An international tribute to nuclear-free warrior, Dr Helen Caldicott
My Six Mentors, “…….Helen Caldicott, MD, by Mary Olson, Gender and Radiation Impact Project, 1 January 20121
Helen Caldicott deserves a much greater place in our histories of the Cold War and ending the USA / USSR arms race than she generally gets. This is, perhaps, because she is powerful and a woman. A pediatrician, who in the 1970’s would not tolerate the radioactive fallout she and her patients were suffering from nuclear weapons tests in Australia, Helen and her family came to the USA. She and another physician named Ira Helfand revived what had been a local Boston organization of physicians and created a Nobel Prize winning organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), which later participated in the creation of another Nobel Prize winning group, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). These two along with hundreds of other organizations committed to peace and nuclear disarmament formed the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) which has helped to create the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (see http://icanw.org/the-treaty ) and also won the Nobel Prize (2017).
Helen herself is a powerful communicator and will move audiences at a level that can change the course of someone’s life and work. She followed her own destiny to winning meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union, where she educated him about Nuclear Winter and the fact that nuclear is not a war that anyone can win. She also met with President Reagan in the era and diagnosing early-stage dementia… Her ability to bring the reality of the world to these men, and reality of these men to the world set her aside, in a class by herself—and was an enormous contribution to us all.
I first met Helen in the body of her Cold War block-buster book “Nuclear Madness.” I was in the midst of an existential crisis that could have become an even bigger health crisis. After college I needed a job (not yet a career) because I was broke, broken up from my first “true” love, and far from home. I got a job as a research assistant in a lab at a prestigious medical school; it was 1984.
Within 2 weeks, I was inadvertently contaminated with radioactivity (without my knowledge) by carelessness of a lab-mate. The radioactive material, Phosphorus-32 is used in research to trace biochemical activity in living organisms. This type of radioactivity is not deeply penetrating, so there was some reason not to panic, however the I was exposed continuously for over a week, and I also found radioactivity at home– my toothbrush was “hot”—so I had also had some level of internal exposure. I was terrified. The lab used concentrations of the tracer thousands of times higher than is typical.
The institution told me there was no danger, but because I was upset, they helped me transfer to a different job. No accident report was filed, and in the midst of transition, my radiation detection badge was never processed. It is not possible to know the dimensions of my exposure—I began having symptoms that were not normal for me. Many people, including some family members told me I was imagining things. No one in my circle understood how terrified I was.
I was fortunate that Helen had already written “Nuclear Madness”—the first edition came out in 1978, just before the March 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in Harrisburg PA—an event that propelled the book into multiple printings including a Bantam Paperback edition that I found. It turned out that 7 years later I helped Helen to revise and update the same text for the 1994 WW Norton edition. It was Helen’s deep commitment to truth, to speaking and writing that truth, to empowering people to take action for good. Helen’s words accurately described radiation and its potential for harm, and in my panic about the unknown, this calmed me.
Every other authority I had encountered was trying to tell me there was no problem—when I knew they had no right to dismiss what had happened to me. I am quite certain that had I remained alone with my fear, despair, and confusion my panic would have resulted in behaviors that would have compounded any harm bodily from that radioactive contamination. Reading Helen’s work let me know there was at least one woman walking the Earth who did know what I was going through… it made it possible for me to choose recovery and walk away from a legal battle that would have forced me to maintain, hold and prove a myself a victim. Instead, following in Helen’s wake, I chose Peaceful Warrior. Thank you Helen! : ……….. https://www.genderandradiation.org/blog/2020/12/31/my-six-mentors
January 1, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, personal stories | Leave a comment
315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific
315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific, https://theconversation.com/315-nuclear-bombs-and-ongoing-suffering-the-shameful-history-of-nuclear-testing-in-australia-and-the-pacific-148909, Tilman Ruff, Associate Professor, Education and Learning Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health, School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Dimity Hawkins, PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology
November 3, 2020 The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received its 50th ratification on October 24, and will therefore come into force in January 2021. A historic development, this new international law will ban the possession, development, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.Unfortunately the nuclear powers — the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — haven’t signed on to the treaty. As such, they are not immediately obliged to help victims and remediate contaminated environments, but others party to the treaty do have these obligations. The shifting norms around this will hopefully put ongoing pressure on nuclear testing countries to open records and to cooperate with accountability measures. For the people of the Pacific region, particularly those who bore the brunt of nuclear weapons testing during the 20th century, it will bring a new opportunity for their voices to be heard on the long-term costs of nuclear violence. The treaty is the first to enshrine enduring commitments to addressing their needs. From 1946, around 315 nuclear tests were carried out in the Pacific by the US, Britain and France. These nations’ largest ever nuclear tests took place on colonised lands and oceans, from Australia to the Marshall Islands, Kiribati to French Polynesia. The impacts of these tests are still being felt today. All nuclear tests cause harm Studies of nuclear test workers and exposed nearby communities around the world consistently show adverse health effects, especially increased risks of cancer. The total number of global cancer deaths as a result of atmospheric nuclear test explosions has been estimated at between 2 million and 2.4 million, even though these studies used radiation risk estimates that are now dated and likely underestimated the risk. The number of additional non-fatal cancer cases caused by test explosions is similar. As confirmed in a large recent study of nuclear industry workers in France, the UK and US, the numbers of radiation-related deaths due to other diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, is also likely to be similar. Britain conducted 12 nuclear test explosions in Australia between 1952 and 1957, and hundreds of minor trials of radioactive and toxic materials for bomb development up to 1963. These caused untold health problems for local Aboriginal people who were at the highest risk of radiation. Many of them were not properly evacuated, and some were not informed at all. We may never know the full impact of these explosions because in many cases, as the Royal Commission report on British Nuclear Tests in Australia found in 1985: “the resources allocated for Aboriginal welfare and safety were ludicrous, amounting to nothing more than a token gesture”. But we can listen to the survivors.
