Nauru is these days known as the dumping ground of Australia’s refugees, but it was dumping of another kind that made Nauru one of the richest nations on earth during the last century.
The tiny country is renowned for their phosphate mines. With phosphate originally covering four fifths of the island, it seemed like a never ending resource, until that resource dried up in the early 2000’s.
But a delegation from Nauru are not going to go down without a fight, and have identified another phosphate-rich resource in Mornington, and now want to mine it.
“We’d heard about it, but when we saw it for the first time, we really couldn’t believe it,” said Jospeh Tiffenson, head of the Nauruan delegation. “The amount of bird poo on Main Street just made our jaws hit the floor and had us seeing dollar signs”.
It was the bird poo on Nauru that kept the mines going for a century, but they have now lodged plans with Mornington Peninsula Shire to strip-mine the phosphate-rich bird poo from the footpaths in Main Street, Mornington.
“It won’t cause much inconvenience,” said Mr Tiffenson. “There will be road closures, some noise, and the use of quite a bit of explosives to get the bird poo off the footpath, but then we’ll truck it away, and it will be like nothing happened. Indeed, the residents of Mornington will be left with clean footpaths at last!”
Ironically, explosives is one of the products that phosphate is used for. Other uses include fertilizer, as an additive to animal feeds, and for the manufacturing of fidget-spinners.
“Obviously, the fidget-spinner market is immense. We literally can’t get enough phosphate to keep up with the demand,” said Mr Tiffenson.
The Public Record’s Derrick DiMaggio has contacted Mornington Peninsula Shire by raven to ask about the Nauruan’s plans, but had yet to receive a reply by time of publication.
