‘National heroes not national villains’:
South Australia and the atomic age
Bernard O’Neil1
Searching for uranium towards the end of the Second World War brought South
Australia into the atomic age and created ambitions about being a nuclear state. There
were three dimensions to these aspirations. Firstly, the uranium mining which is the
focus of this chapter, nuclear power which was speculated about but which was a
remote prospect given the small population and the high cost involved in producing
nuclear energy, and thirdly the atomic tests which the state government facilitated in
accordance with commonwealth government directions. In the context of the Playford
era the focus on a nuclear state seemed extremely important in terms of defence,
political and industrial considerations. It was essentially using a small mine and some
prospecting to give South Australia an entree to the world stage.
Premier Tom Playford, one of the most active proponents of the uranium search, saw
the metallic mineral as another element in his broad campaign to modernise the state
rapidly.2 Uranium had both a military purpose (for atomic weapons and defence
requirements) and an expected peace-time use for energy, including the generation of
electricity. The general views on uranium and the atomic age were positive at this
time: the uranium industry comprised ‘national heroes not national villains’.
Supplying uranium sustained Australia's place in the western alliance in the post-war
climate. Not all people endorsed the nuclear option nor the state’s involvement in the
nuclear fuel cycle but the voices of protest were not yet effective.
The Radium Hill Project, which was a substantial employer of post-war migrants, was
a short-lived, small uranium mining venture. But it stands as the highlight in
Playford’s attempts to make South Australia a nuclear state. At a Thanksgiving Day
luncheon in the Adelaide Town Hall on 25 November 1954, during the visit of a
United States Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, the US Ambassador,
Amos Peaslee, commented that uranium developments in South Australia were
‘indelibly associated’ with Playford and his Minister of Mines, Sir Lyell McEwin:
I venture to predict that their names will go down in history along with those of
other pioneers in the exciting adventure of harnessing the mighty forces of
natural power. In America we have a jingle, ‘Benjamin Franklin discovered the
spark which Edison discovered would light up the dark’. Some of your song
writers can work on that idea for Premier Thomas Playford and Sir Lyell
McEwin.3
The search throughout the country for uranium to fuel the widely forecast atomic age
was supported by the commonwealth government, which allowed explorers taxation
concessions and guaranteed prices, as well as relaxed controls in the uranium
industry.4 The discoveries at Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory in late 1949
(formally opened by Prime Minister Robert Menzies on 17 September 1954) and
Mary Kathleen near Mount Isa in Queensland in July 1954 provided competitors for
Radium Hill.
South Australia’s early uranium industry
The discovery of uranium in the Mount Lofty Ranges in 1890 began Australia’s
association with radioactive ores. Since 1906 investigations of such ores at Mount
Painter in the northern Flinders Ranges and Radium Hill near Olary en route to
Broken Hill resulted in cursory developments, including the Australian Radium
Corporation erecting a treatment plant and refinery at Dry Creek in 1926.5 These ores
– radium, thorium and uranium – had medical as well as scientific and industrial
applications. The medicinal benefit of radioactive treatment was promoted at Paralana
Hot Springs, a private sanatorium which began operating near Mount Painter in the
1920s, where patients and guests bathed in the thermal springs of naturally occurring
radium. The resort folded during the depression and an attempt to reopen it for tourist
purposes after the Second World War was unsuccessful.6
The British government cabled the South Australian government in 1929 for
information about sources of radium and their potential for exploitation. Government
Geologist and Director of Mines Keith Ward reported that the Mount Painter radium
and uranium was more promising than ore at Minerva Heights near Copley, where
British financiers wanted to search in 1930. But they did not proceed. In 1934 the
Australian Radium Corporation abandoned its leases at Mount Painter. The field
remained dormant until 1940 when the Australian Mining and Smelting Company
took up a special mining lease but the problems involved in treating the ore could not
be overcome and the company surrendered the lease in 1944.
In May that year the British government requested the commonwealth government to
undertake an intensive re-examination of Mount Painter as uranium was needed for
atomic bombs for the Allied forces. Mount Painter and Radium Hill were two of the
world’s known workable deposits, the others being in South Africa and Canada.
Urgency was evident: the South Australian Department of Mines and the
Commonwealth Mineral Resources Survey began to survey the deposits in June.7
Despite war-time manpower shortages, from July 1944 the Royal Australian Air
Force (RAAF) compiled aerial maps and an Army survey team produced
topographical contour maps of the area. Playford acknowledged the investigation for
rare minerals but he told parliament that he could not announce the progress.8
The ‘Mount Painter Project’ had a high priority as a munitions project of national
importance,9 and Ward's successor, Ben Dickinson, was granted access to all state and
commonwealth government departments and the Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research. Sir David Rivett from the Council in Melbourne provided staff with
appropriate knowledge in the mineralisation and processing of uranium.10 Geologist
Reg Sprigg joined the Mines Department from the Council’s Soils Division in 1944 to
map the Mount Painter area. He organised preliminary underground work and the
department’s Mining Division cleaned out the old shafts. Secrecy was an issue but
was not always adhered to: Chief Inspector of Mines Bert Armstrong and
anthropologist Charles Mountford once filmed some of these preliminary activities.11
The search at Mount Painter was difficult work in rough terrain. Most of the area was
inaccessible to motor vehicles: camels were used to transport materials and
equipment. Only several small, low-grade deposits were detected by 1945.
Meanwhile, the Allies secured other sources of uranium for their atomic bomb
program.
