Maralinga (53 page)

The British army packed up and went home in 1962. An attempt was made to decontaminate the area, but it was ineffectual. Maralinga closed in 1967, and the site was left to fester in the eternal silence of the desert.

During the years that followed, growing concerns about the safety standards observed during the conducting of the nuclear trials and the disposal of radioactive substances and toxic materials began to snowball. By the 1980s, British and Australian servicemen and traditional Aboriginal owners of the land were suffering blindness, sores and illnesses such as cancer. Groups including the Atomic Veterans Association and the Pitjantjatjara Council pressured the government until, in 1984, it agreed to hold a royal commission to investigate the damage that had been caused.

The McClelland Royal Commission into the tests delivered its report in 1985 and found that significant radiation hazards still existed at many of the Maralinga test areas. It recommended another clean-up, which was completed in 2000 at a cost of $108 million.

During the proceedings, local Indigenous people claimed they were poisoned by the tests. The McClelland Commission could find no evidence of this. However, in 1994, the Australian government paid compensation amounting to $13.5 million to the Maralinga Tjarutja people in settlement of all claims relating to nuclear testing.

The Commission did find that some British and Australian servicemen were purposely exposed to fallout from the blasts. With regard to these health and welfare matters, an Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs study concluded that ‘overall the doses received by Australian participants were small … Only two per cent of participants received more than the current Australian annual dose limit for occupationally exposed persons (20 mSv).'

However, these findings were contested by the Atomic Ex-Serviceman's Association, which claimed that out of 10,700 personnel who worked in the area over a ten-year period in the 1950s and 1960s there were over 9,000 persons who had died by 2005 and approximately 75–80 per cent of those deaths were from cancer.

On 6 June 2009 (ironically the anniversary of the D-Day Invasion in 1944) approximately 1,000 ex-servicemen from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Britain who were involved in nuclear tests during the 1950s finally won the right to sue the British government over health problems they blame on radiation.

It is to be hoped the British High Court decision will force the Australian Federal government to finally recognise health and welfare claims by Australian veterans.

Despite the governments of Australia and the UK paying for two decontamination programs, concerns have been expressed that some areas of the Maralinga test sites are still contaminated.

My love and thanks as always to my husband, Bruce Venables. My thanks also to those family and friends who continue to offer both encouragement and practical assistance: big brother Rob Nunn, Sue Greaves, Susan Mackie-Hookway, Michael Roberts, Colin Julin and my agent, James Laurie. A big thanks to all the hard-working team at Random House, most particularly to Brandon VanOver for his creative support.

For assistance in the research of this book I am indebted to many, but first and foremost my thanks must go to Leon and Dianne Ashton, who, as on-site managers of Maralinga, offered Bruce and me such a warm welcome and gave so generously of their time and knowledge. Thank you also to David Johns, who granted government approval for our visit to the site, and to the Maralinga Tjarutja, who allowed us to travel their lands.

A big thank you to all those wonderfully helpful people I met during my research trip: from Ceduna Library, Julie Sim (and husband Bob, whose hand-drawn map
was of inestimable value), Chris Blums and Meralyn Stevens; from Ceduna Aboriginal Arts & Culture Centre, Pam Diment and Sue Andrasic; Allan Lowe from the Ceduna Museum; Tanya and Andrea from the Maralinga Tjarutja Land Council Office; Patricia Gunter; Des Whitmarsh; the friendly staff at the Ceduna Foreshore Hotel and many others from the highly hospitable township of Ceduna. Thanks also to June Noble and Dick Kimber of Alice Springs.

Among my research sources, I would like to recognise the following:

Fields of Thunder
, Denys Blakeway and Sue Lloyd-Roberts, Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, 1985.

Field of Thunder: the Maralinga Story
, written and researched by Judy Wilks, with Rolf Heimann (Art), Nic Thieberger and Richard Watts (Graphics), Friends of the Earth, 1981.

Maralinga: Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up
, Alan Parkinson, ABC Books, 2007.

A Political Inconvenience
, Tim Sherratt, Historical Records of Australian Science, 1985.

Fallout: Hedley Marston and the British Bomb Tests in Australia,
Roger Cross, Wakefield Press, 2001.

