by Alan Rimmer
He recalled: “It was a place where they rested and held meetings to discuss things. They’d probably been doing it for thousands of years. I think it was a holy place as well. They would often sit on their haunches in circles and sort of chant for hours at a time. As the months went by I became familiar with most of the little tribes that used the spot and even started to pick up some of the lingo. They were nice, dignified people. Simple, I suppose. But noble as well. They were called the Tjarutja and they told me that this was their land, but that I was very welcome to stay.”
One day Murdo arrived at the crossing to find the aborigines in an extremely agitated state. He recalled: “They were all wound up and kept pointing into the desert. Charlie, one of the elders explained that a large party of men, soldiers, had arrived on a train in the early hours of the morning. The whole lot had then taken off into the desert.
“‘Where to?’ I said.
“Charlie pointed down a dirt track that led into the desert. Then he started stamping his feet and shaking all over. He was obviously trying to tell me something, but I was blowed if I knew what.”
The mystery was solved a couple of hours later when the freight train with the water and provisions arrived. As the water was transferred to a bowser in the back of his truck, Murdo got talking to one of the drivers. He told him about the soldiers and how nervous the aborigines were.
Murdo recalled: “The driver said there had been talk of a big new army base far out in the desert. It was supposed to be at a place called Maralinga. ‘Maralinga means thunder field,’ he said. ‘It’s one of their sacred sites. That’s why they’re so agitated. They don’t like people interfering with their spirits.’”
The next time Murdo went to the crossing there was no sign of the aborigines. They had just melted away into the desert. But there were plenty of signs of other activity. The ground, normally just featureless desert, had recently been churned up by a lot of heavy traffic. There were large tyre tracks and heavy boot prints everywhere. A lot of men and equipment had clearly landed at this remote outpost. And as far as Murdo could make out they were all heading in one direction: the place the aborigines called Maralinga.
Murdo was intrigued and asked around when the next freight train drew in, but other than the fact they were mainly British soldiers, no-one seemed to know anything. The guardsman on the train told him it was all ‘hush-hush’ and that he shouldn’t ask questions.
This, of course, only made Murdo want to find out what was going on even more. He could sense an opportunity. Soldiers, lots of them, and equipment; he could smell there was money to be made. Things at Coober Pedy had not gone to plan. He never found a single opal lying around. He realised he wasn’t going to make a fortune there. It was time to move on. He discussed it with Wally that night and they decided to head off to Maralinga and find out what it was all about.
Murdo recalled: “A week later we took off into the desert with just a few days supplies in the back of the Land Rover. We didn’t really know where we were going; we just followed the rough road which went more or less in a straight line west. Just before sundown on the first day, we saw a large aircraft flying quite low and heading into the desert just south of us. We took a left into the brush and followed. The plane seemed to come down about 20 miles ahead.
“We camped for the night and headed off in the morning. The terrain became harsher as we travelled. It was all low scrub and saltbush. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go there and was beginning to think we had got it wrong. We came across this huge flat plain of white limestone stretching away to the north as far as the eye could see.
Slap in the middle was a town of tents and wooden huts that didn’t appear on any map I knew off. On the edge of the town was an airstrip. We followed the road until we came to a sort of border post. Two guards ran out waving their guns and shouting at us to get out of the vehicle.
“We put our hands up, just like the cowboys, and then we burst out laughing at the thought. This seemed to break the ice because one of the soldiers suddenly grinned and put his gun down. We were taken to a guard house while we waited for an officer to arrive.
They wouldn’t answer any of our questions, but one of the lads, a Geordie, said they were all sick of the heat and the flies. I remember saying to him that he should try living in a rabbit hole in an opal mine, and he laughed. Eventually this officer arrived. He took one look at us and barked: ‘This is a restricted area. You could have been shot. Who told you to come here? What’s your business?’
“‘Whoa, whoa,’’’ I said. ‘We’re only looking for work.’
“The officer said it was a military camp and off-limits to civilians. It looked as though we were going to get the bums’ rush until I mentioned the aborigines and how upset they had been.
“The officer looked sharply at me. ‘You speak aboriginal?’
“’Sure do,’” I replied with more confidence than I felt. ‘Like a native.’
“The officer considered this for a while before saying, ‘And what do you do?’
“‘I’m a driver, Sir, says I, hoping to impress. ‘A good one. Been driving in the desert for years.’
“He grunted and nodded toward Wally. ‘And you?’
“Wally said he was a labourer with a good strong pair of hands. We told the officer, who turned out to be a captain, about our adventures gold prospecting in the bush and how we had ended up in Coober Pedy.
“Our voices were drowned out at that moment as another aircraft, a large freighter rumbled in toward the airstrip. ‘Well, there’s certainly plenty of work,’ said the officer more to himself than anything else. He seemed to come to a decision.
“‘Sergeant,’ he barked. ‘Give them a cuppa while I decide what’s what.’ With that he jumped into his Jeep and drove back off into the main camp. ‘You’re in,’ said the sergeant cheerfully. ‘But you might learn to regret it.’
