As the saying goes, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that testing atomic bombs on people was a crime, not unlike the recent Boeing revelations. Even today, not a lot of Australians are fully aware of what was done to them and their country in the 1950s and 1960s.
When the British could no longer work on the atomic bomb with the USA, they cast around for somewhere to test their explosives. Scotland and Canada were suggested but South Australia was selected because it was a colony and ‘there was no-one in the desert’.
Only they were wrong.
Aboriginal people in the 1950s were nomadic or semi-nomadic. The areas used for numerous tests at Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia were traditionally used as hunting grounds, burial sites and regular traversal to visit relatives. Walter McDougall was given the job of monitoring the enormous site and initially wasn’t provided with either a car or a radio by the British. It was impossible to safeguard Aboriginal people walking about, especially as fencing bore signs in ENGLISH about radioactivity. Some Aboriginal people avoided white men while others hadn’t seen white men.
Australian and British servicemen and civilian workers on the sites had to sign the Official Secrets Act. They weren’t allowed to talk to each other about what they observed or keep…