Maralinga's Afterlife
, John Keane, professor of politics, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, London,
The Age
Company Ltd, 2003.

A Toxic Legacy: British Nuclear Weapons Testing in Australia,
published in
Wayward Governance: Illegality and Its Control in the Public Sector
, P. N. Grabosky, Canberra, Australian Institute of Criminology, 1989.

I'm the One That Know This Country!: the Story of Jessie Lennon and Coober Pedy,
Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 2000.

The View Across the Bay
, Sue Trewartha, published by Ceduna Community Hotel, 1999.

Broken Song: T. G. H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession
, Barry Hill, Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2002.

The eagerly awaited new novel

 

‘This town is full of tiger men,' Dan said. ‘Just look around you. The merchants, the builders, the bankers, the company men, they're all out for what they can get. This is a tiger town, Mick, a place at the bottom of the world where God turns a blind eye to pillage and plunder.'

 

Van Diemen's Land was an island of stark contrasts: a harsh penal colony, an English idyll for its landed gentry, and an island so rich in natural resources it was a profiteer's paradise.

Its capital, Hobart Town, had its contrasts too: the wealthy elite in their sandstone mansions, the exploited poor in the notorious slum known as Wapping, and the criminals and villains who haunted the dockside taverns and brothels of Sullivan's Cove. Hobart Town was no place for the meek.

Tiger Men
is the story of Silas Stanford, a wealthy Englishman; Mick O'Callaghan, an Irishman on the run; and Jefferson Powell, an idealistic American political prisoner. It is also the story of the strong, proud women who loved them, and of the children they bore who rose to power in the cutthroat world of international trade.

Tiger Men
is the sweeping saga of three families who lived through Tasmania's golden era, who witnessed the birth of Federation and who, in 1915, watched with pride as their sons marched off to fight for King and Country in the Great War.

 

AVAILABLE FROM NOVEMBER 2011

The animal approaches the river with stealth; not for fear of predators, but in order to avoid alerting possible prey. It is early dusk and others may be slaking their thirst – a kangaroo perhaps, or a wallaby, or wombat. She hopes for a large kill, she has three hungry cubs to feed, but if necessary smaller prey will suffice. Her keen ears are alert to the slightest rustle amongst the grasses and foliage as this might signal a potoroo or a possum.

A nocturnal hunter, she has come down from the woodlands to the valley, leaving her offspring in the safety of their rocky lair on the hillside. The cubs have been out of her pouch for some time, but they are not yet old enough to join her on the hunt, when she will teach them her skills.

The early evening air is crisp and clear with the chill bite of autumn. All is breathlessly still and upon the glass-like river surface the mirror images of willows and ferns meet to create a magically perfect twin world.

There is no prey in sight, so the animal lowers her head and drinks, oblivious to the destruction she wreaks as ever-widening ripples spread in all directions. Then, her thirst assuaged, she slinks off into the undergrowth, barely visible, the black stripes of her tawny back melding with the shadows of fern fronds. The riverbank has not provided easy prey and she is on the hunt now, her ears and eyes attuned to the slightest sound or movement.

Unlike some hunters, she relies more on sound and sight than she does on her sense of smell; and unlike others she relies on stamina rather than speed. She will run down beasts much
faster than she, simply by chasing them into a state of exhaustion. She is strong.

She has travelled barely five minutes, covering considerable ground at an easy trot but keeping low in the grasses, her sharp, black eyes searching the bushes and thickets for any sign of movement. Then she hears a sound. It is the low snuffle of a horse, and she instantly halts. This is not a sound she associates with prey, but rather with predator. She remains motionless, little more than the faintest ripple amongst the broad sea of grasslands.

The horse snorts again, nervously this time – it has caught her scent. She can see it now: its form silhouetted in the soft half-light, tethered to a tree in the thicket up ahead. She has no fear of horses, but where there are horses there are men, and she greatly fears men. She is right to do so, for man is her one true predator. She keeps away from his settlements, but more and more he encroaches upon her territory, and more and more she is forced to retreat. Her world is changing.

The horse tosses its head. Aware of her presence, it is restless.

Her muscles tense, and she makes to flee – the predator cannot be far off – but before she can move, a shot rings out.

