Missing in Nauru Trivia Quiz

Answer: 21 square kilometers (8.1 sq mi)

Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world. Only the Vatican City and Monaco are smaller. As neither of those are republics, Nauru is recorded as the smallest republic in 2019. It is also the smallest island state in the South Pacific Ocean.

Answer: Yaren

Yaren is a district on the south of the island of Nauru. It is interesting that Nauru does not have cities or an official capital, only districts made up of villages. Yaren is accepted by the United Nations as the "main district". While Yaren has the Parliament House and the island's administration offices, there is no actual capital city.

The other names mentioned are all districts of Nauru.

Answer: English and Nauruan

The official languages are Nauruan and English. Nauruan is a distinct Pacific Island language that is only spoken on the island. English is used for most commercial and all government business, as Nauruan is so specific to Nauru. Some locals speak Tuvaluan or Gilbertese which are quite common around the island since these ethnic groups have worked in the Nauru mining industry.

The population has a percentage that are Han Chinese, so Chinese is also spoken but none of the smaller language groups are official languages.

Answer: 0.5 degree south of the Equator

Nauru's climate is hot and very humid. This is due to being very close to the equator and the ocean that surrounds the island. Nauru is hit by monsoon rains between November and February, but usually no cyclones. This has changed in recent years due to the influence of the El Niņo-Southern Oscillation. The rainfall is variable, with several significant droughts recorded.
There are limited natural sources of fresh water on Nauru, so rooftop storage tanks are used to collect rainwater. Three desalination plants provide the islanders with most of their water.

Answer: Australian dollar

Nauru currently lacks money to perform many of the basic functions of a government and relies on help from other nations to support their economy. Australia has been very involved in the history of Nauru. In 1947, a trusteeship was established by the United Nations, with Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom as trustees. Australia became the sole administrator until independence in 1968.

This established the Australian dollar as the currency of Nauru.

Answer: Command Ridge

Nauru is a fairly flat oval-shaped island, with coral cliffs surrounding its central plateau. Command Ridge sits within the cliffs and is 71 meters (233 ft) above sea level. It has a great view of the island and the Pacific Ocean that surrounds it. The Japanese occupied Nauru during World War II. Command Ridge had defensive bunkers built into it. You can still see them today when you climb up the ridge.

Answer: Phosphate

Phosphate is the naturally occurring form of the element phosphorus. It is used widely in agriculture and industry. Phosphate was discovered on Nauru in 1900 by the prospector Albert Fuller Ellis. Nauru was one of three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific Ocean and had rich deposits of phosphate that allowed easy strip-mining operations.

This made the Nauruan people the richest in the world for a short time in the 1980s. Unfortunately, this was terrible for the environment. Forty per cent of marine life is estimated to have been killed by silt and phosphate runoff.

Many indigenous birds have disappeared or become rare owing to destruction of their habitat. The reef that surrounds the island had to be rehabilitated. Phosphate mining ceased in 2011.

Answer: Buada Lagoon

Buada Lagoon is a landlocked, slightly brackish, freshwater lake in the Buada District on Nauru. It is quite big, covering about 0.13 square kilometers (0.5 square miles). The lagoon is classed as an endorheic lake, this means no water flows to other bodies of water such the Pacific Ocean or a river.

It is filled by rain water runoff from the monsoons. The land around the lagoon is very fertile. It supports bananas, pineapples, vegetables, pandanus trees, and indigenous hardwoods.

Answer: a detention centre in Medeng District

From 2001 to 2008, and from 2012, Nauru accepted economic aid from the Australian Government in exchange for having Australia's offshore immigration detention centre on their island. The people held in the "Nauru Regional Processing Centre" are asylum seekers.

They are from mostly Middle Eastern countries, and tried to get to Australia illegally by boat from Indonesia. The Australian government had a policy called the "Pacific Solution", a total refusal to take illegal immigrants and placed them in detention outside the Australian mainland.

Answer: blue, yellow and white

The flag of Nauru has an interesting design. A yellow horizontal stripe, representing the Equator, runs across a blue field that represents the Pacific Ocean. Nauru itself is symbolized by a white 12-pointed star. Each point is for one of the 12 indigenous tribes or districts on the island.

The flag was chosen from a local design competition. It is great that local people had input on their flag. The flag was formally adopted on Independence Day, 31 January 1968.