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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows black-and-white newsreel footage of a nuclear test at Maralinga, South Australia, in the 1950s, and includes comments from people exposed to radioactive fallout from the test. A former serviceman reports that he was instructed to shield his eyes against the flash that accompanied the blast, while an Indigenous woman describes seeing what appeared to be smoke coming through the trees overhead that left behind a residue of grey-black dust. The clip includes historical footage and still images of the test site.

Educational value points

• This clip reveals some of the results of an agreement between the British Government and Australian prime minister Robert Menzies, who consented to the development of a permanent testing range at Maralinga in South Australia without consulting either his Cabinet or the Indigenous people who lived in the area. Tests carried out at Maralinga were part of Britain’s nuclear weapons program and involved testing fission weapons and monitoring their effects.

• This clip is from the television documentary Backs to the Blast, an Australian Nuclear Story and the title, together with the sequences of 1950s footage of a nuclear blast at Maralinga and the testimony of those interviewed, illustrates the inadequate protection from nuclear fallout provided for defence and scientific personnel and Indigenous Australians who remained in the area. The clip shows defence personnel standing with their backs to the blast, heads and eyes uncovered.

• Military and scientific personnel at Maralinga were exposed to levels of radiation considered unacceptable today. They stood about 20 km from ground zero, the point of detonation, to witness each nuclear test. The Australian Nuclear Veterans Association believes that troops were deliberately exposed to radiation to gauge its effect, but the Australian and British governments consistently deny this.

• While most of the Indigenous Maralinga Tjarutja people who inhabited the area around Maralinga were relocated to the Yalata Mission prior to testing, those who remained, such as the woman in this clip who recounts seeing smoke coming through the trees following the test, were exposed to radioactive particles known as fallout.

• In the aftermath of each nuclear weapons test, servicemen at Maralinga were exposed to radioactive fallout. For example, as former RAAF mechanic Ric Johnston explains in this clip, teams were sent to recover and decontaminate equipment from ‘hot areas’ near ground zero. In addition, troops measured fallout in the surrounding areas. These men were not provided with adequate protective gear.

• Nuclear fission bombs, such as the one shown in this clip, use uranium 235, uranium 233 or plutonium 239. Unlike most atoms, the atoms of uranium and plutonium are relatively easy to split, and when split emit the lethal form of radiation called gamma radiation. Exposure can cause most types of cancer, particularly breast and thyroid cancer. It can weaken the immune system, cause hypothyroidism and alter a person’s DNA code, causing birth defects in future offspring.

• Backs to the Blast, broadcast in 1981, had an enormous influence among the Australian public which, at the time, knew little about the British nuclear tests at Maralinga and their effect on the environment and the people exposed to the fallout. Public pressure led to the Australian Government establishing the 1984 Royal Commission to investigate the effects of British nuclear weapons tests on the Australian environment and population.

• A Royal Commission was held in 1984, but it was not until 1995 that the British Government paid the Maralinga Tjarutja people $13.5 million in compensation for being displaced from their land, and it took until 1999 for the Australian and British governments to spend $108 million to decontaminate the Maralinga site.

This clip starts approximately 29 minutes into the documentary.

We see scenes on the ground including abandoned cars and houses and a line of men with their backs turned as the announcer counts down to an above-ground atomic test.
Announcer Ten seconds to go! Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.

There is the bright flash of an explosion – lighting up the backs of the men – turning into a mushroom cloud.
Announcer The mighty power of the atom is unleashed.

Footage of the aftermath of the blast continues as a group of interviewees recollect the test. Archival footage of the aftermath of the blast is interwoven between interviews.
Man Well when the blast went off, whatever part of your arms or your legs were – we used to – we just wore shorts – you get sunburn now from that very first test. That’s how close we were to it. It was just like a sunburn.
Man We uh, put our hands over our eyes, close our eyes, put our hands over our eyes to eliminate the flash, and the uh, when the bomb went off, you could see right through your hands, you could see the buildings in the background.
Indigenous Woman Just as we were getting ready to have breakfast, this er smoke – you know, you can see it between the trees coming through, it went right through, over us. You could smell the gunpowder smell. And on the tent, it had this grey, blacky sort of dust.

Ric Johnston, RAAF driver, is interviewed as footage showing men being dressed and walking around in protective gear is shown.
Ric Johnston Uh, I was actually a driver, a mechanic for a group, Canadian group called the Number One Radiation Detection Unit, and our job was to go in and uh, and check the damage done to vehicles and to salvage and decontaminate those that we could, and to steer clear of uh, those that were too hot, that we couldn’t.

We were wearing what was termed protective clothing – a type of rayon overall – and we had a type of headgear out of the same material with a plastic face-piece and a type of spraypainter’s respirator type of thing on either side of it. But, um, quite often we used to take the, the uh, headgear off because it was just too hot. You just couldn’t breathe in the suit. And if we didn’t take it right off, we would open the neck up with a finger to let the sweat run out, because it would just pour out. Uh, and we used to, ah, get into that gear every time we went in, and uh, we used to get out of it and decontaminate ourselves every time we came back out of the area.

Eric Geddes, RAAF wireless operator (retired), is interviewed as footage of an aircraft taking off and flying over the large crater made by the blast is shown.
Eric Geddes Our task on briefing was simply to fly into a certain quadrant at a certain altitude, and with the use of the monitoring device on the aircraft, to locate the atomic cloud, if it were in that particular quadrant. We got our initial reading on the primary scale of the monitoring device. Very quickly it went off-scale because of the height of the radiation. We switched to the major scale on the device, which performed exactly the same way. It went to its maximum reading; could register no further.