His daughter, Karina Lester, is an ambassador for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Australia, and continues to be driven by her family’s experience. She writes: For decades now my family have campaigned and spoken up against the harms of nuclear weapons because of their firsthand experience of the British nuclear tests […] Many Aboriginal people suffered from the British nuclear tests that took place in the 1950s and 1960s and many are still suffering from the impacts today. More than 16,000 Australian workers were also exposed. A key government-funded study belatedly followed these veterans over an 18-year period from 1982. Despite the difficulties of conducting a study decades later with incomplete data, it found they had 23% higher rates of cancer and 18% more deaths from cancers than the general population. An additional health impact in Pacific island countries is the toxic disease “ciguatera”, caused by certain microscopic plankton at the base of the marine food chain, which thrive on damaged coral. Their toxins concentrate up the food chain, especially in fish, and cause illness and occasional deaths in people who eat them. In the Marshall Islands, Kiritimati and French Polynesia, outbreaks of the disease among locals have been associated with coral damage caused by nuclear test explosions and the extensive military and shipping infrastructure supporting them. Pacific survivors of nuclear testing haven’t been focused solely on addressing their own considerable needs for justice and care; they’ve been powerful advocates that no one should suffer as they have ever again, and have worked tirelessly for the eradication of nuclear weapons. It’s no surprise independent Pacific island nations are strong supporters of the new treaty, accounting for ten of the first 50 ratifications. Negligence and little accountabilitySome nations that have undertaken nuclear tests have provided some care and compensation for their nuclear test workers; only the US has made some provisions for people exposed, though only for mainland US residents downwind of the Nevada Test Site. No testing nation has extended any such arrangement beyond its own shores to the colonised and minority peoples it put in harm’s way. Nor has any testing nation made fully publicly available its records of the history, conduct and effects of its nuclear tests on exposed populations and the environment. These nations have also been negligent by quickly abandoning former test sites. There has been inadequate clean-up and little or none of the long-term environmental monitoring needed to detect radioactive leakage from underground test sites into groundwater, soil and air. One example among many is the Runit concrete dome in the Marshall Islands, which holds nuclear waste from US testing in the 1940s and 50s. It’s increasingly inundated by rising sea levels, and is leaking radioactive material. The treaty provides a light in a dark time. It contains the only internationally agreed framework for all nations to verifiably eliminate nuclear weapons. It’s our fervent hope the treaty will mark the increasingly urgent beginning of the end of nuclear weapons. It is our determined expectation that our country will step up. Australia has not yet ratified the treaty, but the bitter legacy of nuclear testing across our country and region should spur us to join this new global effort. |
|
November 3, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, personal stories, reference, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment
A mixed blessing – the sudden departure of Australia’s nuclear high priest, Dr Adi Paterson
I am reminded of Hilaire Belloc’s advice to the young – ”Always keep a hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse”.
Among other sycophantic tributes, Dr Adi Paterson is lauded for encouraging women into the nuclear industry.
Adi Paterson spent several years in South Africa, trying to establish Small Nuclear Reactors. It turned out to be Tan expensive and useless exercise. Then he came to Australia, with the same dream. He quietly signed Australia up to the Framework Agreement for International Collaboration on Research and Development of Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems, without any consultation, discussion in Parliament (which rubber-stamped this later).
He quietly organised Australia’s participation with China in developing small nuclear reactors.
He rubbished renewable energy at a solar conference.
He went to Kimba to do propaganda for the nuclear waste dump plan, but admitted that there was no economic benefit in the low level waste dump, so the intermediate level waste was the real intention.
Leadership changes at ANSTO, Statement from the ANSTO Chair: Dr Annabelle Bennett 9 Sep 20, Dr Adi Paterson has resigned as CEO of ANSTO slightly ahead of time of his term. He has decided to take a period of leave before formally finishing. ……..
Mr Shaun Jenkinson will continue as acting CEO, while the Board undertakes a global search for a permanent CEO. https://www.ansto.gov.au/news/leadership-changes-at-ansto?fbclid=IwAR0cLOwne84D7XJP9UGwrf1aVAxyXgStAB6502zPYUgsqxdbjUuyUR3MYjo
Adrian “Adi” Paterson is a South African scientist and engineer best known for his work on Pebble Bed modular reactor research and development. He was appointed CEO of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in 2009
He emigrated to Australia in 2008 and was appointed Chief Executive Officer at ANSTO in March 2009.
September 21, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, personal stories, politics | Leave a comment
Regina McKenzie comments on Felicity Wright’s submission about the National Radioactive WAste Dump

May 21, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, personal stories | Leave a comment
NUCLEAR WASTE DEBATE DIVIDING COMMUNITIES
NUCLEAR WASTE DEBATE DIVIDING COMMUNITIES Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA The Transcontinental November 06, 2019, My name is Ken McKenzie. The Flinders Ranges and Port Augusta have always been my home. I now reside in Flinders House in Quorn.
I wish to say that the radioactive waste dump being proposed for our region is going to be very dangerous for all of us and for generations to come if it is allowed to go ahead.
