Above the Fold

by Peter Yeldham

  Having left so early, they now stopped for a brief brunch, a sandwich and more water from one of the eskies that had been refilled with ice. Liquid in this stifling heat and dust was essential, Todd stressed, and during this break he spoke about the people they would meet later that day in Emu Junction.

  “Family called Warlapinni, from the Pitjantjatjara tribe. Parents in their thirties and two kids, I was told. My information from Fred Parkin is that if anyone can tell you about secret tests, they might be able to. They ran into some sort of trouble nearly a year ago, but he’s not sure exactly what. Don’t expect much of a place, by the way. From now on we use the tent. Emu is not a town any more, just a collection of shacks, but they live there ‘cos they’ve got nowhere else to go now. The Pitjantjatjara people were kicked out of their tribal land when the first atom tests started there.”

  “Just kicked out?”

  “That’s what I call it,” Todd said. “Rehousing, the government labels it. But what would the bureaucrats in Canberra know? Nomadic people don’t want houses, they want freedom to hunt and fish and go walkabout when the right season comes. Civil servants and pollies can’t seem to grasp an idea like that. Bureaucratic brains aren’t big enough to understand simple folk’s philosophy,” he said, and added with a grin, “the only dreamtime they’d know is if they’re tucked up in a warm bed with a hot sheila.”

  It was 48 degrees Celsius when they reached a cluster of huts and lean-to sheds, all that was left of Emu Junction. This, Luke knew, had been the site of the first two atom bomb tests ten years ago, in October 1953. The tests from where radioactive dust and particles had reached Adelaide, and blown so far across the country that they’d triggered Geiger counters on the east coast. The experts had not allowed for a sudden wind change, and the people of Townsville and Rockhampton were still blithely unaware of their escape. This had been firmly suppressed from public release, and Luke only knew of it from Yuri Nakamura, who’d been told by one of the scientists involved.

  After this mishap the site had been declared remote and unsuitable. It had mainly been a tent town, hastily assembled, and just as easily demolished. All the dwellings and equipment were gone as well as any demountable office buildings, leaving it a desolate place in a bleak terrain. Luke couldn’t help thinking that if his favourite pub in Chelsea was satirically called ‘The World’s End’, this place was a better candidate for the name. There were six flimsy abandoned fibro buildings, with loose corrugated iron roofs that banged noisily in the wind, as well as one old railway carriage that had somehow been transported there, and was now the home of the Warlapinni family.

  Ningurra, a dour man in his late thirties, was sitting on the step of the train carriage, a wafer-thin cigarette dangling from his lips as if it grew there. Indifferent and morose looking, he nodded a vague hello, and showed little surprise at their arrival. He told them to call him Nick.

  “Me wife, Maysie,” he muttered an introduction, as a large woman wearing a shabby dress appeared in the doorway behind him. Their son, Charlie, who was arm-wrestling with some other teenage boys came to view the arrivals, and a skinny daughter, announced as Ita, emerged from the carriage to complete the family. She was about ten years old, with long thin legs, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes shy and cautious of any strangers. They all watched as Todd went to one of the eskies in the back of the Land Rover, and reappeared with packets of tobacco, two boxes of chocolates and a cask of wine.

  Nick’s face perceptibly brightened at the sight of the cellar pack, and a movement of his head suggested they should accompany him inside. The gifts were distributed. The chocolate to the children, a packet each of tobacco and cigarette papers to the parents, and the wine was opened as the adults sat on the floor of the carriage, while Maysie produced four glasses. One of them had formerly been a jam jar, which she gave to her husband, and with a bad tempered frown he promptly gave back to her, taking her glass as if she should’ve known better. She flashed a quick smile at Luke, which made him think this large jovial woman might be slightly better company than her cheerless husband.

  After the drinks were poured Luke told them why he was here, and set up his recorder. During the next few hours he listened and took some notes, while the parents tried to explain what had happened to them. At times it became a difficult four-way conversation, because both the children joined in with their own feelings, and it was clear they were visibly upset as the story unfolded. Sometimes it was so full of clashing emotional voices, that Luke found it hard to follow what was being said. Fortunately Todd spoke enough of their tribal language that he was able to help out with essential interpretations when needed. After they’d finished Luke was stunned. Their story was a breakthrough, an appalling experience, but astonishing and invaluable. He asked if there was a table where he could put his typewriter and make notes. Maysie led him through the railway carriage past bed-rolls and mattresses, the whole place surprisingly neat and tidy, taking him right to the far end where there were chairs and a card table for their meals.

  “Any good?” she asked.

  “Absolutely fine,” he said, and hurried to the Land Rover to collect the portable and typing paper. He settled down to type, aware of, but trying to ignore, the close intent gaze of two fascinated spectators. Charlie had gone out to play, Nick had remained alongside the wine cask, but both Maysie and her daughter sat either side of him at work, leaning forward to watch as he touched the keys that started to magically turn into words filling the pages of paper.