At nearby East Painter the department conducted geological mapping, drilled
exploratory holes, sank shallow shafts in 1945, and drove five adits in 1946. But by
August 1949 the facilities in the primitive camp were being moved to Radium Hill
where investigations had recommenced in 1947. Work ceased at East Painter by 1950
because the large lode of uranium was too low-grade to develop. During the
parliamentary estimates debates that year Playford justified a proposed £140,455
increase in funding for uranium research on the ground that as other countries
jealously guarded their information on uranium South Australia would need its own
investigations.12
The limited, but growing, overseas demand for uranium for nuclear experiments and
the emerging atomic power industry led to a reassessment of the prospects of Radium
Hill providing a sufficient quantity and grade of ore. No more than a bulge on the
skyline, Radium Hill was situated in desolate terrain 460 km northeast of Adelaide
and 110 km southwest of Broken Hill. The outcropping ore was obvious: ‘You could
walk along the surface of the desert and see very clearly outlined a couple of lodes
and one main lode ... The minerals which contained the uranium were sticking out in
the quartz and felspar quite clearly’.13 First the department dewatered the old mine,
sampled those workings, and undertook drilling, sinking and cross-cutting.
By 1949 there were signs of a deposit worth developing. Playford sought to make
something of this opportunity.
State control
Uranium’s special status was enshrined in legislation. In November 1945 the state
took control of the mining, treatment and use of radioactive minerals and vested
ownership of these minerals in the Crown. Uranium or thorium discoveries had to be
reported to the Minister of Mines. No person was allowed to possess, use, sell or
dispose of radioactive ores without a licence. Minister McEwin justified the decision
on the grounds that the growing use of uranium for military purposes and its
suitability for peaceful purposes meant that the government should retain control over
it for the production of energy.14
State legislation authorising uranium mining at Radium Hill followed a High Court
decision that a statutory authority and parliamentary funding were necessary.15 The
Uranium Mining Act 1949 empowered the Minister of Mines to open and work mines
for the mining and treatment of uranium ore, to store, use, sell or dispose of any
uranium or its by-products and to acquire any property, compulsorily by purchase,
and construct any works and buildings for that purpose. But the minister could not sell
or dispose of uranium without first consulting the prime minister.
A 1951 amendment to the Uranium Mining Act exempted the opening and working of
uranium mines and treatment plants from public scrutiny.16 A further amendment in
1954 empowered the minister to employ staff for uranium work as required and
outside the provisions of the Public Service Act: public servants who were seconded
to uranium projects were also excluded from that Act.
In its anxiety to sell uranium on the world market, the government relaxed its policy
late in 1955. Amendments to the Mining Act 1930 enabled special mining leases to be
awarded to approved mining companies to undertake uranium exploration over wide
areas, rewards to be paid for discoveries and the deposits to be worked under uranium
and thorium mining leases.17 Prospectors and small and large companies were
permitted to search for uranium ores and to participate in their treatment.18 But Crown
ownership was reasserted and the minister was designated the sole authority for the
purchase, sale, disposal or use of any uranium or thorium mined.
To empower the state atomically
In addition to solving the state’s power supply problems through Leigh Creek coal
and any oil and gas that might come from the state-sponsored petroleum searches then
about to unfold, Playford seized on the potential that uranium offered to fuel his
industrialisation ambitions. According to Dickinson, ‘Playford always reckoned that
once Leigh Creek had served its purpose we had to have another source of energy. He
believed in me and I believed strongly that uranium would be that source
eventually’.19 Playford's enthusiasm for atomic power was stimulated by the
optimistic predictions of scientists and world authorities such as Professors Kerr
Grant (Adelaide) and Mark Oliphant (Birmingham/Canberra).20 In October 1946
when Oliphant was visiting Canberra, McEwin wanted him to meet Playford to
discuss the issue.21 Oliphant subsequently made an official visit to Mount Painter.
The local newspapers frequently promoted the importance of uranium as an energy
source and praised the drive to develop the resource. For example, in reviewing
Playford’s budget in October 1951 the Advertiser felt that Radium Hill’s potential as
an energy supplier justified the proposed expenditure on its development.22 Geologist
Maud McBriar recalled that atomic power was not vilified among her scientific
colleagues, let alone in the community:
There were some of us, perhaps most of us, who deplored the use of the Abomb on Japan and felt very embarrassed about that and [were] totally opposed
to the military use of uranium and nuclear arms. But we did believe at that time
that there was a rosy future for uranium as an energy source.23
As another geologist, who was involved in the enterprise, put it:
Those were the days when uranium was something that we all wanted to find.
We were all pretty keen on seeing what we could do to improve the resource of
uranium for the state and the nation. It was a nice commodity to be working in
in those days.24
However, there was opposition in the community to atomic weapons. For example,
the South Australian Peace Council’s two-day peace conference in June 1950 was
preceded by a ‘Ban the atom bomb’ peace rally at Trades Hall with the Reverend
A.N. Dickie (Chairman of the Australian Peace Council) and Dr T. Kaiser (an atomic
specialist) as speakers.25 In 1957 during the Maralinga tests one young man daubed
the King William Street fence of Government House with anti-bomb slogans.26
Playford distinguished between the commonwealth government’s initial interest in
uranium for defence purposes and the state’s for fostering industrialisation. In keeping
with his general opposition to commonwealth intrusions into state affairs, he resisted
the commonwealth's attempts to control the work at Radium Hill. He staunchly
refused to give ground and once told Prime Minister Menzies, “ ‘Well Bob, I think
you might need something. It is going to cost you a lot of money if you want it. You
pay me just compensation and you can take over the rights ... just compensation, that
has got to be worked out before”.’27 That apparently was too complicated for
Menzies. Conversely, Playford was unsuccessful in his efforts to secure South
Australian control of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission and the first
Australian nuclear reactor: these were established in 1953 in Sydney at Lucas
Heights.28
Australia’s participation in the atomic age and its subservience to British interests saw
the country involved in atomic bomb tests at Monte Bello Island off the northwestern
coast in 1952 and at Emu Field and Maralinga in northwestern South Australia.29
Public opposition, such as that over atomic testing and the protests of Dr Charles
Duguid and others over the treatment of the Aboriginal people during these tests and
the long-range weapons tests at Woomera, was not muted but it was largely ignored.