This is something for all South Australians both black and white to be involved in as it will have an effect one way or another on every one of us.
The area where they want to put this dump is on my tribal land. My ancestors are buried here.
The area also holds a huge connection to our women as this is their land overall. The government do not listen when we say we don’t want it.
The earthquakes and flooding stories told to me in our language goes back into time itself.
This is not the place for a radioactive waste dump. If the Lord doesn’t come down in the next few years, this is going to be a threat to all of us and our future generations to come.
I am also very concerned for people over at Kimba who are going thru the same grief that’s happening to us and my family over here.
The money the government are throwing at us, trying to get us to forfeit our land is insulting and disrespectful to us all.
They have divided my family and our communities, and now we hear that without the much more dangerous intermediate radioactive waste being dumped here as well, that there is hardly any value to the community for putting it here.
Why didn’t they tell the communities all this in the first place. We didn’t want it four years ago and we certainly don’t want it now.
This whole process needs to be scrapped and the government needs to look at a new way to get people to ever trust them again.
November 11, 2019 Posted by Christina MacPherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, Federal nuclear waste dump, personal stories | Leave a comment
Nuclear tourism- a pretty sick idea, really
Nuclear tourism is so hot right now, https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-nuclear-tourism-is-so-hot-right-now/news-story/0042cca4743450faafd5c694a11f8e2b
Matthew Abraham, Sunday Mail (SA), August 10, 2019 It was 3.40am precisely on March 1, 1954, when the great Adelaide earthquake rumbled into town, looking for a fight.
Rattled awake, Mum and Dad leapt out of bed, grabbed my older brother from his bedroom, and raced outside. They forgot something.
Me.
I was three weeks old at the time, bouncing around but still sound asleep at the foot of their double bed.
The UK Government began merrily blowing up South Australia’s backyard, detonating atomic “devices” on the Maralinga lands in a series of trials stretching from 1956 to 1963.
In radiation lingo, some of these trials were particularly “dirty”.
We were all blissfully ignorant, and that’s how the UK and Australian Governments liked it. The full extent of these trials was covered up for more than 30 years. The denials and callous disregard for the lives of the indigenous people of the Maralinga lands remains an unmitigated disgrace.
You’d think that soaking up a little Strontium-90 with the Farex as a two-year-old might have been more than enough nuclear joy for anyone.
Strange then, that in 1984 I became a nuclear tourist, strolling across the ground zero sites of three of the Maralinga atomic blasts – Taranki, TM100 and TM101.
This is how it happened.
The then Labor premier, the late John Bannon, was pushing hard for the UK to pay for cleaning up the radioactive mess it’d left blowing around our desert.
Much of the credit for what proved to be a successful campaign should really go to his then press secretary, later premier, Mike Rann.
In May 1984, Rann invited journalists to fly to Maralinga to cover an inspection tour by Bannon and Labor’s resources minister, Peter Walsh.
As then political reporter for The Advertiser, I was on the jaunt.
Despite evidence of uncovered plutonium particles, nobody wore masks, protective clothing or special footwear. I wore my trusty, lightweight Dunlop KT-47s.
Before heading back to the airstrip, I pocketed a small piece of aluminium that had been melted out of shape, almost certainly from one of the towers erected to hold the bombs.
Of all the dumb things I’ve done in my life, this was by far the dumbest.
We were issued with monitoring badges but discovered these only measured background radiation, not airborne plutonium particles.
On arriving home I binned the Dunlops and all my clothes from the trip – including the nuked souvenir.
Later we were flown to the Australian Radiation Laboratories in Melbourne for a four-hour scan of our lungs and livers for any evidence of ingested plutonium particles.
They were negative, which is terrific, because plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years and the tiniest particle lodged in a lung will give you cancer.
Last Tuesday marked 74 years since the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. We’re all so much wiser now. Aren’t we? Nah.
In Ukraine, tourists are reportedly flocking to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the focus of a recent TV drama dealing with the 1986 explosion that turned the nearby city into a ghost town.
The Ukrainian Government has announced it’s transforming the 30km exclusion zone around the still-melting reactor No.4 into a “tourist magnet”, improving mobile phone reception, lifting video bans, and creating walking trails and waterways.
The disaster quickly claimed the lives of 31 workers from direct radiation, while an estimated 5000 people developed thyroid cancer.
Now tourists are posting Chernobyl selfies on Instagram, including a young lady semi-naked in a white contamination suit. It’s all good clean atomic cataclysmic fun.
Nuke tourism? Been there, done that. Give me a small earthquake any day.
August 12, 2019 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, personal stories | Leave a comment
“Smile With Kids”- Queensland welcomes Fukushima children for a much-needed holiday
Fourteen-year-old Karin Hirakuri hasn’t been allowed to play outside since she was six years old and every time she goes to the supermarket, she worries her food could be unsafe to eat.
Key points
- High school students from Fukushima exercise, play and spend most of their time indoors
- Refresh programs in Australia give children the chance to connect with families and experience the outdoors
- Some children are finding career inspiration through refresh programs
Growing up in Fukushima, Japan, after the catastrophic tsunami and the meltdown of four nuclear reactors in 2011, Karin’s childhood has been spent mostly indoors to limit her exposure to radiation.
She is one of eight high school students in far north Queensland this week with Smile With Kids, a not-for-profit organisation that pairs children from Fukushima with Australian host families.
The program began in 2014, inspired by other “refresh camps” that aim to give Fukushima children a week of outdoor activities.