The man steps from the thicket where he has been watching the slight telltale movement in the grasses; he too is an experienced hunter. He approaches the corpse and rolls it over with his foot. A fine specimen, he thinks, in excellent condition. On top of the tiger bounty, there'd be money for the hide. What a stroke of luck. He'd only come out to set his traps.

Van Diemen's Land was a place of profound contradiction. The sheer beauty of the island could stir a man's soul, yet the savage depravity of life on its shores could rob him of all faith. This alarming paradox continued to disturb Silas Stanford, even after ten long years in the colony. He did not doubt that many a poor creature had lost sight of God in the midst of this glorious wilderness where His hand was so evident. Fifty years on, the history of Van Diemen's Land remained, to Silas, a shocking condemnation.

The British had decided, in 1803, to extend their occupation of the Australian continent to include Van Diemen's Land, roughly 150 miles off the south-east coast, and they had done so purely in order to prevent the French laying claim to it. A penal colony had quickly been established for the provision of labour, and a thriving new port had been created at Sullivan's Cove, a picturesque bay on the west bank of the River Derwent. Convict settlers had been transported from Norfolk Island and Port Jackson to people the township and develop the land, and a new breed of society had been born in the wilderness.

Over the ensuing decades, the busy port of Hobart Town, nestled at the base of mighty Mount Wellington, became home to rough, tough men: to jailers and convicts, and sealers and whalers, and to those seeking refuge from the law. Van Diemen's Land, it seemed, was designed for the lawless. Whether they arrived in chains, or whether they simply walked off ships in a bid to escape justice, the island appeared a magnet to the wicked. Here was no haven for the weak or the squeamish; here only the toughest survived. Escaped convicts and bandits
roamed the countryside, while settlers, men who considered themselves civilised, embarked upon the systematic eradication of those whose lands they'd invaded.

The eradication of the natives proved swift and efficient. The last of the surviving Aboriginal population was eventually rounded up and transported to the islands of Bass Strait, where they continued to die in the process of being Christianised and civilised.

The Aborigine of Van Diemen's Land was not the only species to be brutally annihilated. While eliminating human competition on land, the invaders embarked upon a bloodbath at sea. The indiscriminate slaughter of seals and southern right whales soon put an end to the local sealing industry and, not long afterwards, to shore-based whaling. Undeterred, however, the merchants simply built bigger and stronger ocean-going vessels fit to meet the demands of pelagic whaling, and turned their attention to the highly productive sperm whaling grounds farther afield. In the interests of profit, all was fair game. Besides, the fine timbers of the island had made logging highly profitable and had introduced a burgeoning ship-building industry. There were limitless opportunities on offer in Van Diemen's Land for those who knew how to avail themselves of its riches.

The plunder of land and sea had reaped rewards for many who were perhaps undeserving, but as free settlers started to arrive in numbers, wealth became the result of hard work and ingenuity. Among such men were those determined to lead the way in moral enlightenment. Philanthropy abounded. Rich benefactors built churches and funded schools, not only for their sons, but also for the poor. Worship and education was to replace licentiousness and ignorance. An influential lobby group of respectable colonists and clergy formed the Anti-Transportation League in a bid to call a halt to the convict system. Appeals were made directly to the British Government and to Queen Victoria herself. No longer should the island serve as a penal settlement and dumping ground for the dregs of humanity, they argued. Van Diemen's Land must become a free and civilised society modelled along the lines of Britain, with a class structure ruled by the powerful elite.

There was no man more dedicated to the cause of freedom and reformation than the successful wool grower and merchant,
Silas Stanford. But Silas differed from many of his fellow benefactors in the way that he sought neither self-aggrandisement nor power. He considered it his bounden duty to care for those less fortunate. And of even greater importance, he considered it his mission to help lead the way out of a brutal past into a bright new future. He needed no reward for his efforts, at least not in this world.

Silas cut an impressive but austere figure as he marched solemnly down Collins Street in his signal black frock coat and top hat, his greying beard as neat in its trim as his well-tailored suit. He might have been leading a funeral procession, or so his youngest daughter was wont to tell him.

‘Why must you always wear black, Father?' she would tease. ‘Why not a pair of check trousers, or perhaps a grey waistcoat? Both are fashionable, and black is so very funereal.'