The blast at Emu Field on 15 October 1953 was the first atomic bomb test on the
Australian mainland. Testing began at Maralinga in 1956 and continued until 1963:
the site was abandoned in 1966. A cursory clean-up exercise was conducted in 1967,
which a Royal Commission in 1984–85 found to have been inappropriate and
ineffective.
Uranium prospecting
National support for the uranium search meant that commonwealth bodies such as the
Long Range Weapons Establishment and the Bureau of Mineral Resources
participated and the RAAF occasionally supplied aircraft for aerial work.30 In its
aerial prospecting programs the Mines Department used an American-made airborne
scintillometer, which detected a strong radioactive anomaly at Crockers Well in June
1951. Geologist Bruce Webb met Premier Playford when he inspected that operation:
We took him for a ride in the aircraft. Normally there was only room for two,
the operator of the scintillometer and the pilot. I crouched up the back alongside
the scintillometer with Tom in the passenger seat. We had an area where we had
found some radiation. We took Tom over to show him. He was so suspicious
that we were getting the response by twiddling the knobs that he turned around
frequently to make sure I was not playing with the knobs as we flew over the
ground!31
The department took every opportunity to encourage the uranium search, including
issuing prospectors handbooks in 1952 and 1954 and hiring out Geiger-Mueller
counters. A counter was part of a departmental display on the commonwealth jubilee
exhibition train which toured 66 South Australian country towns from late July 1951:
landholders and prospectors were invited to bring ores to the train for testing for
radioactivity.32
Radioactivity noted near the Houghton cemetery in the Adelaide Hills in 1950 led to
uranium discoveries at Houghton and Inglewood. Twins Paddy and Jim Cain found
more uranium at Mount Painter. The Wenham brothers detected pitchblende at
Myponga south of Adelaide in October 1953: in January 1954 they were awarded
£5,000 by the state government for their discovery. Other prospectors were not so
lucky: a £50 reward was made for a discovery at Kangaroo Creek.33 The government
mined the Myponga deposit for two years but the deposit was of little commercial
value.
After the Crockers Well discovery the department ran a more detailed survey over
several years. Prospecting north of Crockers Well in 1954 indicated the presence of
uranium at Mount Victoria, and mining in 1955 revealed a large ore body. Playford
was keen to sell the uranium from Crockers Well and Mount Victoria to the
Combined Development Agency (CDA, the United States and United Kingdom
governments’ uranium purchasing authority) in 1955 but the CDA considered the ore
was too low-grade.34
In 1954 three uranium deposits were discovered near Port Lincoln and other deposits
were located nearby. More uranium was detected in the Flinders Ranges: detailed
prospecting and drilling by the department intersected a narrow lode at Mount
Shanahan, and numerous smaller uranium deposits were noted by prospectors.
Although most of the discoveries were not economic to mine, they encouraged other
searches. But it was the work at Radium Hill which took South Australian uranium on
to the world stage.
The Radium Hill Project
A technical mission from the CDA, termed ‘Our Benevolent Dictators’ by Ben
Dickinson, visited Radium Hill in March 1952 and an agreement was signed in April
after a revision of the estimated capital and operating costs, including the preproduction capital for the research and development that had occurred already. While
en route to Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in June 1953, Playford, who had
promoted the state's uranium ventures in America in August 1951,35 again visited
America to discuss the sale of uranium and to learn more about uranium and oil
industry developments. Bruce Webb saw him finalising these negotiations in
Washington:
He had a book, a report on Radium Hill, pictures and pages and facts and
figures ... He sat down in the room with all these officials [from the United
States Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC)] and turned the pages and was
able to talk competently about all the things. These guys were so impressed that
a politician would take the trouble to find out all about these things that he got a
deal for South Australia that no-one else could have got in the same way. He
was a very, very good operator was Uncle Tom.36
In these tense times – the Korean War had commenced in June 1950 – the Americans,
on behalf of the CDA, complied with Playford’s requests. The Americans wanted a
long-term, secure supply. They were prepared to assist in exploration in South
Australia as well as contributing almost £4,000,000 for developing Radium Hill and
building a uranium treatment plant at Port Pirie. The wily Playford proved a tough
negotiator even in the international forum and in an agreement, which ‘must rank as
the easiest and most generous in the history of uranium negotiations’, secured the
highest price the Americans ever paid in the Cold War period: ‘By the end of the
agreed seven-year contract, the Americans must surely have regretted such
impetuosity’.37
Norton Jackson accompanied Playford to advise him on technical matters. He saw the
favourable reaction to Playford's submission:
The Americans were ... desperately looking for uranium to fuel their future
power generation projects ... Of all the places they had looked at with a new
uranium discovery they said this was the first where the process was in place
and the economics worked out. As one [US] colleague said to me, ‘Dished up
on a plate and ready to go’. That was a tremendous tribute to Playford’s vision
of the way he wanted to drive the state. Back then those of us in the uranium
industry were national heroes not national villains. We had no assured power in
South Australia. We could remember the days when we waited for the ships
coming up the Gulf from Newcastle to know whether we would have coal.
Playford had the vision to take us into the atomic energy age. He said, ‘We have
to get into the uranium school. There is only one way to get into it and that is to
buy your way in. There is only one sort of money that counts and that is
yellowcake’. So he lined up young engineers like myself, more or less saying
‘Get me 1,000 tons of yellowcake’. That is what we delivered.38
The Radium Hill Project was established as a branch of the Mines Department in
1953 with a committee, consisting of the Director of Mines, the Under-Treasurer, the
Auditor-General, an experienced private sector delegate and, from late 1953, the
Chief Executive of the Project, under the Minister of Mines. It was responsible for
budgeting, and organising and authorising the mining and chemical treatment of the
uranium ore. To ensure that the contract was met the Project became a total
government effort: ‘It was just like one big company, all the public service
departments pulling their weight to make it go. We directed everything to the
Project’.39 However, there was also some occasional resentment in the department
towards the Project because it was
shrouded in secrecy ... it was under the umbrella of the Director but had a
separate budget, separate accounting, separate record keeping, its own security
staff, everybody involved in it had to have a security clearance ... It was rather
looked on by departmental staff as a cuckoo in the nest.40
The department supplied the geological expertise and technical facilities for testing
but the mining staff were employed separately from the department.