“It was a funny thing to say, and I asked him what the camp was all about. Suddenly the sergeant lost his good humour.
“‘One thing you’ve got to learn about this place is that you never ask questions,’” he said, very sternly. ‘Start being nosey and they’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks. You got that?’”
The two men were taken into the camp where they were put to work with a contingent of about 40 civilian workers who did general labour duties, building huts, roads and runway repairs.
Murdo was put on border duties, mainly because of his knowledge of aboriginal, and spent his time patrolling the outer limits of the camp that separated the area from the rest of the featureless desert. They were warned several times about the need for secrecy and the dire consequences of talking to “outsiders” about what they had seen.
Murdo learned to keep his mouth shut, and his eyes and ears open. And it wasn’t long before he found out what Maralinga was all about.
Its official, that is to say British, name, was the sinister-sounding X200. It was a 450-square mile area of flat saltbush and desert that bore ample traces of the ocean that once covered it. Wave marks stretched into the distance and there were millions of fossil shell fragments.
X200 was the place chosen to be the test site for a series of atomic bombs the British planned to detonate later in the year. As the time for the tests approached, Murdo was assigned a job as a driver, taxiing sentries and officers on patrol far out into the desert in search of aborigines who wandered into the area. Many did, and Murdo’s knowledge of the language was a great asset in persuading the gentle people to leave.
His pal Wally, meanwhile, was given a job labouring with the construction workers who were rapidly building the new town which would eventually house thousands of servicemen.
Gradually the small town took shape. There were main streets with comforting, homely names like London Road, and Belfast Crescent. A post office, a hospital, several chapels, and a cinema were thrown up in double quick time.
In due course a football pitch was added as well as
a barbers shop, two beer gardens, laboratories and workshops. There was even a VIP dining room with a grand piano which the officers gathered around to smoke cigars and enjoy a beer. The three-mile airstrip doubled as a cricket pitch and the entrance to the terminal was planted with white flowers flown in from England.
Murdo enjoyed himself immensely in the months before the testing began. He revelled in the pioneering spirit of the place. Unlike many of the arrivals he was already hardened to the tough and remorseless conditions. His specialist knowledge of the terrain soon made him indispensable to the soldiers of the royal engineers who toiled far out in the desert preparing suitable test sites.
A civil construction company was used to carry out the work at main camp, but Murdo, as far as he knew, was the only civilian allowed near the forward areas where the bombs were to be tested.
The scientific staff began arriving in July 1956, flown straight into X200 rather than train via Watson Siding. Murdo’s services were increasingly in demand as teams of scientists demanded transport up to the forward areas to check out the lie of the land.
Murdo recalled the days with fondness: “I wasn’t worried about the bombs going off. In fact I was looking forward to seeing them. In the meantime I enjoyed driving round the desert and talking to the officers and I was interested in the preparations at ground zero in a place called One Tree, about 12 miles north of the town.
They had built a little town there where everything seemed to be in miniature. There were even dummies inside the houses to make it look as though real people were sitting at home having tea or a meal.”
Half-way through September 1956 there was a flurry of activity. Air traffic increased and there was a general air of expectation. Murdo was busier than ever ferrying assorted boffins out to One Tree and other sites. He remembered one man in particular. He arrived in the company of two very senior officers and an armed guard.
Murdo took a keen interest in the new arrival: “He was obviously a big-wig, the way they fussed around him. I learned later he was Sir William Penney, the top scientist, the man in charge of the whole shebang. He was pudgy, a bit on the heavy side, and he stood apart from the others.
“I remember him looking into the desert, the sunlight gleaming off his spectacles. It seemed to me he was lonely. But he must have had a sense of humour because there was a poster cartoon of him hanging in the officer‘s mess. It showed him carrying a little bag with the words, ‘atoms, plenty of ‘em’, written on the side.”
Penney’s arrival signalled the beginning of a series of four large atomic explosions between 27th September and October 22nd. The first, a Hiroshima-sized device detonated from a tower, was witnessed by Murdo from his Land Rover about 8 miles away. With him were two scientists, both clothed from head to toe in white protective overalls, complete with gas masks.
Murdo said: “I was dressed as I always was, short-sleeved shirt and shorts, but I didn’t think anything of it. I just thought, they must know what they are doing. I distinctly remember the ground shaking as the bomb went off. It was just after dawn and the sky was still dark, but suddenly the whole place lit up like it was noon.
“It was an amazing sight. I just stared at it open-mouthed. It was red and black and I remember thinking how dirty it looked. Funnily enough I wasn’t scared; I just marvelled at it.
“Even when I was told to drive toward the explosion, some time later, it didn’t twig that I might be in any danger. The mushroom cloud had dissipated by the time we arrived near ground zero. The scientists hopped out and very quickly collected some instruments and brought them back to the Jeep in special bags. Then I was told to high-tail it back to base. It was quite exciting.”
He spent most of the following day running different groups of personnel into the contaminated areas. The awesome power of an atomic explosion was all too evident as he drove around the scorched landscape, raising clouds of dust wherever he went.
