The injury inflicted upon the Indigenous people cannot be properly measured. Robbing people of their ancestral homelands, subjecting them to forced removal and, later, exposure to the plutonium-laden dust and debris is not something that can be forgiven. Maralinga Tours, a successful tourist venture wholly owned by the traditional owners, began in 2014. The venture became possible when unrestricted access to the final part of Maralinga land was finally granted to the Maralinga Tjarutja people. At that point, the traditional owners could come and go freely throughout the site, without permission from the Department of Defence. May this venture thrive and prosper, because of all the people harmed by Maralinga, the Indigenous people were the most powerless.
The toxic physical legacy of Maralinga can almost be summed up in one word: plutonium. When MARTAC reported in 2002 on the outcome of the operation to remove contamination from the area, co-funded by the British Government, it said, ‘Plutonium (Pu) was almost entirely the contaminant that determined the scope of the [Maralinga rehabilitation] program. It is acknowledged as a very radiotoxic element if taken into the body, particularly by inhalation’. Plutonium-239 has significant consequences for the environment. According to radiation expert Frank Barnaby, ‘To all intents and purposes, once [plutonium-239] is in the environment, it stays there permanently. Because of its radiotoxicity and long half-life the disposal of plutonium presents particularly difficult problems’. While many of the people associated with Maralinga tried to play down the risks of leaving plutonium on the open range over the years, their assurances ring hollow. This material is deadly, and even back then this was known. Why was leaving it there considered acceptable? None of the answers given over the years seems satisfactory.
Uncovering secret information is a theme throughout the saga of the British bomb. An interesting side note is provided by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which revealed the plans drawn up by William Penney for an atomic bomb design that became Blue Danube. It is worth tracking back a little to recall the early history of the saga. In 1947, Penney was asked by the GEN.163 Cabinet committee to head Basic High Explosive Research, which later became the AWRE. This research group was tasked with fulfilling the Attlee political ambition of turning the UK into a nuclear power. Penney drew upon his extensive knowledge of the design of nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project, and particularly the Fat Man plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, and started to sketch out a design. This remarkable document, titled simply ‘Plutonium Weapon – General Description’, included a sketch of how the weapon might be constructed, although without great technical or scientific detail. The report was declassified and made publicly available some years ago, but the UK Ministry of Supply suddenly withdrew it from public view in 2002 (along with many other files relating to the British nuclear tests in Australia retained by other government entities, particularly the Ministry of Defence). Wiki-Leaks, however, published the full report, including the drawing, on its website in March 2008, arguing that, even though it had been withdrawn from the UK Public Records Office, the file was in the public domain since no attempt had been made by the UK Government to track down the many copies circulating since it was first made public. The government took an interest in clamping down on its distribution only when WikiLeaks published it.
There followed a bizarre and archetypically British correspondence between WikiLeaks and the head of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Counter Proliferation Department, Regional Issues. Blue Danube had been superseded decades earlier and was no longer part of the British nuclear armoury. The office head said, ‘I have had an initial assessment from our experts. They are extremely concerned by the drawing you have posted on your website and assess it is of serious proliferation concern, and possibly terrorism concern’. WikiLeaks ‘did not find [the concerns] credible’ and refused to remove the document. It remains there at the time of writing.
However, the emails between Jay Lim at WikiLeaks and Isabelle McRae at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office showed something of a half-hearted attempt at information control by the British authorities, perhaps in contrast to the era of the nuclear test series in Australia. McRae responded to Lim’s initial refusal to remove the material by saying:
I will talk to our experts here and do my best to work up a detailed explanation for you (though some of the explanation may be classified!). I am glad to read that you have at least checked this with a number of nuclear physicists before putting it on your website. I would just add that I don’t see that the information furthers your aims – i.e. reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. Therefore, I would be very grateful if you could remove the information while I work up a detailed explanation for you. I will try to do this as quickly as possible – I am away over Easter but if you could give me until 2 April, I’ll send you something then.
Apparently bomb design–seeking terrorists observe Easter breaks too. Lim replied, ‘After consultations it strikes us as extraordinary that the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] claims the WikiLeaks documents are a proliferation issue worthy of censorship, but, apparently, not worthy of assigning a staff member to address the issue during its Easter break’. WikiLeaks refused to budge, saying that ‘the documents are a substantial piece of world history and have been released, then censored. Implicit in our core mission is preventing censorship of such documents’. The issue of British nuclear weaponry remained controversial, long after the British gave up testing on Australian soil.
Britain’s nuclear program evolved rapidly from those Australian beginnings. In 1963, Britain purchased Polaris missiles from the US and added its own nuclear warheads, an arrangement that flowed directly from the resumption of nuclear weapons co-operation in the late 1950s. These submarine-based weapons became the basis for the country’s nuclear deterrent between 1968 and 1996. The new co-operative phase did not last, since Harold Macmillan’s successor, Harold Wilson, was less inclined to pursue further nuclear weapons development with the US. Polaris was bolstered by an improved design known as Chevaline, which had been tested in Nevada in the 1970s, and was later superseded by the Underwater Long Range Missile System, better known as Trident, in the early 1990s, all submarine-based weapons. The future of the aging Trident weapon is currently the centre of ongoing political tensions.
Hardship often brings out the best of creativity in people. Maralinga has sparked beautiful art and beautiful music. A travelling exhibition titled Black Mist Burnt Country, with plans to run for two years from September 2016, honours the output of many artists moved by the legacy of Maralinga. A long-term creative project called Nuclear Futures, which began in Australia but has grown to encompass six countries in all, ‘supports artists working with atomic survivor communities, to bear witness to the legacies of the atomic age through creative arts’. A piano and violin piece titled Maralinga, composed by Matthew Hindson, was performed by the Australian orchestra Ruthless Jabiru in London in October 2013, conducted by Kelly Lovelady, in a program titled Maralinga Lament. Novels have been written about Maralinga, notably Maralinga by Judy Nunn and Maralinga My Love by Dorothy Johnston. A theatre performance produced by arts company Big hArt titled ‘Ngapartji Ngapartji’ premiered at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2004, partly in Pitjantjatjara language. In August 2006, Paul Brown’s ‘Maralinga’, a verbatim play developed with the Maralinga Research Group based on the experiences of nuclear veterans, premiered on the Central Coast of New South Wales, directed by Wesley Enoch.