All events · The War's Long Shadow

British Nuclear Tests at Maralinga and Emu Field and the Removal of the Anangu

c. 1952–1967 · Oceania

Displacement Territory Seized

Displaced

500

No count was made. Several hundred Anangu were moved from Ooldea to the Yalata mission about 150 km south in 1952 when the test sites were established, and were kept off their country for more than thirty years; Australian Geographic reports that about 1,200 First Nations people are thought to have been exposed to fallout.

Territory

3,200 km²

About 3,200 km² of Anangu country in South Australia was taken as the permanent Maralinga test range, adjoining the Woomera Prohibited Area, with the earlier Emu Field site to the north; the land was returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja traditional owners in December 2009 after clean-up, though the safety of parts of it remains disputed.

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What happened

Prime Minister Robert Menzies authorised British nuclear testing in Australia in 1951; after tests at Emu Field, Maralinga was chosen in 1954 as the permanent site, and seven major tests plus hundreds of smaller 'minor trials' were carried out there between 1956 and 1963, with contamination continuing to be assessed into 1967. About 3,200 km² of Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara country was closed off, and in 1952 Anangu families were moved from Ooldea, where water sources had already been depleted by railway use and grazing, to the Yalata mission about 150 km to the south, separating families from their country for more than three decades. Aboriginal people continued to travel through the range, including the Milpuddie family found camping near a test crater in May 1957, and Yankunytjatjara accounts describe illness, vomiting and blindness after a fallout 'black mist'. The McClelland Royal Commission of 1984-85 found significant residual radiation hazards and condemned the disregard for Aboriginal safety, recording that patrols were inadequate, sightings disbelieved and reports discouraged. Britain contributed £20 million to clean-up in 1993, Australia paid A$13.5 million in compensation to the Maralinga Tjarutja in 1994, and the land was formally returned in December 2009.

Parties

Britain, with Australian government consent, took Anangu country in South Australia for nuclear testing and the Anangu were moved off it

Disputed

The health consequences are disputed: the Royal Commission accepted that Aboriginal people were exposed and that safety arrangements were grossly inadequate, but the number of illnesses and deaths attributable to fallout has never been established, and the adequacy of the 1996-2000 clean-up and whether the returned country is safe for permanent habitation remain matters of disagreement between governments and traditional owners.

The denominator

The Australian government declared the Woomera Prohibited Area and the Maralinga and Emu Field ranges over country used by Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Kokatha people without enumerating them; the 1985 McClelland Royal Commission found that the two native patrol officers responsible for an area the size of England could not have known how many people were on it, and that officials assumed the land was empty. Contemporary estimates of the Anangu affected run from a few hundred to over a thousand, and the Maralinga Tjarutja community today numbers on the order of a thousand people; several families, including the Milpuddie group found at the Marcoo crater in 1957, passed through contaminated ground.

Where the baseline comes from

British nuclear tests at Maralinga — Wikipediaopen-edited
Maralinga Tjarutja — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

No death toll has been established. The Royal Commission found significant radiation hazards and inadequate protection of Aboriginal people, and Anangu accounts record deaths in family groups after fallout exposure, but neither the commission nor subsequent Australian health studies produced a figure for deaths attributable to the tests, and the small, dispersed and unregistered population makes any excess-mortality estimate impossible.

Formal findings

Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia (McClelland Royal Commission) (1985) — Significant radiation hazards remained at many test sites, and the treatment of Aboriginal people showed that 'the affairs of a handful of natives counted little compared to the interests of the British Commonwealth of Nations', with patrols left ineffective, sightings disbelieved and reports discouraged. — source