The impetus of the uranium search had led to staff exchanges between the department
and the USAEC and to the appointment of numerous specialists, including
metallurgists to determine the method of concentrating the ore, chemical engineers to
extract uranium from the concentrate, and staff experienced in practical operations
and in planning and installing the operating plant. The department's Metallurgical
Branch experimented with ore concentration and dressing procedures at Thebarton,
and in November 1951 another pilot plant was constructed at Radium Hill. The
branch made material available for the chemical engineering pilot plant established at
Thebarton in October 1952 and designed and constructed the mill at Radium Hill to
the start-up stage. The branch achieved a world first in the flotation of uranium
minerals on a commercial basis, using a method similar to the flotation of titanium
and iron minerals.41 The department required hundreds of daily assays and tests and
the demand outgrew the Assay Laboratory’s analytical services at the School of
Mines and Industries. Hence the Geological Survey Laboratories, the precursor to the
modern Amdel, were formed to provide assay facilities.
Sulphuric acid leaching methods were adopted for treating the uranium. Sulphur was
in short supply in the post-war period and the department gave priority to the search
for pyrites which could be processed into sulphuric acid at Port Adelaide and Port
Pirie. Close investigation of pyrites deposits at Nairne revealed that the ore contained
high-grade sulphur and could be recovered relatively easily. Experimental work to test
the recovery process in a pilot plant by the department and the Broken Hill
Proprietary Company (BHP) led to the opening of the Nairne pyrites mine and the
expansion of the sulphuric acid plant at Port Adelaide. Acid from BHP’s Port Pirie
plant was supplied to the Port Pirie Uranium Treatment Plant.42
The mine expanded to full-scale operation in April 1954 when the testing phase
showed the mining and concentration processes were viable and costs could be
contained. The Radium Hill Mine was officially opened by Governor-General Sir
William Slim on 10 November 1954. The production of uranium oxide commenced at
Port Pirie in August 1955. The concentrate from the mine was railed to Port Pirie in
small bulk quantities for treatment by magnetic separation and heavy media
separation by flotation. From there it was shipped to either America or the United
Kingdom. By then Radium Hill had cost about £7,333,000 and the ongoing annual
expenditure was estimated at £2,500,000.43
At first Dickinson had been ‘loath to take on the Radium Hill Project’ because he
thought the department was ill-equipped to plan and manage it.44 He saw it as a
change of focus for the department from its ‘proper’ responsibility for exploration to
being responsible for mining operations. Nevertheless he was a keen proponent of the
need for South Australia to develop a nuclear power program. In 1955 he proposed
that the Project be severed from the department and placed under the control of a
commission or trust as in America and the United Kingdom. Although coal from
Leigh Creek was to become an integral part of the state’s energy supply, other
suitable coal deposits were not available, there was then no oil and gas industry on the
horizon and there were no sites for hydro-electric schemes. Nuclear power was seen
as the energy resource for the future. While the Playford government was responsive
to the concept, Dickinson's proposed authority to control Radium Hill and, by
extension, other uranium mining activities in the state was not adopted.
Living at Radium Hill
Radium Hill was in a dry, arid zone with extremes in temperatures, typically hot days
and cold nights. It was not paradise but it seemed like a promised land in terms of
work opportunities for many new migrants. With another of Playford's favourite
projects, Leigh Creek, it was the first of the new mining towns in Australia. Radium
Hill, however, was based on older concepts about mining towns:
The mine manager lived in the big house on the top of the hill and the senior
staff flanked it with various houses just slightly smaller in size, down to the
routine staff at the lower level and the daily paid staff all set up in an entirely
different segment of the town. It was a very class conscious town. In that way it
was not much fun to live in, as an ordinary kind of town would be. It was fairly
isolated. That meant you could not really escape the environment, the local
problems, gossip and that sort of thing too easily.45
In August 1948 Rennie Middleton was appointed clerk-in-charge at Radium Hill: he
also ran the office, bank and post office and was a Justice of the Peace. His wife and
three-year-old daughter shared this adventure, at a time when there were only two
other families and two other women in the town.46 The Middleton’s weatherboard
house had three bedrooms, a kitchen and lounge and was equipped with kerosene
fridge, stove and lamps, until a power generator supply, which closed down between
midnight and 6 a.m., was established in 1951. Food and other provisions arrived
weekly from Olary. Water, a perennial problem in the bush, was in erratic supply and
was pumped from a dam to a large storage tank near the town. Rosslyn Middleton
recalled:
To get a decent wash you would have to fill all the troughs up the night before
and put Epsom salts in the water so all the mud would sink to the bottom. You
would scoop all the water off the top to get some clean water to wash. Every
now and again the tank would run dry. You would have to wait for them to fill it
up before you would have any water.47
The Housing Trust designed the town and between 1949 and 1952 built 145 houses,
many prefabricated but some brick, and other buildings.48 While the town was under
construction the workers and miners lived in tents at the mine site. Married couples
rented premises and the single men were housed in staff quarters in the miners camp.
The population grew from approximately 200 late in 1951 to almost 1,000 by the end
of the decade, including about 800 working at the mine and about 300 single men.