  EMU JUNCTION: November 20th 1963

  Both the Australian and British governments have strenuously denied that any tests or trials have been conducted at Maralinga since the seventh and final atomic bomb was exploded at Taranaki on the 9th of October 1957. On the contrary, a number of secret and illegal trials have been conducted with plutonium in the past three years, and the statement that follows will help to prove this.

  These trials or tests have been given rather insipid cover names such as ‘Vixen’, ‘Kitten’ and ‘Antler’ to convey the impression they were unimportant and harmless assessment programs, which is totally untrue. There were hundreds of nuclear experiments carried out under these infantile names. No journalists were allowed access to this program. No outsiders were empowered to see them.

  It is my impression that Britain called the tune and became a member of the ‘Nuclear Club’. Australia mainly provided the land that should never have been used for this illegal purpose. Both are equally culpable, and both set out to prevent the news of these experiments becoming public. And none of this might ever have been known, had it not been for an accidental encounter, and a humiliating experience suffered by a family from the Pitjantjatjara tribe because of a flaw in the security around a testing site that occurred in January 1963.

  The statement that follows was given to me by members of the Warlapinni family at Emu Junction, South Australia on this day, November 20th 1963.

  Luke removed the page and signed it, then began to set out a record of what he’d heard. This was far more difficult. He tried to concentrate, but their rapt focus was a distraction. And little Ita’s tear-stained face didn’t help. Although he’d had his recorder switched on all the time he chose not to use it in front of them, feeling the sound of their distressed voices would upset them. Instead from memory he composed a precis of all he’d been told. What he needed was a document they could sign as a true and correct record of what had happened to them.

  THIS IS A STATEMENT BY THE FAMILY CONCERNED.

  In January of this year 1963, a family from the Pitjantjatjara tribe consisting of the father, Ningurra (Nick) Warlapinni, his wife Maysie, and their children Charlie and Ita, as well as Ningurra’s sister Wendy and the family’s two pet dogs, were travelling by foot from the Everard Range, and were accidentally found by authorities when they were on a test ground at Taranaki. The time this happened seems to indicate it was during the second round of the Vixen trials.

  The Vixen were classed as ‘minor
’ trials, according to information gathered by the undersigned (Luke Elliott), and were carried out in absolute secrecy, but were not at all ‘minor’ since they involved a great many individual tests, and left a dangerous legacy of radioactive contamination, according to a member of the scientific team. They were conducted between September 1960 and April 1963.

  The family of five were found dangerously close to a crater left by one of these tests, and were making their way unaware that Aboriginal inhabitants of the area had supposedly been warned to remain clear or had been forcibly removed. This family had heard no such warnings: they were under the impression that the ‘black mushroom clouds’ had stopped long ago and there was nothing to fear. Because Vixen was a secret program insufficient security was in place. The family were completely unaware of the danger to their lives, and this treatment accorded them did not help their understanding.

  As Luke typed with Ita’s anxious little face so close alongside him watching the keys create words on the page, he could hear her anguished voice vivid in his mind, tearfully revealing what had happened.

  “They made me take my clothes off. I had to stand there with all the soldiers watching … with nothing on … and … and they hosed me with water and scrubbed me …” she pointed at her groin, “here … and here …” she tapped her bottom, “scrubbed me bum lots of times with a brush. It hurt,” she said, crying, “and they kept on doing it … and some of the soldiers were standing there watching and laughing …”

  “It was done to all of us,” her mother’s voice was calmer as Luke recalled it, “and, yes, they laughed when Ita started to scream. We were all frightened of this machine that they held against our bodies that made a clicking noise. But they shouldn’t have laughed because a little girl was frightened and upset. It wasn’t right or decent to laugh.”

  No, it definitely wasn’t, Luke thought, but this was not a place for him to comment. He just had to record it; his chance for criticism would come later.

  Her husband’s contribution was a grumbled and angry complaint. “The rotten bastards burnt our clothes. Threw ‘em on a fire and just burnt ‘em. Then give us these crap clothes to wear. Bloody awful clothes, might as well have given us wheat sacks or garbage bags.”

  “And then they shot both our dogs,” teenaged Charlie said, “just shot ‘em in front of us. I’d like to fuckin’ shoot them. Just point a gun at the stinkin’ soldiers and kill the lot of ‘em.”

  Ita had joined in the lament about the cold-blooded shooting of their pets, although without her brother’s ferocity. It had been like a nightmare for them, Luke realised, particularly the children, as he tried to describe it, finding it difficult with the smallest victim of this violent treatment so close, her tear-stained face just inches from his typewriter. “I wish they hadn’t killed Joey and Puppy,” she said to him. “Why did they do that?”

  Luke knew why. It was the assumption he’d experienced in Japan with Kaito, the defective belief that radiation could be spread like a germ. It was why their bodies had been scrubbed and perhaps why they’d been tested by a Geiger counter, but he avoided answering her question about the dogs, because she was already distressed enough without being told her pets had been killed unnecessarily. He looked hopefully at Maysie, who must have read his message, for she picked up her daughter and sat her down on a chair to allow Luke to continue typing.

  When the authorities discovered them the family were immediately taken to a decontamination centre, told to strip off their clothes and were hosed and scrubbed. On the orders of the Commonwealth Department of the Army the two dogs were promptly shot. This caused the children of the family great distress, but my purpose here was to gather evidence, not criticise the treatment.

