for Australians), Nauruans work hard at having fun. They cruise about in 800 cars and motorcycles, watch free movies, indulge in their traditional hobbies of taming frigate birds or man o' war hawks, and grow steadily lazier, happier and fatter (a 250-lb. Nauruan is considered well-rounded).

The islanders want only one thing that phosphate cannot buy: independence. However, as Chief deRoburt de parted for Manhattan last week to report to the U.N. Trusteeship Council, Australian Territories Minister Charles Barnes conceded cautiously that as a first step toward sovereignty for the island, his government will draft a Nauruan constitution; next January the first Nauruan Parliament will convene. If Nauru proves ready for self-government, Barnes says elliptically, "Further discussions will take place regarding the possibility of further political progress." In other words, it is only a matter of time before Nauruans will be independent--provided the Australian government can find them another island to be independent on.

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