Throughout its life Radium Hill remained very much a man's town and some job
applicants declined employment because their wives objected to living there.49 That
was not the case with the Bruff family who moved there early in 1952 after Gordon
Bruff responded to an advertisement in 1951:
I said to my wife, ‘How would you like to go and live at Radium Hill?’ She
said, ‘Yes, let’s go. Where is it?’ I made a visit to Radium Hill and I was rather
stunned at what I saw. The miners and other wages staff were living by the
mine. We went over in the evening to see it and they had perhaps a dozen
coppers with fires underneath them and water bubbling away in them and all
these guys standing around. I think everybody had a big beard. It looked like a
scene out of a wild west movie and I thought, ‘My God, what is my wife going
to think about this?’50
The semblance of civilisation came to the frontier town gradually: weekend picnics, a
bridge club, a butcher’s shop, an Australian Inland Mission hospital with Royal
Flying Doctor visits from Broken Hill, an area school, a Catholic church, a
community hall and branches of the Mothers’ and Babies’ Health Association and
Country Women’s Association. Films initially were screened one night a week at an
open-air cinema, but later they were shown more often. Sports included soccer,
cricket, Australian Rules football, tennis and golf. Gambling was a favoured pastime,
with a regular two-up game on Sundays at the camp.
Alongside sport and ‘the pictures’, beer drinking was the principal form of
entertainment. The Social Club ran the ‘wet’ canteen, constructed from two Nissen
huts, and consisting of a cold-room, general bar, lounge bar and a beer garden. By
policy, only beer (ale and stout) was sold in the canteen. Spirits and wines were
available privately in the town because it was believed that selling them in the same
establishment would cause problems in that predominantly male population.51 The
opening hours were limited: 11.00 a.m. until 4.30 p.m. on weekdays, 10.30 a.m. to
5.30 p.m. on Saturdays, and in the evenings from 7.00 p.m. to 9.00 p.m. Sunday
trading was not permitted, which was a sore point with some drinkers especially those
without refrigerators. Minister McEwin, who was also responsible for liquour
licensing, solved the problem in an inventive manner by arranging to have a window
put into the cold-room: beer bought on Saturday could be collected on Sunday when
the window would be opened once in the morning and for an hour or so in the
afternoon.52
As the mine moved from the development into the production phase, the Electricity
Trust installed a powerline to connect the town to a 240-volt power supply, and the
Engineering and Water Supply Department laid a pipeline from the Umberumberka
Reservoir, near Broken Hill, to establish a water supply to supplement the local wells,
dams and bores, the water carted from the Olary railway station and rainwater tanks.
Unlike other mining towns where concessions on power and water were made to staff,
at Radium Hill these were charged for on a consumption basis. Later arrivals
sometimes bemoaned the lack of facilities, whereas the early inhabitants who
remained saw it differently as ‘they had come from nothing to something’.53
Secrecy, ASIO and the Project
Following the various post-war spy scandals and defections overseas, an emphasis on
security at Radium Hill was understandable. The Australian Security Intelligence
Organisation (ASIO), formed in March 1949 with Justice Reed of the South
Australian Supreme Court as its inaugural head, was involved in security there.54 In
the prevailing world climate, and with heightened concern for commercial
considerations, Des O’Leary, the Security Officer appointed for the Mines
Department in 1952, apparently was responsible for implementing stringent security
procedures and reporting to a ‘national security organisation’. Some other staff were
believed to have been seconded from ASIO.55
ASIO was responding to British and American pressures. The British could be
demanding and the commonwealth government enforced strict security for ‘prohibited
areas’, such as Maralinga, Emu Field, Woomera and the Long Range Weapons
Establishment facilities, and at work places where ‘classified work’ was conducted:
an ‘Undertaking of Secrecy and an Oath of Allegiance to the British Monarch’ was
obligatory. The Americans also were insistent on imposing secrecy and security
provisions on the usually freewheeling Australians. Playford had to go along with
them or else risk losing their financial support.56 Although expressing concern at the
‘ridiculous security restrictions’,57 the Playford government complied with the
American demands as the Cold War continued to cast a chill over the world. This was
indeed a period of great paranoia, highlighted by the Menzies government’s
unsuccessful attempt to proscribe the Communist Party in 1950 and 1951, by the
defection of a Russian diplomat and secret agent, Vladimir Petrov, and his wife
Evdokiva, in April 1954 and by the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era in
America.58
As the authorities were concerned to vet many post-war European migrants, some of
whom had been ‘the enemy’ only a few years earlier, ASIO’s interests extended to
matters of employment. A lot of time and effort was spent on this:
even the most menial cook’s assistant had to be screened. They had to go
through screening processes and family investigations into their religious
background and so on. The whole of that security business was set up through
[O'Leary's] efforts, co-ordinated even with the commonwealth and our police. It
might have seemed a little bit overpowering but ... it was a normal procedure.59
Provisions of the Uranium Mining Act 1949 prevented employees from divulging
information acquired in the course of their work. A 1952 amendment set out the
secrecy provisions: anyone connected with uranium work had to take an oath; the
governor could declare prohibited areas; no person was permitted to possess any
sketch, photograph, plan, model, note or record of a prohibited area or to
communicate any information about the operation without authorisation; cameras
were banned, and persons entering, leaving or in prohibited areas could be searched
without a warrant being issued. Despite the existing political atmosphere, it all
seemed heavy-handed to many of those involved. Those alarmed at this trend
included the Advertiser’s normally conservative editor who protested over the severe
conditions when the bill was debated in parliament.60
An oath had not been a precondition of government employment previously.