  Mr Warlapinni’s sister, Wendy, who accompanied them, was pregnant at the time, and was taken to hospital in Yalata. Or perhaps in Maralinga, the family were not sure, because the name Maralinga was not one of their original names. It was imposed by the British.

  The baby was born dead, and as far as the family know, the sister has been detained and is still being treated and kept for observation in hospital. It means she has been there for about nine months since admission, and the family are very frightened about what has happened to her. They are unable to visit her because of the distance and lack of transport or funds, and have had no further word of her condition from the army or nuclear authority. When they tried to ask, the question was passed from one department to another, and no reply was ever given. It is clear that this Aboriginal family, innocent trespassers on an experiment they knew nothing about, are being treated with disrespect that borders on contempt.

  As the authority claims that the seventh and final atom bomb exploded at Maralinga in October 1957 was the last of their program, the experience of the Warlapinni family appears to prove that the British have been engaged in secret and illegal plutonium trials at Maralinga since that time, and these have been proceeding without any public notification. The still-born child and the long hospitalisation of Wendy Warlapinni require a thorough investigation. That it was felt necessary to shoot the family dogs to the great distress of the children is another question that deserves an answer, but seems highly unlikely to get one.

  After completing this Luke had a problem. Should he read it to them? The two children in particular had been deeply disturbed by the memory. He hesitated after checking for typing errors, and saw the dark eyes of the mother watching him. It seemed as if she could sense his dilemma, for her gaze moved to her daughter, then back to Luke again. That was when she nodded slightly, and held out her hand for a biro, gesturing that she would sign the document.

  Luke nodded and placed it on the table for her. She made a sign on the bottom of the last page. It was not exactly a cross, but something that to her was a signature, and Luke signed his name alongside it. Then they took it to her husband, who was half asleep beside the depleted wine cask. His wife spoke abruptly to him when he muttered what seemed like a protest, and she handed him the biro and indicated that he should do what she’d done. His mark was a heavy cross that almost tore the page, and Luke signed over this. It was the best he could hope for, and was a great deal more than he’d expected. Not that it was enough, but it was a start, and there was no longer any doubt. The British–Australian tests were in violation of the International Agreement. Lies had been told in Westminster and Canberra. And the paper on which he’d typed their story was a vital piece of evidence that could help substantiate his book. But if it fell into the wrong hands, it could bring him nothing but trouble.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  They saw the helicopter for the first time about an hour after leaving Emu Junction the next morning. It had been a long exhausting afternoon and a stressful night, their first time using the tent and sleeping bags. Luke felt deeply concerned about the children. The treatment had been unnecessarily brutal; whatever might have been needed, like the washing of their bodies and the checking by Geiger counter, could have been with some privacy, and certainly with a great deal more humanity and less derision. Instead the whole experience had been traumatic — the way the family been taken into custody by soldiers who’d abruptly surrounded them and behaved like storm troopers, the lack of explanation, the unkind and mocking laughter at their fear and timidity.

  A simple explanation would have helped. It seemed the men had no concept of the humiliation they were imposing. After being ordered to stand outside and let the sun dry them (there were no towels available for the purpose) the family were handed army fatigues to wear, and their own scraps of clothing were burnt in front of them, without them being told why.

  “Makes you wonder why they had to behave like such bastards,”

  Luke said, appalled by the children’s distress.

  “We can guess why,” said Todd. “The soldiers were pissed off. Angry. They were supposed to clear the area, and make sure it stayed clear. They did a shoddy and careless job, and got caught by their own laziness so they took it out on the family. Mebb
e that’s a jaundiced view, but it’s what I reckon.”

  “I think you’re right,” Luke said. All the rough treatment, plus the dead child and disappearance of their auntie was difficult enough for a ten-year-old nomadic little girl to cope with, but apart from her flood of tears it was her brother who was more affected by the recounting of what had happened. He was too upset and angry to sleep. Much of this anger was shouted in his own language, and later when they were alone, trying to get some rest in the heat and discomfort of the tent, Todd was able to summarise what the boy had been saying. It was a series of fierce threats against the army and the police.

  “He wanted to kill them all. This was serious violent rage. Out of control stuff. It was a really terrible experience for his family, and he’s one disturbed kid who needs some care and close attention, which he’s not getting. And I’m afraid will never get. That dopey bloody father sits smoking and brooding, his anger is all bottled up. The wife’s about the only one of them who’s got a clue and can even crack a smile. The girl’s sad for the loss of her dogs and confused at why she had to be manhandled and scrubbed like that. It was intrusive, for her it was almost like a rape. I hope she’ll get over it, though I’m not sure she will. But that boy, in a few years he’s going to head off from that dump, go to Adelaide or somewhere looking for trouble. And what then? People will just call him a bloody Abo when he does something damn stupid, and ends up in jail.”

  “I’m sorry I had to put them through it again,” Luke said. “It’s a disgrace the way they’ve been treated. No follow-up, as if they were of no account whatever.”