Maralinga’s Afterlife

April 26, 2015 4:06 AM

At Maralinga, the British Government treated Aborigines, Australian servicemen and even its own troops as scientific guinea pigs. John Keane, whose father was there, looks at the dirty games that were played in the desert of South Australia.
posted by Wolfdog (9 comments total)

My father was out there doing it too. He was an Air Force member at the time. No cancers, nothing weird, although he wasn't on the front line of scrubbers and luggers.

Despite living in Adelaide for a large portion of my life, I had never heard of the Strontium 90 cloud of 1958 and its associated poisonings and fatalities; still less any of secret autopsies that followed. As a child I was completely fascinated by my father's slides of abandoned enclosures of radioactive military aircraft and vehicles, just sitting there in the desert, red hot.
posted by Wolof at 4:29 AM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Artist Lin Onus's 1990 sculpture Maralinga (another angle).
posted by Quilford at 4:57 AM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

There should be a hell for military officers and bureaucrats who dream up such evil.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:27 AM on April 26, 2015

In the wind, the ashes fly.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:26 AM on April 26, 2015

This is so sadly what I have come to expect as the experimental method, widely in use today.
posted by Oyéah at 10:36 AM on April 26, 2015

http://australianmap.net/maralinga/
posted by flabdablet at 11:45 AM on April 26, 2015

Someone has carefully documented these on OpenStreetMap.
posted by scruss at 12:14 PM on April 26, 2015

There is a hell for military officers and bureaucrats. Unfortunately, those of us who weren't able to prevent these atrocities are forced to share it with them.
posted by sneebler at 5:49 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reminiscent of Archie Barton taking soil from Maralinga to the UK:

Man lands drone carrying radioactive sand on Japanese prime minister’s office
Drone sat idle for two weeks on roof before being discovered.

(Sand from Fukushima; Asahi Shimbun story in English)
posted by XMLicious at 11:58 AM on April 28, 2015