Surplus cars, trucks and other equipment had been seared and twisted into almost unrecognisable shapes. He particularly remembered a Centurion tank that was fused into the red desert sand. Hastily constructed huts and concrete bunkers had been blasted out of existence. The desert near ground zero had been turned into a sea of glass, while a pall of sand and dust drifted about.
A task he took no pleasure in was helping round up the fear-maddened animals that had been tethered on the outer edges of the explosion area for the scientists to examine. Many of the unfortunate creatures, including rabbits, chickens, sheep and goats, had struggled free in their terror and had to be pursued across the smoking landscape. Those he did catch were in a pitiable condition, their eyes scorched from their sockets, flesh burned from their bones. All had to be bagged and taken back to base.
Later that day, Penney decided to view the bomb site. Murdo was assigned to drive him and his escorts into the contaminated area: “He was, of course, in full protective clothing like the rest of the scientists. He didn’t speak much to me, but he was very courteous. He asked me very politely if I wouldn’t mind taking him to a spot where he could have a good look at the crater. We stopped on the top of this hill about 300 yards away and he got out. He must have stood for an hour, binoculars in his hands, just staring down into the crater.”
Over the next four weeks Maralinga shook and rumbled to the tune of three more massive atomic explosions. The bombs were detonated soon after dawn, collection and retrieval of instruments and equipment just before noon. Later in the year scores of so-called ‘minor trials’ were held in which small nuclear devices were set off. These never made much of a bang, but the scientists seemed a lot more nervous when entering those areas.
Murdo wondered about that, as he wondered about a lot of things…like the strange and disturbing story he overheard about the human beings who had supposedly been brought up in a truck to within two miles of the fourth, and last, of the ‘big bang’s, at One Tree site.
This story was told by three Australian Sappers who arrived back from the range ashen-faced and in need of a drink. They had been checking instruments at One Tree when a truck had pulled up in an isolated spot away from all the activity. Just behind was a Land Rover containing two stern-faced civilians.
The driver of the truck jumped out and joined them in the following vehicle which then sped off back to the camp. The three Australians were curious and went over to have a look. As they got near they were stopped in their tracks by a cacophony of moans and howls emanating from the truck.
At first they thought the vehicle might contain animals, but all soon agreed the sounds came from human throats. ‘Unearthly sounds’ was how one of them described it. It made their hair stand on end, added another over a drink in the beer tent later.
The men got to within about 15-feet of the truck and could clearly see movement inside. But they decided not to investigate further; they were just too afraid of what they might find. Later when they returned to the area to collect their equipment, the truck was in the same place, but no sound came from it.
It was a disturbing tale, and one that gave Murdo a deep sense of unease. It wasn’t made any better when later the three Australians abruptly disappeared. According to one of the squaddies they had been sent for in the night and hadn’t been seen nor heard from since.
The incident added to the sense of gloom Murdo was beginning to experience about Maralinga. Other incidents only served to heighten this sense of foreboding. Like the day he found a dingo mother which had just given birth to six pups in the contaminated area.
None of the pups appeared to have any eyes and most were missing limbs. The mother, whose fur was hanging limply from her flanks, barked feebly at Murdo as he approached, but was too weak to run away. Murdo destroyed them and buried their bodies in the sand.
Then there was the time he came across a patrol that had a rounded up a small family of aborigines who had wandered into the prohibited zone. The little family, comprising three adults and two children appeared to be in a bad way. Their feet w
ere cut and blistered and there were running sores on their legs. They were upset because the soldiers who found them had shot their two dogs.
Murdo learned the family had been found camping in one of the bomb craters. He was ordered to take them back to camp. On the way they vomited profusely and were obviously in a bad way. They told him they had lost two members of their family out in the desert and that there were more sick people wandering about.
The family was later sent to Darwin, a major town in the north. When Murdo asked after them, a sergeant major informed him brusquely the family had been taken to the ‘leprosarium,’ a large leper colony on a little island just off-shore.
Murdo spent more than a year at Maralinga by which time he had had enough. He’d had enough of the heat and the dust and the desert; he’d had enough of fear-maddened animals and burnt-out buildings and sick human beings. Maralinga had become a cursed place for him and he longed for the green grass and rolling hills of Scotland.
He wanted to feel a cold, salty wind on his face…and most of all he wanted rain, clean, sparkling rain. Murdo decided he was going to leave and he told Wally at the earliest opportunity. Wally wished him luck, but said he was going to stay on for another year to save more money
Later that month, with dire warnings from an officer of what would happen to him if he disclosed any of Maralinga‘s secrets, Murdo joined a small troop of soldiers and civilians bound for Adelaide. Wally came to see him off: “Wally had been a good mate, we’d been through a lot together and I was sorry to leave him behind,” Murdo said.
“I could understand him wanting to stay on because the money was good and we’d both saved quite a bit. Wally said he wanted enough to buy a garage business when he got home. But I just wanted to get away. We shook hands and I left. I never saw Wally again and often wonder what happened to him.”