Although none of the new employees in the department since 1952 had objected to
taking the ‘Oath of Faithful Service and Secrecy’, if asked to do so, it was not
enforced during the preliminary phase of the Project.61 When full-scale production
was about to commence, all staff (from the director down the professional ranks, the
clerical and administrative groups, through to the Geiger-Mueller counter operators
and the laboratory cleaners) were told to comply with the oath. 62 Even so, security
moved slowly at times. Prior to leaving the Project in September 1954, O'Leary
visited Radium Hill with his replacement. One of their tasks was to take oaths from
more than 40 people who had been nominated at the end of May: 13 months later
those oaths still had not been taken.63
Geologist Noel Hiern went to Radium Hill in 1953. During the final stages of
exploration with shafts being driven underground and diamond drilling on the surface
to define the ore body, he mapped, sampled and appraised the mineral content of the
mine, logged core, supervised the diamond drilling work, and designed new drilling
programs. Security meant he did more than a geologist's usual duties. Hiern, another
geologist and the tracer who drafted the plans were the only ones allowed to see
sample locations and assays combined:
samples would be prepared and go into the Geiger room [for] analysis ... the
head sampler would write up the physical details of where it came from and
what the width was and allocate a number. The Geiger room would give the
results but would never see the details of where the sample came from … It was
left to me to do the clerical work of entering up ledgers …64
The same applied to the diamond drill logs and cores. Fragmenting information and
restricting access were intended to keep the operation secret. It was hardly necessary
in such an isolated community where strangers were readily identified and there were
few trees for Russian spies to hide behind! In any case they could just as easily have
counted the number of trucks on each train on the Port Pirie-Broken Hill railway line
and collected samples of the concentrate for analysis and this would have told them
Radium Hill's production.65
Perhaps the level of security and secrecy was unnecessary, even for those times.
Geologist Lee Parkin recalled that O'Leary's security system relied on the ‘need to
know principle’. The professional staff tolerated this with some hilarity. The attitude
of those in charge of security was that it was all important but ‘with respect to Radium
Hill it reached the height of absurdity’.66 Parkin experienced that sense of overkill
when he tried to take his wife to Radium Hill:
I had been going up and down for years so I applied for permission to take her
up for a brief visit ... a security clearance involved filling out the essential form
… providing several referees. She filled out this form and I submitted it to
O’Leary. Later he called me in, in a kindly way which was a special security
mask, lit his pipe and discussed the proposal and then disclosed that he had a
problem: one of the referees was himself, he said, ‘a security risk’. The security
risk was our local minister, who had blotted his dossier by attending a peace
march in Sydney a year or so before. That was really hilarious because he was
such a kindly pleasant fellow who could not be a risk to anybody under any
circumstances. That is the way it went in those days.67
That case was not atypical of the rampant paranoia of those Cold War times when to
speak out or, worse, to demonstrate for peace was to declare one’s support for ‘the
enemy’. There was scarcely a real security risk:
The mine was so low-grade and the process was so well-established, the
statistics relating to it were of no particular value either to the Allied cause or to
any other cause. So in a way it was a gross overkill of a fairly minor project in
world terms.68
But it was not a minor project for either South Australia or the Mines Department.
Health and safety concerns
During Radium Hill's heyday there was an awareness of health and safety issues and
the measures adopted, though far less stringent than those applying now, were in
accordance with the standards of the day. The procedure for radon and radiation
sampling was unsophisticated:
you had a tyre pump and you had some cylinders, two-inch diameter cylinders,
and you pumped them up twice and let them down and then the third time you
pumped them up that was the sample. The idea of pumping them up twice was
to get out anything that was residual stuff from the previous sample. We used to
take them one day and they would be put on the plane and brought to town and I
would come down on the train the next day.69
Bert Armstrong chaired national Chief Inspectors of Mines conferences when the
mine was being developed. Through this role he helped to prepare codes of practice
for the uranium industry in line with the general world-wide standards for radiological
protection. Some of this work involved representatives from the Project. He also
represented the Chief Inspectors when the Radiological Advisory Committee was
being created.70
After atomic testing had commenced at Emu Field and Maralinga, an amended Health
Act established a six-person Radiological Advisory Committee, responsible to the
Minister of Health, to regulate and control all radioactive substances and irradiating
apparatus. The attitude of the Minister of Health, the ubiquitous Sir Lyell McEwin,
indicates some scepticism about the risks associated with uranium mining:
The problem with it being radioactive was known. I went up there and went
down the mine and everywhere else the fellows worked. They are digging up
figures now but I do not know whether anybody can prove whether cancer came
out of mining or out of the time they spent in the canteen.71
McEwin seemed similarly unconcerned about the occasional strike over pay or
working conditions, including health and safety issues, in the mine:
We had a strike or two but I do not think there was anything in them ... The men
were all earning big wages ... I do not think they had more than a week's strike
... When they would tell me, I would say, ‘I suppose they want a holiday and go
to Broken Hill instead of being out in the bush all the time’.72
Although basic precautions such as showering frequently, washing clothes regularly,
blood testing and dust monitoring had been implemented, doubts about health and
safety existed. The mining industry’s consideration of health matters was similar
throughout Australia when risks and uncertain outcomes, such as those associated
with the mining of asbestos at Wittenoom in Western Australia, were easily
minimised in the face of over-riding economic and defence priorities. Just as the
security provisions at Radium Hill seemed excessive to many of the workers, their
concerns over health and safety could be seen as too demanding. An early 1990s
empirical study of 2,574 people who had lived or been employed at Radium Hill
between 1948 and 1962 indicated significant increases in the risk of contracting lung
cancer in underground workers when compared with surface workers, particularly for
smokers. The risk doubled for every 26 months worked underground. This
disinterested research suggests that the risks were real and that the workers may have
been sacrificed for the state’s ends. However, the actual situation for the underground
miners, surface workers, laboratory personnel and the town’s residents remains to be
demonstrated.73
Under a death sentence
By 1960 doubts over the future of the mine were being voiced widely. With the
contract to supply the CDA due to expire on 31 December 1961, Dickinson's
successor as Director of Mines, Tom Barnes, travelled overseas from April to August
1961 primarily to appraise the world uranium situation and the implications for the
Project. He found there was no hope of the contract being extended and little
likelihood of developing new markets for the uranium as new mines and improved
refining techniques had made Radium Hill uncompetitive. The Project had run its
course.
