NAURU

NAURU / NAOERO.

Independence.
Simplified map.
Second stamp in a set of 2, issued on 11.09.1968.
Face value: 10 cents of Australian dollar.
Printed by Note Printing Branch, Reserve Bank of Australia.
Printing: Photogravure.

Catalogs
- Michel No. 84.
- Scott No. 87.
- Seven Sea Stamps No. 84.
- StampWorld No. 101.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 95.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 84.

Nauru (Nauruan: Naoero), is an island country and microstate in Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its surface is 21 km² (8.1 sq mi) and its estimated population in 2021, about 11,000 inhabitants. Nauru is a phosphate-rock with rich deposits near the surface, but the phosphate was exhausted in the 1990s, and the remaining reserves are not economically viable for extraction. To earn revenue, Nauru became a tax haven and center for illegal money laundering. From 2001 to 2008, and again from 2012, it accepted aid from the Australian government in exchange for hosting a controversial offshore immigration detention center. Nauru was occupied by Micronesians about 3,000 years ago. The first westerner to sight the island was John Fearn, captain of the ship Hunter, in 1798, and he named it Pleasant Island. In the second half of the 19th century, Nauru fought a civil war, which was ended by its annexation to the German Empire, which made it a colony in 1888. After the First World War, Nauru became a League of Nations mandate administered by Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In August 1942, during World War II, it was occupied by Japanese troops and liberated by the Royal Australian Navy on September 13, 1945. After the war, the country came under the United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence on January 31, 1968 and became a member of the Pacific Community in 1969.