Antinuclear

Australia’s Maralinga veterans and Aboriginals paid the price for nuclear bomb testing

Finally they can heal together, Adelaide Now, Bryan Littlely, From:The Advertiser, November 12, 2011 THEY are snapshots from a secret time. An insight into a life in one of the harshest and most secure places in Australia. The men who took these photographs at Maralinga during the series of British nuclear testing and clean-up from 1952 to 1967 carry them proudly. Most also carry another legacy of this land and the controversial atomic testing that went on here.

Cancers and other conditions linked to the radiation, plutonium, burilium-laced lands that were left after the testing has claimed the lives of many of the men who were at Maralinga. In 1985, a survey found that of the 12,500 people involved in the British nuclear testing program in Australia, 11,000 had died. Hundreds of Maralinga-Tjarutja people were also forced from their homeland during the testing.

Few of the veterans remain today but the handful who have gone back to Maralinga for the Remembrance Day reunion have done so with the blessing of the traditional owners, so the two groups of people for
whom Section 400 is so significant can heal together…. Australian Nuclear Veterans Association founder Avon Hudson, the Maralinga whistleblower and advocate for compensation claims for the men, said there were only about 50 members of that association left.

“We’re nearly buggered … most of our members are old buggers like me and we are dropping off the perch,” Mr Hudson, 74, said. “We can get a bit of healing coming back here. It brings back a lot of sad memories because almost all my mates are dead but it is mixed feelings because I have a lot of good memories, too.”…
“We were sent on to that Taranaki ground zero site to test some stuff… nobody knew it was contaminated,” he said…..
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/finally-they-can-heal-together/story-e6frea83-1226193206591

November 13, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, health, South Australia, weapons and war | South Australia