‘Black is dignified and respectful, Amy,' he would reply. ‘One must avoid any show of ostentation, particularly when one is calling upon those less fortunate than one's self.'

But Amy never let him have the last word. She knew only too well that her father favoured his sombre form of dress through pure personal preference. ‘The poor rather like a little colour,' she said good-humouredly. ‘I always wear a bright scarf or carry a silk kerchief myself. Such items are greatly admired. So much so I must admit that I often find myself giving them away.'

‘You are of age, my dear, and it is your prerogative to dress as you wish – within the bounds of respectability of course …' Silas knew that he sounded stuffy. He couldn't help himself, it was his nature, but the twinkle in his eyes betrayed him as he added, ‘… just as it is my prerogative to dress in funereal fashion.'

‘So it is, and so you must.' Amy laughed and kissed his cheek. It didn't stop her playful nagging, however, just as it didn't stop his enjoyment of the game, for Silas adored the youngest of his three daughters.

Nineteen-year-old Amy had always been her father's favourite, even as a child, although Silas would never have admitted the fact to a living soul. And now that his older daughters, Harriet and Isabel, had left home, Amy was more precious to him than ever. He dreaded the day when she too would fly the nest, abandoning him to a solitary widower's existence.
But he was resigned to the inevitability of such a fate. Unlike a number of his contemporaries who had lost their wives, he was not one to keep a daughter standing by as a servant to nurse him into old age. Besides, Amy did not want for suitors; it would be only a matter of time before one would claim her heart. She was not as striking as her sisters it was true, but she was pleasing in appearance, and her feisty streak of independence, which aroused in Silas a strange combination of pride and concern, was found attractive by many. Then of course there was the prospect of her substantial inheritance. In a place such as Hobart Town where scoundrels and opportunists abounded, a young woman like Amy Stanford, with or without physical attributes, was considered a worthy prize. Silas trusted implicitly in his daughter's strength of character and sound commonsense, but he was nonetheless on the constant look-out for any who might seek to take advantage.

Upon reaching the intersection of Campbell Street, Silas halted and looked down towards Macquarie Street and the hustle and bustle of the harbour, where the cries of the hawkers could clearly be heard ringing out from Fishermen's Dock. On any given day, there were vessels of all descriptions sitting at the docks, or resting at anchor, or working the harbour waters: whalers and merchant ships, fishing boats and barges. They might be the powerful ocean-going barques and ketches and clippers and schooners, all with masts towering above the highest of the nearby stone warehouses, or they might be the smaller boats and ferries that plied the river trade. Hobart Town revolved around the hub of its harbour, and the dockside was under constant development to increase its capacity. The newly created Constitution Dock was completed only three years previously.

Silas continued to gaze down at the harbour, oblivious to the traps and the drays and the pedestrians passing by as he watched the road gang of convict labourers. Work never ceased on the foreshore, and the next stage of dockland reclamation was well under way. The men toiled in silence like mindless beasts, paying no heed whatsoever to the brutal barks of their overseers. They were plainly accustomed to being cursed like dogs. Silas, as always, found the sight and the sound offensive. Little wonder, he thought, that spirits have been broken and
souls lost here, for European settlement has brought to this paradise everything that is base in mankind.

Well, all that is about to change, he told himself with a surge of satisfaction. Oh yes indeed. Changes were most definitely afoot in Van Diemen's Land, and not a moment too soon!

He crossed the road and walked on down Lower Collins Street and, by the time he reached the junction of Sun Street, he found that he was holding his breath. He always avoided inhaling deeply when he visited the suburb of Wapping, but today, in the heat of early December and with a strong southerly breeze, the stench from the Hobart Town Rivulet was particularly disgusting. More so than ever to Silas, because he had recently returned from his property in the southern midlands, where the air was pure and the river waters pristine.

He turned left into the narrow lane where Polly Jordan lived and, unable to hold his breath any longer, reluctantly exhaled to breathe in the stench of rotting animal parts and sewage and all the other forms of putrid matter that was washed down the rivulet from the abattoirs and households and mills upstream, only to end in Wapping.

