Antinuclear

Maralinga atomic testing :The Anangu Story

Maralinga: The Anangu Story 50 years ago secret atomic tests were carried out on Australian soil at a place called “Maralinga” in north–western South Australia.
The traditional Aboriginal communities of the region were to be moved for their own safety but somehow they were covered in radioactive fallout. Some of the local Anangu people suffered radiation poisoning and died and many are still enduring the effects of that toxic exposure today.

Maralinga: The Anangu Story ABC Television   – Message Stick 18 Oct 09 Earlier this year a book of stories and paintings depicting the horrendous results of the testing was published in South Australia. It details those stories, of when the bombs came, first hand……………………

PAULINE CLAGUE: From 1953 to 1963, British forces, alongside the Australian services, carried out seven series of atomic tests in an area that was originally an Aboriginal reserve for the Pitjantjatjara and the Gugada Peoples of the Great Victoria Desert. Named Maralinga, a Yolngu name for thunder, it was chosen because it was desert land that was considered uninhabited. The power of the A-bombs detonated in the series of tests was equivalent to 100,000 tonnes of explosives. The most secretive series were called “the minor trials”, but there was nothing minor about these experiments. Nearly 700 trials of air and land missile strikes were tested over the decade. They released 100kg of radioactive and toxic elements on Anangu land……………………
YVONNE EDWARDS…………….: He, like all the men who’ve been worked here, they’re all finished now. My husband got lung cancer. Before that he had trouble with the eye, he couldn’t see properly. He had cancer all over his lung, and it was spreading fast. Sometimes I cry at night. I think my mother, great grandmother, they’re all gone. My aunties, uncles, they was young, they all died. Just like us here now in our 50s, we got nobody over 60s or 70s in that community. Even people died when they was young. I lost a sister when she was in her 20s from cancer. I lost an uncle, 40s, from cancer. My auntie died from cancer……..

CHRISTOBEL MATTINGLEY:: The story of the injustices to the Aboriginal people, the Anangu people, through the Maralinga atomic testing are not widely known or remembered now

Message Stick – Maralinga: The Anangu Story

October 20, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, aboriginal issues, South Australia | aboriginal, antinuclear, Australia, Maralinga, nuclear, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, radioactive, South Australia