“They can just come and enjoy nature without worry,” Smile With Kids founder Maki McCarthy said.
A highlight for Karin was sinking her feet in the sand and feeling the spray of seawater on her face at Palm Cove beach, north of Cairns, on Thursday.
“I wasn’t able to go swimming at the beach for five years,” she said. “We cannot play outside in Fukushima.
“We have to play in the gym or in the house.”,,,,,,,,,
Families connect
Smile With Kids host Catherine Gunn has been accommodating Fukushima students for the past three years and said the experience had been eye-opening.
“It opens my world up,” Ms Gunn said.
“Also the reflection on how lucky we are in Australia.
“We’ve never experience anything like [the nuclear disaster] in Australia, we have a very free life.”…….https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-28/children-enjoy-nature-after-nuclear-disaster/11348602
July 29, 2019 Posted by Christina MacPherson | personal stories, Queensland | Leave a comment
A Maralinga nuclear veteran’s grim story

The nuclear bomb tests, under British Government control, at Maralinga in far west South Australia in the 1950s were conducted at the highest level of secrecy. But they had thousands of witnesses. Most were Australian servicemen, innocently used as guinea pigs and exposed to deadly radiation. Craig Cook talks to a survivor, one of the last of a group of men who built the Maralinga camp as part of 23 Construction Squadron and watched in awe as the bombs were exploded, little knowing they were risking their lives and the futures of their children.
Tony Spruzen knew the drill at the top secret Maralinga facility in the South Australian desert in the spring of 1956.
Just like hundreds of others at the nuclear site at 11-mile camp during Operation Buffalo, he was told to turn his back and cover his eyes to protect himself from the gigantic glare of the exploding atomic bomb.
What they didn’t tell the Australian Army sapper was, at the moment of the flash of detonation, he would see the bones of his hand through his tightly shut eyelids.
“It was like a massive x-ray,” Tony, 83, from Glengowrie says. ‘Unlike anything I’d ever known before.”
A week after One Tree, on October 6, 1956, Spruzen witnessed the detonation of Buffalo 2, named Marcoo.
The bomb was only a tenth the size of One Tree but this time was detonated directly above and just under the ground.
“The bomb was in an amphitheatre of hills and we were far closer to that one, maybe only 200 yards away,” he remembers.
“We were close enough to see the trenches with dummy soldiers in them holding rifles and fake aeroplanes and tanks used to test the blast effect.
“And we could see the scientists walking around in their white suits checking out the site before and afterwards but we were just in khaki shorts and short sleeved shorts. Even the dignitaries had no protection.”
Every hour, from five hours out, an elaborate PA system across the complex announced the timing of the bomb detonation.
In the final 30 seconds, and with a rising and excited inclination, the voice on the PA dramatically counted….ten, nine, eight…down to zero.
When Marcoo exploded at 7am it only took a few seconds for a heavy shower of dust to descend on the witnesses.
“We had this large piece of litmus paper attached to our shirts,” Spruzen recalls
Spruzen, originally from Victoria and a carpenter by trade, enlisted in the Army at just 16.
Four year later he was at Maralinga as part of a detachment of 23 Construction Squadron, an acclaimed unit of the Royal Australian Engineers and exclusively raised in South Australia.
Around 40 young men were selected from the unit to build a desert tent camp with cook houses and latrines for the Commonwealth military ‘high-ups’ who were having their first look at the impact of the devastating nuclear weapon.
Around 200km from the ocean, the tent city gained the facetious name of the ‘Sea View Holiday Camp’.
“It was an adventure…we were all excited,” he recalls.
“A lot of young single guys together and we had some fun.”
The lads knew it was serious too as this was a hush-hush operation. They weren’t even allowed to take a camera along for snapshots so Spruzen has no personal photos from Maralinga.
“Then we all turned around to see this mushroom cloud climbing into the sky. The next thing was the blast. The boom was deafening…and then the wind came about thirty seconds after that blowing dust and soil and debris all over us.”
But he does have a terrible reminder of his three months spent in far western South Australia.
“Of the 40 men who went up with me I only know of three of us still around,” he says. “The rest have all died – many from cancers.”
The first Maralinga bomb, Buffalo 1, with the nickname One Tree, was detonated after being dropped from a 31m high tower.
At 15 kiloton it was the same size as Little Boy, the bomb dropped by the US air force that demolished the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, killing more than 100,000 instantly and tens of thousands slowly in the aftermath from burns and radiation poisoning.
“They said, keep an eye on that and if it changes to pink come and see us. Well it turned pink for every one of us.
“Had I have known what I know now I wouldn’t have been so close.”
Transferred to Sydney on a training course, Spruzen missed the final two detonations at Maralinga that year: on October 11, 1956, Buffalo 3 (Kite) was released by a Royal Air Force Vickers Valiant bomber, the first drop of a British nuclear weapon from an aircraft; and then on October 22, and again dropped from the 31m tower, (Buffalo 4) Breakaway exploded.
There were a total of seven nuclear desert tests at Maralinga performed during Operations Buffalo and Antler.
The 1985 McClelland Royal Commission heavily criticised the detonations, declaring the weather conditions were inappropriate and led to the widespread scattering of radioactive material.
The radioactive cloud from Buffalo 1 reached more than 11,000m into the air and with a northerly wind blowing radioactivity was detected across Adelaide.
Radioactive dust clouds from other bombs were detected in Northern Territory, Queensland and across New South Wales, as far away as Sydney, 2500km from Maralinga.
