Night asylum solution almost ended in disaster Suspicions ignored: The detention centre where Amnesty International says men live in hot, leaky tents. Charlie Two Post is the name for the second check point. Here, in the dirt, a band of 40 police and a few doughty guards made their stand, and quite probably saved Australia from yet another wretched asylum seeker catastrophe. Charlie Two Post is more a stop sign on the hot gravel road than a proper gate, just a couple of long ball kicks from Charlie One Post, entrance to Topside - Nauru's main detention centre. For 90 minutes three weeks ago, a fierce battle surged back and forth in the narrow, dusty alley between the two check points. The Nauruan police crouched in a line behind shields as more than 100 men hurled rocks, broken fences, flaming plastic chairs, empty fire extinguishers - anything they could get their hands on - and tried metre by metre, to force their way out. Out of the camp, out of detention, free of Nauru and able to begin the life they had expected when they tried to reach Australia by boat. Except, had the men escaped, they would have run head-long into an angry and frightened mob of locals, hundreds-strong, whipped up by a panicked Nauru government and threatening to take matters into their own hands. Manus Island locals watch asylum seekers arrive. "We wanted to f---ing kill someone, eh," seems to capture the mood, as described by one of the local boys. They had it all good and they burnt it down. The riot at Topside on July 19 left most of the newly constructed camp a charred wreck and caused $60 million in damage. That no one was killed, let alone badly injured in either the riot, subsequent inferno or by the angry crowds outside, is astonishing. The partially completed Refugee Processing Centre 2, known as "Black Soil" camp, on Nauru. Photo: Department of Immigration and Ci And bad as it was, what has been overlooked in Australia is just how close Nauru - and the Rudd government - came to disaster that night. The entire Pacific Solution could have unravelled had a death toll been attached to the damage bill. Yet attention has been elsewhere, for at the same moment as the riot, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was unveiling his Papua New Guinea solution, never to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat a home in Australia. Men like the 543 Tamils, Iraqis, Sudanese, Iranians and others held on Nauru that Friday have evoked sympathy and contempt in near equal measure for more than a decade. Former Salvation Army staff who worked on Nauru blamed the riot on frustration with "the degrading bureaucracy implemented by our government" - whereas opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison simply saw "thugs." But that night, far removed from the political clamour to "stop the boats" or "free the refugees," at least some of these men may well have condemned themselves to a lifetime in prison on an isolated tropical isle. Wreckage on Nauru. Photo: Dan Flitton Fairfax Media has spent the past week on Nauru, talking to more than a dozen witnesses or those with close knowledge of the riot. Official investigations and court proceedings are under way - 119 men are already charged with offences, and arson and attempted murder charges are likely for about 30 of them. Those found guilty face a life sentence on Nauru. Fears an out of control fire could rage across the 21-square-kilometre island are taken seriously. But the official findings and any subsequent convictions will do little to clear the air of suspicion and conspiracy about the decisions made that evening - and whether the full measure of destruction might have been avoided altogether. For some, the questions will never have satisfactory answers. The small clutch of opposition MPs on the island want to know why the local police commissioner was suspended just hours after refusing to confront the asylum seekers - although they have been censored when trying to raise the issue in Nauru's media. Guards from the private security employed at the camp are convinced they could have quelled the protest sooner if only protective gear had been on hand - equipment surprisingly absent, even though violence had flared in the past. Heat, dust and rain make Nauru a sticky place. And many are wondering if an emergency text message sent to every phone on Nauru, as well as TV broadcasts calling for all fit and able-bodied men to assemble and be ready for a fight, only served to inflame the tension. Kieren Keke, an opposition MP who went to the camp in a bid to calm the baying crowds, saw at least a half a dozen asylum seekers - and not only those involved in the riot - punched and kicked as they were spirited away from the fires. The outright hostility towards the foreigners that night raises doubts about an easy community amalgam with talk of new refugee settlements on Nauru and "open camps." But one thing is clear: despite the scare, Nauru will not stop asylum seekers coming to the island. "No change to Regional Processing Centre plans," the government gazette declares and the opposition broadly agrees. The tiny nation has become Australia's unlikely saviour, a country of just 10,000 people willing to sell its sovereignty to process refugee claims on Canberra's behalf. A damaged building after riots on Nauru. With once rich phosphate deposits all but exhausted, asylum seekers are big business. There is no bank on Nauru - no local currency even, only Australian dollars and an economy that runs entirely on cash. Healthcare is bad, Naurans suffer regular electricity outages and occasional water shortages despite flooding rain. But visa fees for asylum seekers now bring $1000 a head each month into the government coffers, plus millions of dollars in import duties on the heavy equipment used to build the camps. More "transferees" - to use the oddly depersonalised jargon of the government's new Pacific Solution - will soon be on their way. Topside will be rebuilt. The second camp, Black Soil, is under way and the aim is to build a third camp in four weeks, with tents mostly. Immigration Minister Tony Burke is expected to visit soon for further talks. Rudd said last week that people found to be refugees could live on the island with Australian support - but will never win citizenship - as a "parallel" with PNG's promise of permanent settlement. Should the Coalition win office, the spotlight will shine even brighter. Tony Abbott has flagged sending as many as 5000 asylum seekers to Nauru - and though the local government is wary about making firm commitments, acting president David Adeang says there is "no cap" on numbers. The wreckage on Nauru. A small nation hopes to carry a heavy burden. The signs of trouble that Friday afternoon came at shift change, just before six o'clock, when the day guards hand over to the night. Some asylum seekers had put running shoes on, rather than thongs usually worn in the heat. Time to play soccer at the camp's gravel pitch, they said, but the field was closed, ringed by temporary fences, with preparations under way for a crane soon to drop one of the shipped-in modular buildings on the site. Security reports had been written in