Changing Controversy Over the British-Australian Nuclear Testing Program at
Maralinga and Montebello Islands.
By Zachary Weavers
Student ID: 996894
Tutor: Dr Henry Reese
Why was Britain’s nuclear testing program in Australia so controversial and how has the Australian
public changed its perception of it over time?
Australia and Britain’s nuclear testing program had disastrous consequences for the
Indigenous Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Anangu peoples, Australian servicemen involved in
the program and the environment. Since it was first announced in 1946, nuclear testing has been
controversial, particularly during the McClelland Royal Commission in the 1980’s. However, as the
bombs were being tested, there was hardly any public criticism of the testing due to government
secrecy and Cold War paranoia. Unique to world history, Britain was able to convince the
Australian government into using atomic weapons on its own land at Montebello Islands and
Maralinga. The Australian government, military and science establishments were happy to oblige
Britain in the context of Cold War anxiety. The two governments successfully mobilised colonial
ideology to justify the bombing of Indigenous land and people to the public. Only through
persistent activism and the experiences of white Australian servicemen did the media finally
investigate the human and environmental tragedy at Maralinga. Australia’s understanding of
nuclear testing on its own soil demonstrates the staying power of colonial ideology and Cold War
thinking as both governments controlled the narrative of testing for over thirty years. However,
nuclear testing in Australia also demonstrates the importance of continued, inter-generational
activism as well as investigative journalism in bringing about change.
Following World War Two, Britain desperately wanted to remain a global power and saw
nuclear weapons as insurance against the Soviet Union. In 1946 it was excluded from sharing
scientific knowledge regarding atomic weapons with the United States, and quickly moved to
1
exert its influence over its former colony Australia and set up a testing range.1 In 1946, Australian
Minister for Defence John Dedman announced that this would be conducted in Central Australia
on an Aboriginal reserve.2 The announcement joined a diverse coalition of activist groups together
to resist the program, including the Australian Aboriginal Committee, humanitarian, pacifist,
missionary, union and feminist groups.3 From 1946 to 1947 this coalition called itself the Rocket
Range Protest Committee and was highly active, collecting over 10 000 signatures in South
Australia and organising protests in multiple cities.4 Due to the presence of church groups and
white feminists, the movement was fairly well publicised.5
However, appeals to the safety and well-being of Indigenous people in the area had little
sway over the Australian government. British Prime Minister Attlee obfuscated all responsibility at
the time, saying ‘the welfare of Aborigines was a matter for Australia’ and Minister Dedman saw
this as a non-issue as ‘the probability of missiles falling on aborigines in the reserve [is] extremely
remote … [because] the area is vast and the average density of the population is probably about
one native in every 50 to 100 square miles.’6 This demonstrates that those in power not only did
not plan to warn the Indigenous population of testing on their land but had limited understanding
of their numbers and accepted leaving their lives up to chance. The colonial mindset was alive
and well at this time as social Darwinian racial ideas met Cold War technology. For example, an
article from the Australian Worker in 1947 celebrated the ‘immense possibilities’ of ‘the new
Atomic Age’ and expressed pride in the fact that ‘the secret is still in Anglo-Saxon hands’.7
Atomic weaponry was thought of as a way to preserve the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon race in
a new world order. So while resistance to the rocket range was successful in gaining the support
of at least one parliamentarian, all it managed to achieve politically was to move the testing site to
a different area - one that was still occupied by Indigenous people.8
1
JD Mittmann, “Maralinga: Aboriginal Poison Country,” Agora, 52, no.3 (Sep 2017): 26.
Catherine Speck, “Thunder Raining Poison: The Lineage of Protest Against Mid-Century British Nuclear
Bomb Tests in Central Australia,” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Art 20, No. 1 (2020) 70.
2
3
Ibid, 71.
4
Ibid, 71.
5
Ibid, 71.
6
Ibid, 72.
7
“Possibilities of the New Atomic Age,” The Australian Worker, May 14, 1947.
8
Speck, “Thunder Raining Poison,” 72.