Around 12,000 Australian servicemen served at British nuclear test sites in the southern hemisphere between 1952 and 1963.
In recent years, the British Government’s claim that they never used humans “for guinea pig-type experiments” in nuclear weapons trials in Australia has been revealed to be a lie.
Tony Spruzen has struggled to come to terms with being placed in danger by his own government who had full knowledge of the consequences of exposure to radiation.
“Once we all found out later what we’d been exposed to at Maralinga it makes you very angry,” he says.
“We believed them when we were told we would be safe — but we haven’t been.”
Spruzen met his wife Shirley, the daughter of an army veteran, in Adelaide where they settled after marriage in June 1960. He left the army seven months later to work in civil construction. He thought his Maralinga days were well behind him but soon after they came to haunt him.
In the first four years of marriage, the couple agonisingly suffered six miscarriages, including twins.
Alarm bells started ringing when he was sent a survey from Veterans Affairs asking about his general health and, specifically his history of cancers.
“It turned out those involved in the atomic tests had a 30 per cent higher chance than getting cancers than the general public,” he says.
“Most of those got them within the first five years and a majority of those were dead before a decade had passed.”
Spruzen, who eventually had three children with Shirley, didn’t get cancer at that time, although he has since had several melanomas removed.
But when his son was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia at the age of 41, he wondered about the possibility of faulty genes, damaged by exposure to radiation, as has been documented in Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs, jumping a generation.
“My son was told by the QEH (Queen Elizabeth Hospital) there was nothing could be done for him but we went up to Queensland and after a bone marrow transfer from his sister he survived,” he adds.
“A decade on he’s working as strong as he has but I don’t think his condition was a coincidence given my history.
“There’s been nothing (compensation) for those of us who were there although they gave us a white card for our cancers and now we have a (full health) gold card.”
Ken Daly, President Royal Australian Engineers Association says it is the least the men, who literally put their bodies on the line, deserve.
“You get these young men, aged around 25-30, with a history of exposure to radiation, coming down with cancers in those numbers and you just know what has caused it,” he says.
“Many died within a few years of being exposed to the fallout and many passed on generational health problems and birth defects to their children.”
Mr Daly, who was based at Warradale Barracks for 15 years, where 23 Construction was based until being disbanded in the early 1960s, hadn’t heard of the Squadron until around five years ago.
Since then he has been central to the group gaining due recognition.
In its earliest days the Squadron, with a strength of eight officers and 160 in other ranks, built the El Alamein Army Reserve camp, part of which later became the Baxter Detention Centre, outside of Port Augusta.
It also assisted the South Australian community by providing aid during bush fires, the grasshopper plague of 1955, and significant infrastructure construction.
During the record flood of 1956, while those squad members were at Maralinga, the rest of 23 Construction were out sandbagging River Murray towns and then cleaning up after the water receded.
In 2011, the Royal Australian Engineers constructed a memorial at Warradale to all who have served in its ranks.
This year a bronzed engineer’s slouch hat, of actual size, by Western Australian sculptor and former army engineer Ron Gomboc will be incorporated into the memorial.
“The hat will be mounted on the memorial in such a way it will look like it’s suspended in mid-air,” Daly adds.
“It acknowledges the ultimate sacrifice of the more than 1250 engineers who died in World War I and the remarkable service and sacrifice of 23 Construction Squadron that has never been recognised before.”
The slouch hat, costing $6,000 and one of only six to have been cast, will be unveiled during a service at Warradale Barracks at midday on Sunday April 28.
Contact Ken Daly at dailydouble@bigpond.com for further details.
April 25, 2019 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, health, personal stories, reference, secrets and lies, weapons and war | Leave a comment
Anti nuclear campaigner Eileen Wani Wingfield honoured posthumously at the 2018 SA Environment Awards.
Four years after her passing, legendary anti-nuclear campaigner Eileen Wani Wingfield has been honoured posthumously at the 2018 SA Environment Awards.
Eileen’s daughter Janice Wingfield collected the prestigious Lifetime Achiever Award on behalf of the Wingfield family.
“I was just wondering and thinking about how she would react if she was there on that night. She probably would have just sat there all calm and cool.”
Eileen was a proud Kokatha Arabana woman and was a leader in the Aboriginal community.
She took every opportunity to act as a voice for not only her people, but for the animals, water and land.
A mother to 13 children, beloved grandmother of 51 grandchildren, great-grandmother of 64 – all have inherited Eileen’s love for Country.
“She was a very humble lady. She taught us everything like going out in the bush and catching our own wild bush tucker,” Janice said.
“Her beliefs have been passed through the family. Grandchildren, great-grandchildren, aunties and uncles. Everyone has got a keen interest in environmental protection.”
Living her life in the South Australian desert, Eileen experienced first-hand the effects of the British atomic bomb tests at Emu Fields in the 1950s and dedicated most of her life to advocate for the injustice she witnessed.
She is also famed for her daring protest at Cane Grass Swamp in the 1980s after uranium was discovered at Roxby Downs.
Eileen put her body on the line, laying in front of bulldozers to protest construction of the Olympic Dam uranium mine.
Soon after, she became a key member of the Kupa Piti Kungka tjuta, a council of senior Aboriginal women dedicated to the protection of land and culture.
in the 1990s Eileen was instrumental in the fight against the federal government’s plan to build a nuclear waste dump in the SA desert and in 2003 she was the recipient of the International Goldman Award for Protection of Environment.
