NAURU AND OCEAN ISLANDS

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 13 January 1921, Page 3

NAURU AND OCEAN ISLANDS

STORY OF THE PHOSPHATE

DISCOVERIES

The December issue of the N.Z. Journal of Agriculture contains a very interesting and romantic account of the discovery of Nauru and Ocean Islands, where the phosphate abounds, from the pen of Mr Albert F. Ellis, who is the N.Z. Commissioner in the tri-partite administration of the islands. It is a story of British wide-awake-ness running rings around the Germans in spite of their boasted slimness. Nauru, or Pleasant Island, was discovered by Capt. Fearn, of the Hunter, in 1789, but in 1888 it was allowed to fall into German hands, and it was theirs up till the outbreak of war. The phosphate deposits were discovered by the British in 1900, and a British company acquired the predominant interest them before the Sauerkrauters woke to the fact what fabulous wealth was under their feet. Even the cute American, who worked out the guano islands of the Phoenix group several hundred miles to the eastward, missed completely the greater riches of Nauru and Ocean Island.

It was an accidental discovery, and Mr Ellis says no first-hand account of it has previously appeared in print. Just prior to 1900, he says, he was transferred to the Sydney office of the Pacific Islands Company. His attention there was arrested by a large block of rock used for keeping open the door of the laboratory, and it struck him as being like phosphate rock. He mentioned the matter to the company's manager, who told him it was a lump of petrified wood that had been found on Nauru. Ellis was silenced but not satisfied. He knocked a chip off the block, and when the test was made the petrified wood turned out to be phosphate of the highest value. Head office in London was communicated with, and " mum " became the order of the day. A German chartered company held the mineral rights, but before the Germans knew the game that was afoot the Pacific Island Company bought the concession to work Nauru. The rest is soon told: After the war the company's interests .were bought out by the British, Australian and New Zealand Governments, and New Zealand's partnership in Nauru and its hundreds of millions worth of deposits is a bright and gaudy feather in Mr Massey's cap. He stuck to his guns in maintaining the Dominion's right to share in the deposits.

Ocean Island was discovered by the British ship Ocean in 1804, and up till 1900 the natives were so poor a crowd that not even a " beach-comber" was living amongst them. In 1901, however, the Imperial Government annexed it, and it is now estimated that it contains thirty million tons of phosphates. The natives are now quite well-to-do, and during the war they subscribed a lump sum of £1000 for the Prince of Wales' Relief Fund.