2
Once testing had begun, the British mobilised Cold War anxiety to keep the nature and
extent of nuclear testing a secret and for the most part, had the Australian government and media
in its control. Because of lingering loyalty to Britain, particularly under conservative Prime Minister
Menzies, nuclear testing in Australia was the only time in history a country willingly sold its
uranium to a foreign power and agreed to have its own land bombed.9 In the era of McCarthyist
paranoia, Cold War anxiety quickly dismissed criticism as ‘local communists want[ing] to
sabotage rocket testing in Australia for Soviet Ends’.10 Once testing had started, the problem
became worse as British and Australian governments exercised tight control of media depictions
of the event and maintained secrecy over the project. The first test at Montebello islands showed
no regard for the safety of Australian servicemen who were allowed to roam the radioactive site in
shorts and thongs while British scientists wore protective suits.11 Little information was provided
to these servicemen about the dangers of radioactivity. For example, pilots were told to dispose
of any contaminated boots, clothes and pieces of aircraft that they used to fly over the site and
their safety advice was to avoid conceiving any children for the next month.12 Whistleblowers
faced up to thirty years in jail or even the firing squad if they were to go public with this
information due to servicemen being forced to sign the Secrets Act.13 Similarly, up to 15 000
hospital files and other documents relating to the victims of the testing disappeared during the
many years before the McClelland Royal Commission in 1984 and over 600 plutonium tests were
conducted in secret over the program’s 11 years.14
With external political scrutiny already sidelined in the 1940’s and internal scrutiny being
maintained by the Secrets Act, media was controlled in order to keep the obvious flaws of the
testing program hidden from the Australian public. Defence notices provided guidelines for the
media to self-censor itself when reporting on the testing.15 The Australian media was more than
willing to do so in order to gain access to the bombing as this was bound to excite the general
9
Australian Atomic Confessions, directed by Gregory Young and Kathy Aigner, (2005; NFSA) DVD.
10
“Possibilities of the New Atomic Age.”
11
Australian Atomic Confessions.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
Elizabeth Tynan, “Maralinga and the Journalists: Covering the Bomb Tests Over Generations,” Pedagogy
Topics 38, no.1 (2011), 132.
15
3
reader. This created a media environment where journalists would not criticise the government as
they would lose access or be persecuted as communist sympathisers. For example, The Sun in
1952 reported on an interview with Chief British scientist Sir Ernest Titterton and demonstrated a
complete inability to ask critical questions.16 Interviewer William Bissell said ‘the interview was like
a university lecture, with me as a class of one’ and described Titterton as ‘speaking with machinelike precision, and almost as rapidly as a machine-gun.’17 Completely raptured with the
opportunity to speak to Titterton, Bissell’s colourful description of him portrays a rosy image of
the testing and of Titterton himself. Similarly, the article refuses to be critical of nuclear
technology, only briefly mentioning the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were ‘horribly
mutilated’ but insists that Australians ‘need not worry about being affected by dangerous
radiations’.18 With access to testing sites controlled by the AFP, the public’s only engagement with
the tests were through controlled media encounters such as these. Combined with a lack of
scientific literacy among media practitioners, these dangerous, highly secretive experiments went
by with no serious, critical media coverage until the late 1970’s.19
This is especially shocking considering public perception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the
time. Many in Australia wanted nothing to do with the horrors that could be inflicted upon other
human beings by atomic weaponry, yet had little understanding of what was taking place at
home.20 From 1958 to 1959 the Hiroshima Panels exhibition toured Australia, receiving nationwide praise and were hailed as ‘one of the major artworks of our generation’ and the best
depiction of war ‘since Goya’.21 Despite immense praise for the exhibit, very few people drew the
connection between what had happened in Japan in 1945 and what the Australian government
was allowing Britain to do on its own soil. The non-controversy of Maralinga and Montebello at
the time speaks to the true power of media control exercised during this time.
Yet the cost of nuclear testing on Indigenous peoples was immense. In line with the
concept of Terra Nullius, the land of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Anangu people was
16
“An Atom Bomb is Simple - In Theory,” The Sun, October 3, 1952.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Tynan, "Maralinga and the Journalists,” 132.
20
Speck, “Thunder Raining Poison,” 76.
“Hiroshima Panels Come to Australia,” Tribune, March 5, 1958; “What People Are Doing,” The Canberra
Times, February 17, 1959.
