Backs to the Blast, an Australian Nuclear Story

Clip 3: Power of the atom

Taken from the documentary Backs to the Blast, an Australian Nuclear Story (1981)

Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG

Please be aware that this clip may contain the names, images and voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may now be deceased.

Curator’s clip description

In the mid 1950s above ground atomic tests are carried out in South Australia. The bomb is dropped by aircraft and the blast is seen. Various people recall the tests including RAAF driver Ric Johnston, RAAF wireless operator Eric Geddes, an unidentified man and an unidentified Aboriginal woman.

Curator’s notes

Cameras were set up to record the blast. This clip includes some of that footage. Newsreel cameras also recorded the event.

Damien Parer, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows black-and-white newsreel footage of a nuclear test at Maralinga, South Australia, in the 1950s, and includes comments from people exposed to radioactive fallout from the test. A former serviceman reports that he was instructed to shield his eyes against the flash that accompanied the blast, while an Indigenous woman describes seeing what appeared to be smoke coming through the trees overhead that left behind a residue of grey-black dust. The clip includes historical footage and still images of the test site.

Educational value points

This clip reveals some of the results of an agreement between the British Government and Australian prime minister Robert Menzies, who consented to the development of a permanent testing range at Maralinga in South Australia without consulting either his Cabinet or the Indigenous people who lived in the area. Tests carried out at Maralinga were part of Britain’s nuclear weapons program and involved testing fission weapons and monitoring their effects.

This clip is from the television documentary Backs to the Blast, an Australian Nuclear Story and the title, together with the sequences of 1950s footage of a nuclear blast at Maralinga and the testimony of those interviewed, illustrates the inadequate protection from nuclear fallout provided for defence and scientific personnel and Indigenous Australians who remained in the area. The clip shows defence personnel standing with their backs to the blast, heads and eyes uncovered.

Military and scientific personnel at Maralinga were exposed to levels of radiation considered unacceptable today. They stood about 20 km from ground zero, the point of detonation, to witness each nuclear test. The Australian Nuclear Veterans Association believes that troops were deliberately exposed to radiation to gauge its effect, but the Australian and British governments consistently deny this.

While most of the Indigenous Maralinga Tjarutja people who inhabited the area around Maralinga were relocated to the Yalata Mission prior to testing, those who remained, such as the woman in this clip who recounts seeing smoke coming through the trees following the test, were exposed to radioactive particles known as fallout.

In the aftermath of each nuclear weapons test, servicemen at Maralinga were exposed to radioactive fallout. For example, as former RAAF mechanic Ric Johnston explains in this clip, teams were sent to recover and decontaminate equipment from ‘hot areas’ near ground zero. In addition, troops measured fallout in the surrounding areas. These men were not provided with adequate protective gear.

Nuclear fission bombs, such as the one shown in this clip, use uranium 235, uranium 233 or plutonium 239. Unlike most atoms, the atoms of uranium and plutonium are relatively easy to split, and when split emit the lethal form of radiation called gamma radiation. Exposure can cause most types of cancer, particularly breast and thyroid cancer. It can weaken the immune system, cause hypothyroidism and alter a person’s DNA code, causing birth defects in future offspring.

Backs to the Blast, broadcast in 1981, had an enormous influence among the Australian public which, at the time, knew little about the British nuclear tests at Maralinga and their effect on the environment and the people exposed to the fallout. Public pressure led to the Australian Government establishing the 1984 Royal Commission to investigate the effects of British nuclear weapons tests on the Australian environment and population.

A Royal Commission was held in 1984, but it was not until 1995 that the British Government paid the Maralinga Tjarutja people $13.5 million in compensation for being displaced from their land, and it took until 1999 for the Australian and British governments to spend $108 million to decontaminate the Maralinga site.