The surface of the narrow laneway, which for much of the year was a soggy, muddy mess, particularly when the rivulet flooded as it often did, had dried in the summer sun, and several scruffy little girls were playing hopscotch in the dust. Silas scowled. They should have been at school. Women leant against the doorways of conjoined tin shanties and squalid wooden huts, gossiping and enjoying the pleasant weather, seemingly mindless of the fearful stench. In deference to their feelings, Silas resisted the urge to hold a kerchief to his nose. Instead, he tipped the brim of his hat as he passed by. They waved. ‘Allo Mr Stanford,' one of them called. The women of Wapping knew Silas Stanford, just as Silas Stanford knew them.

To Silas, Wapping epitomised the shameful dichotomy that was Hobart Town. Here, where the rivulet wound its way into the Derwent, the muddy streets and the network of poverty-ridden back alleys and lanes were little more than a cesspit, while barely a half a mile to the west were the grand homes of the prosperous and powerful. Silas, in his mission to help redress the balance in whatever way he could, was today making one of his many routine house calls on behalf of the
Hobart Town Businessmen's Philanthropic Society. A whaler by the name of Albert Jordan had died accidentally six weeks before and had been buried at sea. The society was providing his pregnant widow with a monthly rental allowance and weekly supplies of fresh rations for her children.

Polly Jordan's poky tin shack was at the far end of the lane, and its front door opened directly onto the street, where two boys were squatting in the dirt playing marbles. Upon his approach, Silas recognised the older boy.

‘Charlie Jordan,' he said sternly, ‘you should be in school.'

‘Oh. Hullo, Mr Stanford.' Nine-year-old Charlie scrambled respectfully to his feet. His mother's instructions had been well drummed into him for the past month.

‘I want you nice and proper, whenever anyone comes from the society, Charlie,' Polly had ordered, ‘your best behaviour, mind. They're good people that lot and they deserve our respect.' Her son had correctly read the warning to mean:
We need that lot, Charlie. Don't go messing things up
.

It had been Silas himself who had founded the Hobart Businessmen's Philanthropic Society five years previously, but most people had lost sight of the fact. Bigger names than his had attached themselves to the cause, many for the purposes of self-promotion, which did not in the least bother Silas. So long as they offered money along with their names, he was perfectly happy for them to reap whatever benefit they wished.

Respectful though Charlie's manner was, the boy didn't appear too dismayed at being caught playing truant.

‘I haven't been able to go to school, Mr Stanford. I've had the grippe something awful this past week.' He gave a pathetic cough to emphasise the fact, then before any further discussion could take place he charged for the open front door. ‘I'll tell Ma you're here,' he called as he disappeared, and the shriek of ‘Ma! Mr Stanford's here!' echoed back out into the lane.

Silas looked down at the urchin still squatting in the dust. ‘You should be in school too,' he said.

The urchin grinned back with a cheeky arrogance. His dad was a fish-hawker and his mum was a washerwoman: they didn't need handouts from the HBPS do-gooders.

‘Hullo, Mr Stanford.' Polly Jordan was at the front door in an instant. ‘How nice to see you; do come in.' She smiled a
welcome that was meant to be winsome, but her once-pretty face was weathered well beyond her twenty-nine years, and two missing front teeth did nothing to help, although they gave her a girlish lisp, which was strangely coquettish.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Jordan. Thank you.'

She stood to one side and he edged his way past, trying not to make contact, but she was so hugely with child it was difficult to avoid her altogether as he clutched his top hat to his chest. She seemed to have grown to twice the size in the month since he'd last seen her. He wished she would take more pains to cover her condition; the cotton dress, which was designed to hang loosely, clung to her distended belly in a most distracting fashion. He wondered whether he might suggest Amy bring a smock with her when she next visited the household, although perhaps that would be insensitive.

‘Sit down, Mr Stanford, do.' Polly indicated the mothy armchair, which had clearly been her husband's and which dominated the tiny room, then she plonked herself heavily onto the small hardback chair that sat beside the rickety table where upturned packing cases formed the remainder of the family's seating arrangements. A little girl of around four was perched on one, solemnly watching the proceedings, and an eighteen-month-old infant lay sleeping in a cradle, also assembled from the wood of packing cases. There was no sign of Charlie, who'd ducked out the back door into the rear of the neighbouring house, and was currently making his way through to the front lane to resume his game of marbles.