21
4
publicly declared empty, despite British and Australian governments knowledge of Indigenous
peoples inhabiting the area. The McClelland Royal Commission concluded that ‘if aborigines
weren’t injured or killed by the explosions, this was due to chance and not management or
resources allocated to their safety’.22 However, the Indigenous that were “looked after” suffered
immensely under the assimilation policies of the time. For example, under the Ooldea area’s
status as an aboriginal reserve was removed and its people were forcefully relocated into Yalata
and Koonibba land near the sea.23 This process not only dumped Indigenous people into an alien
land they had little understanding of how to survive in, but it forcefully separated families.24
Anangu women would later described the difficulty of living in this strange land of ‘grey powdery
limestone’ and struggling with the shortage of bush tucker due to sheep grazing.25
However, many nomadic indigenous peoples were left behind to face the destruction of
nuclear testing and had only one native patrol officer, Walter MacDougall, sent to warn them.26
MacDougall had the impossible task of not only warning and convincing indigenous people in the
territory to leave their land for a threat that was unimaginable to these people, but he had to
locate and control the movements of people inhabiting an area of several hundreds of thousands
of square miles.27 When MacDougall threatened to go to the public and warn of the potential harm
to these groups, he faced disciplinary action as Chief Scientist Alan Abutment was astonished
that he would dare ‘plac[e] the affairs of natives above those of the British Commonwealth of
Nations.’28 Those who were not relocated or warned of the testing faced serious health
consequences. The ‘Black Mist’ - a name for the cloud of radioactive debris that swept through
the land, caused many to face decades of miscarriages, cancers and other serious health
problems over the coming decades, resulting in deaths, inter-generational trauma and suffering.29
One extraordinary example was the Milpuddie family, who lived undisturbed in a highly
22
Mittmann, “Maralinga: Aboriginal Poison Country,” 29.
23
Ibid, 30.
24
Speck, “Thunder Raining Poison,” 76.
25
Ibid, 76.
26
Mittmann, “Maralinga: Aboriginal Poison Country,” 29.
WH Edwards, “Walter Batchelor (1907-1976),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, published 2000, http://
adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macdougall-walter-batchelor-10944.
27
28
Mittmann, “Maralinga: Aboriginal Poison Country,” 29.
29
Ibid, 27-28.
5
contaminated area for over seven months, hunting the easy to catch rabbits that were blinded by
the atomic flash and suffered intense health problems as a result.30 While resources were put
towards controlling the media and pushing the narrative that this was a highly professional,
scientific endeavour, there was little attempt to investigate or monitor the effects on human health
of toxic fallout and residues.31 Meteorological advice was also ignored despite the knowledge that
a plume of radioactive smoke and particles would drift directly over the known communities of
Aboriginal Australians at Mintabie, Wallantina and Welbourne Hill.32 In fact, fallout from the tests
had such a reach that it was detected as far as New Zealand, effecting communities along the
way.33
Overall nuclear testing in Australia was a confused, dangerous and hastily put together
catastrophe that was highly traumatic to the many Indigenous communities who lost loved ones
and faced inter-generational health problems. In 1980, previously mentioned Sir Ernest Titterton
would go on ABC radio to say ‘the black people’ were well looked after and that any talk of the
‘Black Mist’ was nothing but a ‘scare campaign’.34 For Yankunytjatjara elder and activist Yami
Lester, a man blinded by the atomic flash and whose hospital records had gone missing, this was
infuriating to hear.35 According to investigate journalist Frank Walker the harm was deliberate, as
the British agenda was to observe the effects of radiation on the Australian population.36 It’s
important to remember this could not have been achieved without the ideology of colonisation.
Ideas of assimilation and Terra Nullius allowed settler society to declare the land empty and justify
forceful relocation and family separation. Therefore, it was in fact necessary for the tests to be on
Indigenous land because the British and Australian government’s knew they could mobilise these
ideas and avoid public scrutiny.
Eventually however, what was considered by many in European Australia as a noncontroversy came under a Royal Commission and intense investigative journalism from the late
30
Ibid, 28.
Heather Goodall, “Colonialism and Catastrophe: Contested Memories of Nuclear Testing and Measles
Epidemics at Ernabella,” in Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, eds. Kate Darian-Smith and
Paula Hamilton, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 58-59.
31
32
Ibid, 55-57.
33
Australian Atomic Confessions.
34
Mittmann, “Maralinga: Aboriginal Poison Country,” 28.
35
Ibid, 29.
36
Speck, “Thunder Raining Poison,” 76.
