Maralinga

Maralinga is a remote region of Southern Australia that was originally the home of the Maralinga Tjarutja people. During the process of colonising Australia, control of the land was taken away from the Maralinga Tjarutja people and given to the Australian government. During the 1950s, the Australian government and the British government worked together to conduct nuclear testing on the land. However, they did not adequately warn the indigenous people in the area about the nuclear testing, leaving them unequipped to deal with the widespread contamination. Additionally, many of the Australian veterans who helped carry out the testing were not provided with effective safety equipment.

After the nuclear tests, the British government worked to decontaminate the region. However, testing conducted later showed that Maralinga was still heavily contaminated with plutonium. A second decontamination was conducted in the year 2000 and partially financed by the British government. This testing showed that Maralinga was safe to inhabit. The region was then returned to the Tjarutja.

Background

Maralinga is a remote region in Southern Australia where the Maralinga Tjarutja people once lived. They are a southern branch of the larger Pitjantjatjara people. As of the twenty-first century, the region was under the jurisdiction of the Aboriginal Council. Historically, control of Maralinga has been a point of contention between the Aboriginal peoples and the Australian government.

During the mid-twentieth century, control of Maralinga was taken away from the Aboriginal Australians by the Australian government. The remote region caught the interest of the government of Britain, along with sites in the Montebello Islands and Emu Field. At the time, the global powers of the world were racing to develop their nuclear weapons technologies. Each believed that the first to perfect such technology would have a significant advantage in future wars. The British government believed that these sites, particularly Maralinga, were perfect places to test nuclear weapons.

The Australian government granted Britain permission to conduct nuclear experiments, and testing began in 1952 on the Montebello Islands. The Australian government intended to use the agreement to foster positive relations with Western European nations. In 1956, Britain began inland testing at Maralinga. Throughout its testing sites, Britain conducted twelve major nuclear trials. Additionally, the country conducted more than two hundred minor trials, with testing lasting until 1963. Many minor trials were aimed at testing the performance of specific weapon components to improve both the safety and efficiency of Western nuclear weapons. However, these tests all involved the combustion of plutonium and the use of large quantities of conventional explosives.

Overview

Plutonium-239, the material used in the tests, is highly carcinogenic to humans. Many of the personnel who carried out these tests were members of the Australian military, who were not properly trained in handling radioactive material. For example, Australian pilots were instructed to fly through mushroom clouds to conduct sampling experiments. However, they were not given proper safety equipment or radiation monitoring equipment. In some cases, pilots were not even offered protective clothing.

Neither the Australian government nor the British government considered how long-term nuclear testing might affect local populations of Aboriginal Australians in Maralinga. Only one naval patrol officer, Walter MacDougall, was responsible for warning Aboriginal peoples across hundreds of thousands of square kilometres about the potential dangers of radiation. For this reason, many Aboriginal peoples were not aware of the dangers presented by nuclear contamination. Some Aboriginal peoples erroneously described experiencing nuclear fallout as a harmless black mist.

When confronted with this reality, some government officials expressed the view that the welfare of a small number of natives should not be placed above the welfare of the British Commonwealth of Nations. However, in 1963, both Britain and Australia signed the United Nations Partial Test Ban Treaty, which made the type of testing conducted at Maralinga illegal. Without a reason to keep their test sites open, Maralinga was officially closed as a government facility in 1967.

Following the conclusion of testing in Maralinga, the British government tried to decontaminate Maralinga in accordance with the science of the time. This included burying contaminated debris and plowing contaminated soil into the ground. However, in the 1980s, the Australian government prepared to transfer ownership of Maralinga back to the Aboriginal peoples to whom it originally belonged. During this process, they found that the area was still heavily contaminated with plutonium.

The Australian government formed a Royal Commission to investigate the nuclear tests. The commission was critical of both the British and Australian governments for their disregard for the lives of the Aboriginal Australians living in Maralinga. The commission recommended that the cost of full decontamination be undertaken by the British government and compensation be paid to the Aboriginal peoples to whom the land rightfully belonged.

In December 1993, the British government agreed to pay twenty million pounds towards the decontamination of Maralinga. However, the full cost of the decontamination process was estimated to be more than one hundred million dollars, far more than Britain’s payment. Additionally, in 1994, the Australian government compensated the people of Maralinga with a one-time payment of 13.5 million dollars.

By 2000, the vast majority of Maralinga had been decontaminated enough that unrestricted access was considered safe. In 2009, the land was officially returned to the Tjarutja people. However, many of the Aboriginal peoples in the Maralinga area, as well as the veterans who helped with the nuclear testing, suffered elevated rates of cancer.

Bibliography

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Tynan, Liz. “Sixty Years On, the Maralinga Bomb Test Reminds Us Not to Put Security Over Safety.” The Conversation, theconversation.com/sixty-years-on-the-maralinga-bomb-tests-remind-us-not-to-put-security-over-safety-62441. Accessed 10 Dec. 2020.