Turner then handed them over to security, who ‘evacuated them from the area’. The Milpuddie story came to be known as the Pom Pom incident after the location where the father had been found.
The family must have arrived at Marcoo sometime after 6 pm the night before, when the health physics caravan had closed for the day. They had approached from the northwest, walking across about a mile of land contaminated by fallout, which Turner asserted ‘would not adhere to their feet or bodies’. The campsite was also contaminated, although Turner said that a 16-hour stay at the site would expose them to
only about 2% of the weekly dose that is permissible every week throughout a lifetime, and about 0.025% of the dose required for clinical detection. The inhalation hazard was completely negligible. The contamination on the hair of the boy was less than the accepted tolerance value… Therefore there is no possibility that any of the family could have experienced any radiation injury.
The family were Spinifex people from the Ernabella Mission and had travelled to Ooldea to visit relatives, not knowing that it had been closed down. They were shipped to Yalata and placed into the care of Pastor Temme of the Lutheran Mission. Edie was pregnant at the time, and soon after she miscarried. They took their dogs with them, but when Howard Beale found this out he issued a direct order to the range commander that all four dogs be shot. This was done in front of the family. Over the next few years Edie suffered several more miscarriages. She was interviewed in 1985 when the Royal Commission went to the outback and sat in the dust with the Indigenous owners. She eventually revealed the sorrow of her miscarriages to Jim McClelland, and he featured the story in his report.
On 3 December 1957, Beale was again quizzed in parliament about reports of harm to Aboriginal people from the Buffalo and Antler test series, and HJ Brown again had to come up with acceptable answers quickly. John Moroney sent an urgent cable to him at Woomera, recounting the questions:
(1) Did a mystery disease of epidemic proportions a few months ago result in a number of deaths amongst Aboriginal children at the Ernabella Mission Station in South Australia? (2) Is it a fact that in certain quarters the deaths of these children were attributed to the effects of radioactive fallout from bomb tests? (3) If he has not already done so, will he have this report investigated immediately and make information available as soon as it comes to hand?
Brown’s response noted that ‘a disease of epidemic proportions did occur at Ernabella during March to June 1957, resulting in the deaths of 20 children and 2 adults’. He denied it was a mystery disease, ‘although soon after its outbreak a pathological investigation carried out at Alice Springs apparently did not disclose the cause of death’. He said that ‘three children were removed from Ernabella to the Children’s Hospital Adelaide where subsequently one died and the result of post mortem indicated large fatty liver and malnutrition, and infection of both mastoids. At least one of these children was admitted with a history of measles’. Further investigation, he said, had indicated an outbreak of measles. Medical scientists had not investigated ‘the possible effect of radio active fall out’, but they had ‘since stated that there was no reason to suspect any other cause for the deaths than measles’. Brown also pointed out that an influenza outbreak at Ernabella had killed some people. He rejected speculation in the British Medical Association journal The Lancet that had drawn a connection between measles and radioactivity, piquing some interest and questions from Charles Duguid. Even if the article were true, he said, ‘Aborigines have not been subjected to radio activity’.
As we have seen, after the major bomb trials ended with Operation Antler in 1957, the activities at Maralinga were more secret than ever. The more dangerous minor trials meant that Aboriginal people still had to be kept away, although it was harder to explain why. A patrol report by Macaulay in October 1963 mentioned ongoing issues:
The [Maralinga] Range Commander had recently travelled over the outer perimeter roads and had met an Aboriginal family in the Prohibited Zone. This had led him to some appreciation of the problems and the delicate handling required in the early stages of contact between whites and nomadic Aborigines, especially in such a political context for Aborigines and the Maralinga Prohibited Zone.
On 1 May 1963, Jim Cavanagh, Labor senator for South Australia (and later federal minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Whitlam government), asked Beale’s representative in the Senate about the Aboriginal interaction with the Maralinga site. The Department of Supply prepared a briefing paper for the minister to help answer these questions. For the question ‘Have experiments with nuclear explosions been conducted at Maralinga, South Australia?’ the paper suggested that the response‘“yes”, qualified by “not since 1957”, is strictly true’. Actually, this was not strictly true as the nuclear experiments of the Vixen B series continued until April 1963.
Cavanagh also asked two questions as to whether Department of Supply personnel and vehicles were to keep native Aboriginals off the area, and whether Aboriginals were kept off the area at the time of such experiments. The briefing paper disputed the implication
that we had to take positive action to keep aborigines off the area. The facts are that we conducted land and air surveys, and found no natives in the area at the time in question. We did not have to keep them off. However, one group of natives was encountered on walkabout outside the area, and they were transported (with their willing consent) to their destination.
Even had this action not be taken, the briefing paper asserted, there was no reason to believe ‘they would have been in the area at the time of the explosions’.
A fourth question asked if the government had ‘any knowledge of harmful effects on natives as a result of these explosions’. The briefing document answered by saying:
There have been attempts to blame the tests for various ills suffered by the natives, but after investigation we have been unable to find any foundation for such claims. One instance of penetration into the area subsequent to the trials is known, but the natives concerned were removed from the area, and were given a thorough decontamination and examination. They were taken to the Aboriginal Mission at Ooldea [actually, the Milpuddies went to Yalata], where they remained for some time, but no detectable effects were observed.
One of the most perplexing episodes in this history is the so-called black mist. This little-understood phenomenon occurred after Totem 1 at Emu Field in October 1953. Many later commentators have wrongly associated it with Maralinga. The black mist story has gone into local Indigenous folklore, but its first broad public airing was in the Adelaide Advertiser on 3 May 1980. When the Royal Commission investigated the Emu Field tests, it concluded that weather conditions for the first Totem blast had been unsuitable and the test should not have proceeded.
The Indigenous people most prominently associated with the black mist are Yami Lester and Lallie Lennon, both of whom experienced it and reported their experiences publicly, and to the Royal Commission. The allegation is that after the first bomb in the Totem series was detonated on 15 October 1953, an unpleasant greasy black cloud enveloped the land around Wallatinna and Mintabie and deposited material on the people in the vicinity. Uniformly, they reported vomiting, diarrhoea and skin conditions, as well as blindness (in the case of Yami Lester, who was a child at the time) and a number of deaths. Ernest Titterton called the allegations ‘a scare campaign’ and denied the possibility of a black mist. He said, ‘If you investigate black mists you’re going to get into an area where mystique is the central feature’. William Penney stated to the Royal Commission, ‘I was not aware at the time of any of the alleged reports of “black mist”’.