the 24 hours before warning of a likely demonstration. Some of the Tamils had been meeting alone, the Palestinians too. Tension had then built all Friday as the asylum seekers made clear they wanted to march down from their camp, high in Nauru's phosphate fields, to the airport by the coast. At least two of the men cut their arms or chest to draw attention to their plight. But for most of the asylum seekers it was meant to be a peaceful protest about the long delays and lack of transparency around processing their refugee claims. In the 10-months since Nauru's detention centre had opened again, not one determination had been made. Aware there had been trouble before - in September, soon after the camp opened, when a smaller riot caused $25,000 damage - all the Australian immigration officials, Salvation Army workers, local kitchen hands, medical and administration staff had evacuated earlier in the afternoon. Only about 40 guards and a couple of negotiators remained with more than 500 detainees, who began to crowd at the back side of the recreation centre. "Close Nau-ru," they chanted, pushing forward at the temporary fences used on building sites. This was Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims, so threats to withhold meal privileges meant little to many of the men. At some point, the fence collapsed and a large group of asylum seekers bolted around the left side of the recreation centre and towards Charlie Two Post. Nauru's government, only a few weeks in office, wanted to take a hardline stance and stop the protesters leaving the camp. The Australian police chief Richard Britten was not convinced he had such authority. The asylum seekers would not be committing any crime on Nauru by marching - at best, they would be breaching their visa requirements that requires them to remain at the camp except in case of emergency or on organised excursion, such as being taken down to the harbour for a swim. Britten went to the camp with two senior officers and tried to calm things down. He could not be contacted for this article, but it is understood he considered a less confrontational approach would be to just let the march go ahead with escorts - after all, on Nauru, it is not like anyone can run. Yet unknown to Britten, at that moment David Adeang called a cabinet meeting, incensed at the prospect of asylum seekers on the loose. Britten was stood down and Kalinda Blake, a 33-year-old Nauran superintendent of support, was suddenly designated police commissioner with orders to stop them leaving the centre. Blake was already outside the camp with the riot squad. For what seemed a long while the noise of the protest could be heard but she couldn't see the asylum seekers. Then at 7.47pm and there came a din thick with shouts and clattering of rocks on police shields. Inside the camp the guards had retreated to the recreation centre, a split two-storey building with a verandah running around the outside and middle, giving them a vantage point. A large number of asylum seekers had not joined the protest and were now milling around their accommodation blocks. Groups of the rioters ran back and forth, shirts wrapped around their faces, collecting missiles and attempting to sabotage the diesel generators and plunge the camp into darkness. The office of Transfield, the company contracted to run the centre, was the first building set alight. More followed - the kitchen and newly opened dining hall, medical clinic and eight accommodation blocks, estimated housing for 650. A Nauruan teenager, Detroit, saw the flash and dull thud of exploding gas bottles from a nearby peak. Back at Charlie Two Post, stolen fire extinguishers were sprayed at the police - the suffocating carbon dioxide almost breaking the line. The press of bodies came again and again, testing the men and nine women behind the shields. Blake had about 20 extra officers on site behind the riot squad, plus the day shift guards who had returned, and insists she never asked for more help. But Adeang signed an order to create the Nauru Police Force Reserve, an extraordinary sweeping power for private security guards and "all other deputised" to respond to the riot. A text message was sent on the same system designed for tsunami warnings: Riot at RPC, Public has 2 be aware & take safety precaution, also requesting males willing/able 2 volunteer & support report 2 the police station 2 be deputised. Eventually the rioters' resolve began to fade, perhaps realising just how much damage had been done. By 10pm, the guards at the recreation centre slipped behind the burning mess hall to the right and circled around to Charlie Two Post. But they had a new challenge, to keep the crowd from tearing into the hand-cuffed men now sitting on the road or the other asylum seekers who took no part. Sprent Dabwido, the former Nauruan president, was among those who responded to the call up and is convinced the large turn-out brought the riot to an early close. So is Adeang, who has no regrets. Without asylum seeker processing it is hard to envisage a future for Nauru. There is little to show from a century of pumping rich phosphate supplies down long booms off the coast to waiting ships - other than battalions of exposed sun parched rocks in the interior, known as the Pinnacles. The hospital is broken down, like most infrastructure, and the children, once sent to the finest boarding schools in Australia on fully-paid scholarships, now increasingly speak with a Fijian inflection picked up in cheaper education off island. Asylum seeker processing is the lifeline Nauru clings too - a perverse incentive to hope the boats keep coming. But there is no pretending the issue is easy for the tiny community. At least one asylum seeker not involved in the fighting was punched and had stitches thanks to the crowd. By 11pm a head count matched every guard and asylum seeker, and the fires began to die down. "God's will first" the inscription read underneath the coat of arms in Nauru's courthouse. Two weeks later and six men are on the wooden pews before the resident magistrate - an aptly named Australian, Peter Law. Presented with the last of the 119 men to be so far charged, he explains there is a presumption in favour of bail in Nauru, and waits while Tamil and then Sudanese Arabic translators relay the words. His Worship wants the men to understand this is an open court. Justice might have been meted out differently in their homeland but here the public, media, anyone can see the process. He explains the trial might not begin until November. He understands they have been crowded 11 to 14 a cell this past fortnight, with only a small yard and not able to change clothing. But as soon as there is a proper place for them to stay, he will release them back to the camp. While the magistrate speaks and the translators translate, one young man on the pews rubs his chest and looks pained. He rocks back and forth and a burly Nauru policeman puts a hand on the slender man's shoulder in a gesture to check he is OK. He looks pale, like he might vomit and breathes hard. He might have eaten something sour at the prison. Or just realised the new home he crossed oceans to find has already arrived.