This prestigious prize has been dubbed the ‘greenie Nobel Prize’.
With many other notable achievements under he belt, Eileen will be remembered by friends, family and the wider community for her leadership, love of culture and “unstoppable passion for a nuclear free world”.
February 14, 2019 Posted by Christina MacPherson | personal stories, South Australia | 1 Comment
Yes, Prime Minister, I’m striking from school: consider it a climate lesson

Seeing this, we students do not shout at each other across the classroom. We sit in a shocked silence. Afterwards, we shout, with our signs and our demands. Because how can an educated person know all we know, and do nothing?
Mr Morrison and his government continue to overlook the danger of climate change, while not seeming to have a problem helping coal miners such as Adani dig up and burn more coal. It’s surreal to watch nothing significant happening on the parliamentary floor, when the solutions have been made so clear. We are one of the sunniest and windiest countries in the world, yet our government chooses to burn more coal.
When Mr Morrison refuses to implement a climate policy that keeps fossil fuels in the ground and transition to 100 per cent renewable energy, he isn’t representing us, our community, or the majority of Australians who want urgent climate action.
Tackling climate change isn’t just about looking out for our young people. We’ll all live with extreme heat and changing weather patterns, not to mention the sense of helplessness in losing our natural world.
By making a stand and organising our communities, we can push our politicians to represent us, not lumps of coal…….That is all we want – for a serious problem to be treated seriously by our politicians. We need the fire of climate change to be confronted, not left to engulf my generation.
Veronica Hester is a school student from the Sutherland Shire. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/yes-prime-minister-i-m-striking-from-school-consider-it-a-climate-lesson-20181127-p50iqd.html
November 29, 2018 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, personal stories | Leave a comment
Friday November 30 – Australian students Strike For Climate Action
Students in each state capital and across 20 regional Australian centres will walk out of their classrooms this week to tell politicians that more of the same climate inaction is not good enough.
Here are some of the lessons they hope to teach.
‘If we really want a better planet Earth’ Continue reading →
November 25, 2018 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, personal stories | Leave a comment
A cry from a brave indigenous heart
Heather Mckenzie Stuart Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 4 June 18 Hmm, Regina McKenzie Vivianne C McKenzie I feel that our intelligence has been insulted by DIIS especially how we have been disrespected and ignored in our stand against the proposed nuclear waste dump Barndioota on Adnyamathanha yarta.
Honestly people, we might be Aboriginal and are still part of the flora and fauna and not in the Australian Constitution, but we have a mind of our own and can go between the non Aboriginal world and our culture.
We started our campaign against the dump talking to media etc, attending protest marches, visiting politicians. Vivianne and Regina went to Melbourne to see the then minister Frydenburg. Regina and my grand daughter went to Canberra campaigning with others. Regina’s daughter attended functions in Sydney.
I dropped out attending functions interstate, due to the loss of my only son. The grief of a loss of a child, no matter how old is horrendous, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but at the time, the DIIS lot didn’t care about me my feelings, my hurt, my sorrow as a human being, a mother who was in mourning, they still persisted liaisoning with my family organisation and visited family homes in Port Augusta causing unrest among our once close family. During this time, culturally at different times, I should have had my loved ones around me, but due to the unrest among everyone that those lot caused, me and my family were left on our own. Everyones world was turned upside down as we had already lost a dear family member 4 months before my son’s passing, we were already grieving for a nephew.
I love all my family no matter what, but I with my sisters and my family will trudge on against what we believe in and that’s standing up and say NO to a nuclear waste dump on Adnyamathanha yarta. We will never forget the hurt that has been caused through this dump by DIIS dividing and conquering. We have had enough of our family been destroyed bad enough our mum was stolen from her family. #WeWillKeepSayingNoToNuclearWaste#EnoughIsEnough #WeWillNeverGiveUp https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/

June 3, 2018 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, Federal nuclear waste dump, personal stories | Leave a comment
Maralinga Britain’s guinea pig land for toxic nuclear bomb testing
Australia’s Least Likely Tourist Spot: A Test Site for Atom Bombs, NYT, By BEN STUBBS,
“Yes, there is still radiation here,” Mr. Matthews said as he drove a minibus to the sites where the Australian and British governments dropped seven bombs between 1956 and 1963, which dotted the earth with huge craters and poisoned scores of Indigenous people and their descendants.
Back then, the government placed hundreds of human guinea pigs — wearing only shorts and long socks — in the front areas of the test zones. The effects of large doses of radiation were devastating……..
Today just four people live full time in Maralinga village, a veritable ghost town. Amid the old buildings are new lodgings built for tourists, complete with hot water and Wi-Fi.
In the 1950s and ’60s, at the height of the Cold War, 35,000 military personnel lived here. There was a permanent airstrip, then the longest in the Southern Hemisphere, plus roads, a swimming pool, accommodation and railway access.
The first nuclear test was conducted in September 1956, two months before the Melbourne Olympics. That blast — as powerful as the bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan — was the first of seven atomic bombs set off here.
But it was the so-called minor tests that were the most harrowing. Carried out in secret, the tests examined how toxic substances, including uranium and plutonium 239, would react when burned or blown up.
To ensure tourists’ safety in the area, a zone was cleaned up by radiation scientists at the cost of more than 100 million Australian dollars, about $77 million.
Around one area tourists can visit are 22 major pits, each at least 50 feet deep and cased in reinforced concrete to prevent dangerous radiation from seeping out.
