At the various Maralinga sites, much the same process was undertaken. Most of the fences and warning signs were removed, debris and glazing were removed by hand, and there was much ploughing and grading. In addition, soil was brought in to cover ground zero to a depth of a few centimetres. At Marcoo, where the ground-detonated bomb had made a crater, about 1.5 metres of earth was dumped and levelled, to even it out. Two new waste burial pits were dug into the limestone, making a total of 21. All the burial pits at Taranaki were capped with reinforced concrete.
The minor trial sites at TM100, TM101, Wewak and Taranaki were either yellow or red areas. They were ploughed and covered with topsoil. The fences and signs around the Taranaki pits were left and the concrete covering the pits had ‘RADIO ACTIVE MATERIAL BURIED HERE’ imprinted onto it. Some of the contaminated soil from Wewak found its way to the Marcoo crater as fill. Several pits at TM101 were capped with concrete, like the Taranaki pits, and fences and warning signs were erected.
The Pearce Report made clear assertions about the safety of the site:
At One Tree, which has the highest doserate, a member of the public could, in 1967, stand up to four days a year continuously at ground zero without exceeding the dose limit recommended by ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection]… At the present time, even a permanent inhabitant of the Range, free to move about at will, would not be exposed to a significant radiation hazard unless he chose to spend most of his time at or near a ground zero. This eventuality is most improbable now and the likelihood of its occurring in the future should be considered in light of the above comments on the decaying gamma doserates.
Pearce identified Taranaki, TM100 and TM101 as the worst parts of the site. ‘Following the treatment given during Operation BRUMBY the only sites where the level of radioactivity warrants further consideration are Taranaki and TM100–101. At all the other sites the contamination is well below the recommended permissible levels.’ Later, Pearce admitted to the Royal Commission, ‘I concede that it would have been useful, with hindsight, to have examined those very high readings more closely’. Instead of increasing the measurements in the vicinity of the high-plutonium areas, Pearce and his team simply stuck to the same system used across almost the entire range, taking a measurement every 90 metres (although, anomalously, TM101 was surveyed every 9 metres). As Geoff Williams and the other members of the ARL team discovered in 1984, an awful lot of plutonium slipped through that large-gauge net.
The Pearce Report claimed that about 20 kilograms of the 22 kilograms of plutonium had been buried, thus rendering it less dangerous. In fact, an estimated 20 kilograms was later found scattered around the site, in the form of particles of various sizes dispersed locally and fine dust spread over a very large area of outback Australia. Moroney believed that the inadequacies and gross inconsistencies of the plutonium field data used for Operation Brumby were not simple mistakes. He later discovered, as discussed in chapter 11, that the AWRE knew of the errors involved. These errors resulted in considerable confusion and misinformation about plutonium contamination at Maralinga for many years, despite Moroney’s vigorous efforts immediately at the conclusion of Vixen B.
Pearce never publicly admitted any flaws, and his Royal Commission statement claimed, ‘I would say that Operation Brumby was a successful exercise, meeting in all respects the detailed requirements of the [AWTSC] who were kept fully informed throughout the preparation and implementation of the proposals, and who were satisfied with the results at the time’. His statements were challenged at the Royal Commission when it sat in London in March 1985, and Pearce spent two uncomfortable days being questioned by Counsel Assisting Peter McClellan. His frequent tussles with McClellan, and his protests that he could not remember any details, added to a sense that his was not a firm hand on the clean-up tiller.
The tone of the interaction between McClellan and Pearce was often testy and strained. Pearce was taxed on the tricky convolutions that the AWRE nuclear elite engaged in to slip Vixen B under the radar of the nuclear weapons test moratorium and was also asked about the ineffectual clean-ups. He was questioned repeatedly about whether he or others involved gave a thought to the way the site might be used by people in the future, and whether cost drove decision-making. He said, ‘My understanding is that at the end of Brumby we had satisfied the requirements of the Safety Committee and could declare that the range had been controlled’. He stuck to this line throughout his evidence to the Royal Commission, even though the story had already started unravelling. To the end, even with the evidence piling up in front of him, Pearce maintained that he had left the site in a safe condition and that anyone visiting the site would not be harmed. Would he allow his children to eat a rabbit caught on the range? He would eat one himself, he replied.
In March 1967, George Owen arrives at Maralinga straight from his posting in West Germany. He will turn 26 the following month, a long way from home. He is a plant operator in the British Royal Engineers and able to manoeuvre heavy machinery. He volunteered to come to Maralinga because he was bored and fed up with his service in Cold War West Germany and was looking for an adventure. Perhaps he will find more than he expects.
Owen’s first job is to get the trucks and earth-moving equipment working. Not much has happened at the site since the last Vixen B test four years previously. Desert conditions and disuse are hard on the gear, and it takes a good two weeks to get the vehicles fit for service. Once everything is moving again, the heavy work begins. Owen operates the Scoopmobile, a front-end loader with a big bucket scoop used to load contaminated Maralinga soil into tip trucks to be carted up to the Taranaki site, where bulldozers will spread it around the blighted test range. The Scoopmobile itself is not allowed to operate in the contaminated areas, because the vehicle will be sold later, and it can’t have any radioactivity. The days are unbearably hot for someone from the cold climes of the northern hemisphere.
Owen is part of a crew of 100 men that loads about 76 000 cubic metres of soil each month. They work 12-hour shifts and he knows the work is urgent. The men work at Taranaki, not knowing that the ground is liberally dotted with plutonium-contaminated fragments. No-one says any such thing to him at the time.
The English ‘health visitor’ Mr Edward Edwards tests material at the site for contamination. Edwards, a friendly and humorous man, calls the lads together when he arrives to give them a lecture. He recounts the difficulties he had back home on the docks in England. To convince sceptical dockers that the low-grade radioactive waste that they had been asked to handle was safe, he had picked up a piece of it and licked it. The Maralinga crew laugh heartily. They can relate to this sort of frontier bravado.
With casual animal cruelty, bored truck drivers mow down sluggish kangaroos that come to Maralinga in the early morning to find moisture, a vision of carnage that will live with Owen for decades. He is especially upset to see joeys run over. Owen also notices that the numerous rabbits in the area are often deformed and have bulging eyes.
After operating the Scoopmobile for a while, Owen shifts up to the contaminated zone at One Tree to do some bulldozing. One Tree is the site of the first major Buffalo test, and there is quite a bit of glazing there. Owen is among the team that performs an emu parade, walking along and picking up the glazed pieces by hand. The health visitor, Edwards, says that the glazing is emitting a little gamma radiation.