In the final stages, in order to maximise production, mining was concentrated on the
remaining pockets of good ore. In the financial year before Radium Hill closed in
December 1961, 176,760 tonnes of ore, a record quantity, were raised.74 Economic
factors suggested that the mine would not reopen and so much of the plant and
equipment was sold throughout Australia and overseas. The Housing Trust transferred
many houses and buildings to Mount Gambier, Coober Pedy and other towns, and
some were sold to other departments or private interests.75 A skeleton staff maintained
the facilities at Port Pirie, which closed in February 1962, as it was hoped that the
plant could be used again for uranium treatment. A pilot plant was established there
for treating scandium oxide and other rare earth minerals from the uranium residues in
the tailings: in a short time sufficient scandium was produced to stock-pile for the
immediate world demands.
The government disposed of the heavy media tailings, rubble and other waste as
ballast on the Port Pirie–Broken Hill railway line when it was standardised by the
Commonwealth Railways in the mid 1960s, and the South Australian Railways used it
for ballast between Olary and Cockburn and elsewhere. The Highways and Local
Government Department also purchased mill tailings from 1957 onwards to use in
constructing and upgrading roads, including the Cockburn–Broken Hill road.76
When the mine and the treatment plant closed, contracts valued at almost £16,000,000
had been fulfilled. Nearly 1,000,000 tonnes of ore were mined in the seven years and
from this 850 tonnes of uranium oxide were extracted at Port Pirie.77 As testimony to
Playford's negotiating skills, the Project may well rank as one of the few government
mining ventures to operate without incurring a substantial financial loss.78
To the future
There was a revival of interest in uranium exploration locally in the mid 1960s
following successful searches for uranium in the Northern Territory and increasing
stock exchange activity, especially the improving outlook of the uranium market in
1965. As a result of its earlier work, the Mines Department was well placed to
respond to this. Company exploration and intensive drilling programs focused on the
deposits the department had identified at Crockers Well and Mount Painter: between
1967 and 1970 several companies leased an area around Mount Painter and East
Painter. However, the comprehensive prospecting and drilling activities resulted in
little more than estimating the ore reserves. A new phase of uranium exploration to
ascertain whether uranium deposits may have accumulated in the more recently
formed sedimentary basins now began. Largely due to the perspicacity of Playford
and McEwin, and their advisers in the department, some of the earliest aeromagnetic
surveys in Australia had been flown in South Australia in the 1950s. One outcome of
their support in this respect was the discovery of the massive Olympic Dam coppergold-uranium deposit on Roxby Downs Station in 1975. But through the 1970s and
into the 1980s the development of uranium deposits was curtailed by changing
circumstances in the political world. It was no longer so clear whether the promotion
of uranium mining was the work of heroes or of villains.
1
Further detailed information on Radium Hill is contained in my history of the South Australian
Department of Mines and Energy from 1944, Above and Below. I thank David Rich, Susan
Marsden and Alison Painter for reading this chapter in its draft form and for their helpful suggestions. I
especially thank my patient co-editors, Judith Raftery and Kerrie Round.
2
See the chapters by David Rich, Susan Marsden, Nic Klaassen and Carol Fort in Playford’s South
Australia.
3
Advertiser 26.11.1954
4
Alice Cawte, Atomic Australia 1944-1990, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1992, ch.5; R.M. Gibbs,
Bulls, Bears and Wildcats: a centenary history of the Stock Exchange of Adelaide, Peacock,
Norwood, 1988, p.342.
5
Bernard O’Neil, In Search of Mineral Wealth: the South Australian Geological Survey and
Department of Mines to 1944, Department of Mines & Energy [DME], Adelaide, 1982, pp.274-77.
Four companies mining radium ore at Radium Hill and Mount Painter during the 1920s – the Radium
and Rare Earths Treatment Company, the United Mount Painter Radium Company, the Mount Painter
Exploration, Radium Company and the Mount Painter Heights, Radium Syndicate – amalgamated in
1926 to form the Australian Radium Corporation. Register 25.5.1926; DME file SR[Security Register]
5/6/144 vol. l. Earlier companies included the Radium Extraction Company in 1914.
6
Advertiser 25.5.1946.
7
Australian Archives [AA] (SA) A877/2 Department of the Interior CL22740 Mount Painter aerial
survey 1944-45. See also DME 1944/433, 1944/512 and 1945/185; State Records SA [SRSA] GRG
24/6/354/1943.
8
South Australia Parliamentary Debates: House of Assembly [SAPD:HA] 28.9.1944. In a broadcast on
station 5AD on 16 May 1947, Playford commented that Mount Painter had been of only geological
interest for many years. However, he said, ‘Very early in the last war I received information that world
interest was being evinced in all uranium occurrences, and that this mineral might assume great
importance’.
9
AA (SA): B300/2; 8508 Mount Painter 1944-1968.
10
Interview with Sir Ben Dickinson 19.1.1990. [All interviews carried out by the author]. The
Council became the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in 1949.
11
Interview with Bert Armstrong 7.12.1989. Some films relating to Mount Painter and Radium
Hill are in Department of Mines records in State Records.
12
SAPD:HA 17.10.1950. Almost £43,500 was spent in the previous year.
13
Interview with Norton Jackson 16.10.1992.
14
SAPD:LC 16.10.1945
15
SAPD:HA T. Playford 23.8.1949.
16
In discussing the amendment the Labor Party member for the northern electorate of Stuart, Lin
Riches, indicated that bipartisan political support for uranium existed where developments
were in the people's interest rather than for the benefit of private enterprise. William MacGillivray
introduced a tone of caution to the debate and suggested that uranium might not be the solution to
the state’s power needs: his reading indicated that solar energy would supply cheap power within 50
years. SAPD:HA 4.10.1951.