The site looks like a recently tilled garden bed, stretching out for hundreds of yards, in a near perfect circle. Dotting the red desert earth are shards of twisted metal. Aside from a few feral camels loping nearby, it is still and silent.
But on Oct. 4 1956, a “nuclear land mine” was detonated here, tearing a crater 140 feet wide and 70 feet deep into the earth.
The resulting atomic reaction took only a fraction of a second, but its effects on one Indigenous family would last decades.
In early 1957, Edie Millpuddie and her family were traversing the Great Victoria Desert plains. “The Millpuddies needed shelter for the night, and they came across this enormous hole where the ground was still warm,” Mr. Mathews said. “They drank rainwater from the bottom and lit a fire. All the rabbits in the area seemed disoriented; they were easy pickings for dinner before the family went to sleep in the crater.”
Two weeks later, Ms. Millpuddie delivered a stillborn baby.
Later, her surviving children’s children would all be born with “physical and mental deformities,” Mr. Matthews said. “This all happened right where we’re standing.”
Survivors of the blasts, their children and grandchildren suffered from cataracts, blood diseases, arthritic conditions, stomach cancers and birth defects. In the 1980s, a Royal Commission investigating the tests awarded Ms. Millpuddie 75,000 Australian dollars.
There was no overt pressure or media scrutiny over what happened at Maralinga until the 1970s, when those injured by the tests came forward and a small group of journalists and politicians cast a more critical eye on the tests and the secrecy surrounding them……. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/world/australia/maralinga-nuclear-tourism.html
April 18, 2018 Posted by Christina MacPherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, personal stories, reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment
Group of Montebello nuclear test veterans have no medical insurance, not entitled to gold card

When Ray Whitby and a handful of Australian Navy colleagues stepped onto an island off the WA coast after Britain had just wrapped-up its nuclear weapons testing, they had no idea their lives would be changed forever.
“We were in shorts, sandals and short-sleeved shirts,” Mr Whitby said.
A scientist who was with them that day on the Montebello Islands off the Pilbara coast — and who was decked-out in full protective clothing — delivered a grim message.
“He told us ‘you guys shouldn’t be here, this is deadly’,” Mr Whitby said.
Later investigations found the weapons tested on those islands — believed to be around four times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II — had left behind a level of radiation that was “definitely unacceptable to personnel”.
When Mr Whitby and his colleagues returned to their ship they attempted to decontaminate themselves, but were later told the water they used to do this, also contained high radiation levels.
So too, did the kitchen items they were using to prepare meals.
There’s no excuse whatsoever’
Mr Whitby said the effect was devastating, with many of his fellow servicemen on that HMAS Fremantle mission dying as early as their 30s, or suffering lasting health issues.
He has fought cancer and saw his wife miscarry five times.
“We were used as live guinea pigs,” Mr Whitby said.
“There’s no excuse whatsoever, we all joined the service to help our country and do our part.”
Many in similar circumstances to Mr Whitby had a big win last year, when the Federal Government announced a $133 million program to give nuclear veterans access to the gold card, which provides veterans with lifelong no-gap medical insurance.
But this would only apply to veterans exposed to radiation between October 3, 1952 and June 19, 1958.
Mr Whitby and his colleagues were exposed 85 days after the cut-off date.
One of those colleagues, ex-serviceman Jim Marlow, describes the situation as infuriating.
“Why it differentiates between one and the other I have no idea,” he said.
“We are not recognised, we simply get ignored.”
A small cost for a big benefit: veterans
Mr Marlow, Mr Whitby and others have spent years campaigning for access to the gold card, believing it to be a fair request given the challenges they have faced in their later lives.
“I paid hundreds of thousands of dollars out over the years on cancers and various medical situations that I had,” Mr Whitby said.
“It has been dreadful.”
The exact number of people in the same situation is unknown, but the Australian Ex-Services Atomic Survivors Association believes it to be relatively small and one that would not require a big financial outlay from the Federal Government.
Veterans affairs benefits are a federal issue, but the State Government has vowed to lobby the Commonwealth to extend medical benefits to Mr Whitby and others in the same circumstance.
Mr Whitby’s son, Reece, is a first-term Labor MP in WA and used his platform in State Parliament to urge the Commonwealth to act.
“If we can’t treat veterans from the 50s fairly, how can current members of our armed services have confidence they will be treated fairly in years to come?” Reece Whitby said.
A spokeswoman for Federal Veterans Affairs Minister Darren Chester said the eligibility dates were determined on the basis of scientific evidence.
March 17, 2018 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, health, personal stories, weapons and war | Leave a comment
My people are still suffering from Australia’s secret nuclear testing
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/my-people-are-still-suffering-from-australias-secret-nuclear-testing-20171208-h01a3l.html Sue Coleman-Haseldine,
My name is Sue Coleman-Haseldine. I was born into poverty on the margins of Australian society on the Aboriginal mission of Koonibba in 1951. At this time my people were not allowed to vote and we had very few means to be understood, let alone be heard.
I was born into one of the oldest living cultures known on Earth and into a place that I love – a dusty, arid paradise on the edge of a rugged coastline. Our land and waters are central to our outlook and religion and provide the basis for my people’s health and happiness.
And I was born just before the desert lands to our north were bombed by the deadliest weapons on Earth in an extensive, secretive and devastating manner by the Australian and British governments.
In the 1950s, areas known as Emu Fields and Maralinga were used to test nine full-scale atomic bombs and for 600 other nuclear tests, leaving the land highly radioactive. We weren’t on ground zero, but the dust didn’t stay in one place. The winds brought the poison to us and many others.