6
1970’s into the 1990’s. This was because of continued activism from Anangu people such as Yami
Lester who refused to be silent despite linguistic, geographical and political barriers to their
success, and played a major role in the decision of the Bob Hawke Government’s decision to
conduct a Royal Commission.37 But, as is often the case, the suffering of white Australians was
what really caught the media’s attention and created the journalistic interest in the human cost of
nuclear testing. Radiation-induced health problems such as cancer and birth defects like
miscarriages, still births and deformities effected over 17% of servicemen at Maralinga from 1952
to 1958 and they sought recognition under the Veterans Entitlement Act.38 Anangu elders travelled
to London, carrying a tin of soil from Maralinga to seek compensation from Britain and after
continuous lobbying in Australia was also able to get the Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act
passed in 1984, taking back roughly 76 000 square kilometres of land.39 Yet it is clear that white
servicemen saw far greater media representation and economic compensation than Indigenous
people. One 1988 Canberra Times article tells the story of Mr Rick Johnstone, a serviceman who
was discharged for health reasons and received no repatriation benefits despite developing
radiation sickness, resulting in anxiety neurosis, panic attacks and agoraphobia.40 While he and
other servicemen saw considerable monetary compensation it still took him thirteen years to get
to court and the harm had already been done.41
While efforts were made to clean the Maralinga area of its nuclear contamination with
reluctant support from Britain, the controversy did not go away following the 1984 Royal
Commission. Instead, nuclear waste continued to be dumped in Maralinga from Sydney’s Lucas
Heights facility until as recently as 2012.42 Moving nuclear waste such long distances is not done
anywhere else in the world. On top of this, investigative journalism only managed to uncover the
secret Vixen B program, which consisted of over 600 highly toxic plutonium dumps in 1993 and
these had the most severe environmental impact.43 Today, radioactive plutonium in Maralinga soil
37
Goodall, “Colonialism and Catastrophe,” 59.
38
Australian Atomic Confessions.
39
Mittmann, “Maralinga: Aboriginal Poison Country,” 31.
40
“Nuclear Testing: Govt Faces Costs,” The Canberra Times, December 23, 1988.
41
Ibid.
Michele Madigan, “The Nuclear Fight: Then and Now,” Eureka Street, 30, no. 11 (May 2020): 27;
Australian Atomic Confessions.
42
43
Tynan, “Maralinga and the Journalists,” 131-132.
7
has been dispersed and incorporated into the soil profile and food chain, with continuing
environmental and human consequences to this day.44 Therefore, despite Australian media
discontinuing the story, the environment and people of the area continue to suffer from the testing
that occurred decades earlier.
Nuclear testing in Australia demonstrates the power dynamics that influence what is
considered a controversy and what is not. If the right ideological narratives are mobilised and
disciplinary action is used effectively, governments can exercise tight control over public
perception and get away with policies that cause immense trauma and suffering. But Australian
nuclear testing also reveals the importance of inter-generational activism and investigative
journalism to keep these controversies alive and achieve change.
Johansen et al, “Plutonium in wildlife and soils at the Maralinga legacy site: persistence over decadal time
scales,” Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 131, (May 2014), 74.
44
8
References List
Australian Atomic Confessions. Directed by Gregory Young and Kathy Aigner. 2005; NFSA, DVD.
Edwards, WH. “Walter Batchelor (1907-1976).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. Published first
in hardcopy 2000, accessed October, 2020, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macdougall-walterbatchelor-10944.
Goodall, Heather. “Colonialism and Catastrophe: Contested Memories of Nuclear Testing and
Measles Epidemics at Ernabella.” In Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, edited by
Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton, 55-76, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Johansen, MP, DP Child, E Davis, C Doering, JJ Harrison, MAC Hotchkis, TE Payne, S Thiruvoth,
JR Twining, and MD Wood. “Plutonium in wildlife and soils at the Maralinga legacy site:
persistence over decadal time scales.” Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 131, (May 2014)
72-80.
Madigan, Michele. “The Nuclear Fight: Then and Now.” Eureka Street, 30, no. 11 (May 2020):
26-28.
Mittmann, JD. “Maralinga: Aboriginal Poison Country.” Agora, 52, no. 3 (Sep 2017): 25-31.
Speck, Catherine. “Thunder Raining Poison: The Lineage of Protest Against Mid-Century British
Nuclear Bomb Tests in Central Australia.” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Art 20, No. 1
(2020) 68-89.
Tynan, Elizabeth. “Maralinga and the Journalists: Covering the Bomb Tests Over Generations.”
Pedagogy Topics 38, no. 1 (2011) 131-145.
9