17
SAPD:LC L. McEwin 12.10.1955.
18
Annual Report of the Director of Mines and Government Geologist, 1954, p.3.
19
Interview with Sir Ben Dickinson.
20
During the war Kerr Grant chaired the Scientific (Physics) Manpower Advisory Committee
among several other official posts. He was knighted in 1947, the same year that he attended the
ANZAAS Conference in Perth where he participated in a symposium on atomic energy. Australian
Dictionary of Biography, vol. 9.
21
SAPD:LC 8.10.1946.
22
Advertiser 12.10.1951.
23
Interview with Maud McBriar 30.9.1992.
24
Interview with Bruce Webb 16.10.1992.
25
Advertiser 22.6.1950 p.14.
26
Bernard O’Neil, Above and Below: the South Australian Department of Mines and Energy 1944 to
1994, DME, Adelaide, 1995, p.46.
27
Interview with Sir Ben Dickinson.
28
Advertiser 19.10.1954.
29
Other indicators of this attitude were the long-range weapons testing and rocketry
experiments at Woomera. See Peter Morton, Fire across the Desert: Woomera and the AngloAustralian Joint Project 1946-1980, AGPS, Canberra, 1989.
30
DME 1952/610, 1952/1357.
31
Interview with Bruce Webb.
32
Mail 21.7.1951; Advertiser 27.7.1951.
33
Advertiser 30.3.1954.
34
Cawte, p.85.
35
Advertiser 13.8.1951, see also 11 and 21.8.1951; News 10.8.1951; SAPD:HA 27.9.1951.
36
Interview with Bruce Webb.
37
Cawte, pp.47-48.
38
Interview with Norton Jackson.
39
Interview with Norton Jackson.
40
Interview with Lee Parkin 11.12.1989.
41
Interview with Norton Jackson.
42
Planning details are in SAPP71:1953 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works –Port
Pirie Uranium Treatment Plant Water Supply. As well as developing the Nairne pyrites project, the
Research and Development Branch's interest in barytes led to the design and installation of a barytes
plant at Quorn. Barytes was needed for heavy concentrate pro duction. At least 1,000 tons of
South Australian barytes went into the concrete shielding the atomic pile at Lucas Heights in
Sydney. (Interview with Norton Jackson.)
43
Annual Report of the Director of Mines and Government Geologist, 1955, p.32.
44
Interview with Sir Ben Dickinson.
45
Interview with Bruce Webb.
46
Interview with Rosslyn Middleton 12.10.1990.
47
Interview with Rosslyn Middleton.
48
Susan Marsden, Business, Charity and Sentiment: the South Australian Housing Trust 19361986, Wakefield, Adelaide, 1986, p.218.
49
DME 1950/550.
50
Interview with Gordon Bruff 22.10.1992.
51
Malcolm Harrington and Kevin Kakoschke (comps), We were Radium Hill, Malcolm Harrington,
Morphett Vale, 1991, p.7.1.
52
Interview with Sir Lyell McEwin 11.7.1980. McEwin was also Chief Secretary, with responsibility
for police and security matters, and Minister of Health.
53
Interview with Noel Hiern 15.8.1990.
54
Interview with Sir Ben Dickinson and subsequent information.
55
Interviews with Lee Parkin, Sir Ben Dickinson and Reg Sprigg 17.1.1990. This is difficult to verify
because ASIO’s policy was and is to refuse to confirm or deny the identities of its employees and
contacts. While O'Leary’s name does not appear on the published staff lists, he reported to Dickinson
and Colonel Spry, ASIO’s Director.
56
Interviews with Reg Sprigg and Bruce Webb.
57
Reg Sprigg diaries, 1.9.1952.
58
South Australia was not immune to the fear of communism. In the 1953 state election Elliott Johnston,
a communist, stood for the electorate of Eyre, which included Woomera, as a ‘non-Labor’ candidate.
Possibly many of the 550 electors who voted at the Woomera village polling booth presumed he was a
Liberal and Country League candidate because he received 107 votes there. So perturbed was O’Leary at
this result that he checked the figures at the two Radium Hill polling booths in the Senate election later
that year. He was probably relieved to report to Chief Secretary McEwin that of the 135 votes cast, the
Communist Party candidate received only two. DME SR 1/2/26.
59
Interview with Sir Ben Dickinson.
60
See, for example, Advertiser 18.8.1952.
61
DME SR1/2/37 D. O’Leary to S.B. Dickinson 9.4.1954.
62
DME SRI/2/37 O’Leary to Dickinson 2.5.1954.
63
DME SR1/2/37 O’Leary to Dickinson 27.8.1954, W.B. Skinner note 26.10.1955. Like O’Leary,
Skinner remains a shadowy figure.
64
Interview with Noel Hiern.
65
Interview with Noel Hiern.
66
Interview with Lee Parkin.
67
Interview with Lee Parkin.
68
Interview with Lee Parkin.
69
Interview with Ross Love 14.12.1989. Love, Assistant Battery Manager in the department, visited
Radium Hill in its latter days every three months or so.
70
Interview with Bert Armstrong. The Radiological Advisory Committee was established in 1956, with
particular regard for the atomic tests in South Australia.
71
Interview with Sir Lyell McEwin.
72
Interview with Sir Lyell McEwin.
73
Adelaide Research Digest 1993. The study was conducted by the Department of Community
Medicine at the University of Adelaide.
74
Annual Report of the Director of Mines and Government Geologist, 1960-61, p.45.
75
Marsden, pp.218-9.
76
DME Radium Hill Project file 1957/73.
77
O'Neil, Above and Below, p.xixx; Keith Johns, ‘Mineral exploration and development in SA: 18361991’ in Mineral Industry Quarterly, 64 p.29.
78
Interviews with Lee Parkin 11 and 18.12.1989.