Aboriginal people, indeed many people at that time, knew nothing about the effects of radiation. We didn’t know the invisible killer was falling amongst us. Six decades on, my small town of Ceduna is being called the Cancer Capital of Australia. There are so many deaths in our region of various cancers. My grand-daughter and I have had our thyroids removed, and there are many others in our area with thyroid problems. Fertility issues appear common.
But there has been no long-term assessment of the health impacts in the region and even those involved in the botched clean-ups of the test sites have no recourse because they cannot prove their illness is linked with exposure to nuclear weapons testing.
The impact of the Maralinga and Emu Fields testing has had far-reaching consequences that are still being felt today. Ask a young person from my area, “What do you think you will die from?” The answer is, “Cancer, everyone else is”.
I have lived my life learning about the bomb tests and also learning that the voice of my people and others won’t always be understood or heard. But I learnt from old people now gone that speaking up is important and by joining with others from many different places and backgrounds that our voices can be amplified.
Through these steps I found the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), or perhaps ICAN found me.
ICAN – as an organisation, as a collective of passionate, educated people working for a clear goal – has been so important to me. To know that my story and my voice helps bring recognition to the past and can shape the future of nuclear prohibition has strengthened my resolve.
Being involved in ICAN has been a double-edged sword. On one hand and for the first time in my life, I no longer feel alone or isolated. I have met others from many parts of the globe who have similar stories and experiences and who are passionate advocates for a nuclear-free future.
But the flip side of this is my understanding of just how widespread and just how devastating the nuclear weapons legacy is across the globe. To learn that so many weapons still exist sends fear to my heart. ICAN is a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize – in a short time we have gathered support for a treaty to finally outlaw nuclear weapons and help eliminate the nuclear threat.
The vision was reached in part with so many nations adopting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in July 2017. And we should celebrate this win and the opportunity to work together to stop the suffering and assist countries to make amends to nuclear weapons victims by acknowledging the permanent damage done to land, health and culture.
Unfortunately, the Australian government, along with other first world nations, didn’t even participate in the treaty negotiations, and they haven’t signed the treaty yet, but over time we feel confident they will.
A lot has changed since I was born. Aboriginal people now have the right to vote in Australia, but still we battle for understanding about our culture and the Australian nuclear weapons legacy. My home is still remote and most of my people still poor. But we are also no longer alone. We have the means and the will to participate – to share and to learn and to bring about lasting change.
ICAN’s work is not done, our work is not done. We will continue to work together. A world without nuclear weapons is a world we need and are creating. I stand here in hope and gratitude for the opportunity to participate. I stand here with pride and I stand here for our future and the generations to come.
Sue Coleman-Haseldine is a Kokatha woman who lives in Ceduna, South Australia. This is an extract of her speech in Oslo marking the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN.
December 11, 2017 Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, personal stories, weapons and war | 18 Comments
1.This month
For international nuclear news go to https://nuclear-news.net
Please come along to this webinar discussing the Fukushima disaster which is an ongoing disaster that Japan is still pretending to the world is under control.
9 March – WEBINAR.
7 pm Eastern time AAEDT
6.30 pm Central rime South Australia
6 pm. Weatern Australia
*******
26 Feb – 24 April The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives) is a group exhibition that explores the ways in which acts of nuclear trauma, Indigenous genocide and cultural erasure have been memorialised by artists and others. It comes as the result of research by curators Lisa Radford and Yhonnie Scarce whose fieldwork has encompassed sites of significance including Auschwitz, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima, Maralinga, New York, Wounded Knee and former Yugoslavia.
*********************
*******************************
—
Submissions to the Senate Committee Inquiry into National Radioactive Management Amendment Bill. 2020. Go to our summaries of significant submissions, conveniently listed in alphabetical order at Kimba waste dump submissions or see all submissions listed at Read the Submissions
Pages
- 1.This month
- Action Australia
- Disclaimer
- Federal Nuclear Inquiry SUBMISSIONS
- Kimba waste dump Submissions
- – Alternative media
- – marketing nuclear power
- business and costs
- – Spinbuster 2011
- Nuclear and Uranium Spinbuster – theme for June 2013
- economics
- health
- radiation – ionising
- safety
- Aborigines
- Audiovisual
- Autralia’s Anti Nuclear Movement – Successes
- climate change – global warming
- energy
- environment
- Fukushima Facts
- future Australia
- HEALTH and ENVIRONMENT – post Fukushma
- media Australia
- Peace movement
- politics
- religion – Australia
- religion and ethics
- Religion and Ethics
- secrets and lies
- spinbuster
- Spinbuster
- wastes
- Australian links
- ethics and nuclear power – Australia
- nuclear medicine
- politics – election 2010
- secrecy – Australia
- weapons and war
- Follow Antinuclear on WordPress.com
- Follow Antinuclear on WordPress.com
Blogroll
Categories
- 1
- ACTION
- Audiovisual
- AUSTRALIA – NATIONAL
- Christina reviews
- Christina themes
- General News
- Olympic Dam
- Opposition to nuclear
- reference
- religion and ethics
- Resources
- TOPICS
- aboriginal issues
- art and culture
- business
- civil liberties
- climate change – global warming
- culture
- energy
- environment
- health
- history
- legal
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- people
- personal stories
- politics
- politics international
- religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets and lies
- spinbuster
- technology
- uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- water
- Wikileaks
- women