60 Years ago to the Day

Hi Stephen,

I spent many years looking at the map, wondering what is was like there before I eventually made it - at the time it was to me one of my "must do remote places".



Cheers
Alan

Your first question is, where was the first British/Australian test conducted?
Second question, did the British care to clean this particular site up afterwards?
Third question, name the politician who conducted the inquiry that led to the clean up of Maralinga.
Fourth question, who runs the best and most informative tours of Maralinga, and finally
Name the the whistleblower who revealed the incompetence of commonwealth bureaucrats who bungled the clean up effort ( bonus points if you can also identify a politician who was complicit in this deception)

See how you go......your time starts now!

(You can see I have too much time on my hands)

Cheers, Leigh

I wonder has any one been to the site up in cape york when they did a massive blast with just TNT the bush tucker man showed you the site on one of his shows

they built a huge tower and put every thing up to and let it go . nothing seems to have grown in the area since

thanks for sharing that information with us and nice pictures

I am amazed no one has used the Nuclear device in anger in the past 60 odd year I think it has come close but that god some one has seen some sense .

There should be a monument at the site, three times the size of the current one, to the monstrous negligence and shrugged-off culpability of the British Govt in what was essentially the greatest hoodwinking of the Australian public ever carried out.

The treatment of the Veterans who have endured multiple radioactivity-related diseases and complaints, and those Veterans who died young because of the same, is an utter abomination on the record of the British Govt.

Those remaining veterans are still dragging the British Govt through the courts to get compensation willfully denied them all their lives. I won't even mention how badly the Abos were treated by the British.

The entire early British nuclear era is a festering sore upon their record as they constantly sought to deceive other nations of the risks and results of nuclear tests, and how they constantly downplayed any risks when pertinent questions were asked.

What is amazing is that British nuclear secrecy towards allies, as regards nuclear testing in the early 1950's, was paramount - and was carried out effectively and without regard to any other countries concerns - yet America knew that Russian spies operated within British nuclear operations as early as 1946, and the Americans refused to share nuclear secrets with Britain because of this serious concern.

This refusal by America to share its nuclear secrets, was what drove the British nuclear test program of the late 1940's/early 1950's - which program was rapidly rendered totally unneccessary when America finally agreed to share its nuclear secrets with Britain in the mid-1950's - well after the Russian spies within the British nuclear industry had been outed.
Unfortunately, the Americans had nearly as many Russian spies amongst their own nuclear industry, making their refusal to share nuclear info with Britain, a total sham anyway.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Spies-Who-Spilled-Atomic-Bomb-Secrets.html

http://aic.gov.au/publications/previous%20series/lcj/1-20/wayward/ch16.html

I could rave on, but I hope that this type on thing is never allowed on Australian soil ever again

I totally agree with you in that one

Gday Stephen,

Thanks for this reminder. It hadn't occurred to me that we were up to 60 years since the first blast at Emu. Fascinating area though. We were mesmerised when we first travelled that track down to Totem 1 about 12 years ago. A lot more schrapnel lying around then - seemed like lots of stuff got covered over in a hurry, but further work since means that less is visible.

Cheers
Phil