SIXTY years on since the A–Bomb testing by the British Government on Australian soil ceased, the contaminated barren, dry desert, the former Maralinga atomic testing site, is still being remembered.
For Rob Hornsby of Bonnie Doon, Maralinga holds a special attachment, having been placed there in his role as Royal Australian Navy Medic for some two years in the 1960s.
At the time of the atomic testing all arms of the Australian Defence Forces had personnel attached to the British Army and for the few years following the ceasing of testing.
Maralinga sits in probably one of the most remote desert places in South Australia, on the edge of the Nullabor; the testing site covering some 3300 sq km.
Rob described getting there as usually taking him about four days with breaks.
"You drive across South Australia to Ceduna, then keep going for 200km, turn off the Eyre Highway, go due north on a sealed road for 80km, from there on you've got 60km of very rough road; then come to the Trans–Continental Railway line to a place called Ooldea – just down a track for a little bit there is a place called Watson – and that was the railhead that went out to Maralinga.
"Then you have 36km from the railway line north on a sealed road until you run into the village of Maralinga.
"All up Maralinga is about 225km from Nundroo, about five hours from Ceduna.
"At Maralinga village there is a huge air strip 2.5km long; it's the largest airstrip in the Southern Hemisphere and is the standby for the space shuttle.
"And then 36km further north is where the actual A–bomb tests were started," he said.
"If you go further north – you come to a place called Emu Field – the site of the first tests on Australian soil which were then moved to Maralinga."
Rob's position at Maralinga from 1963 to 1965 was NCO at the village hospital as a medic.
"I was in charge of the 14 bed hospital – it was fully air conditioned – the coolest place on the range," he said.
"Everything at Maralinga was built with aluminium as following World War II there was a shortage of steel, no corrugated iron, but aluminium was in plentiful supply and it all came out from England."
The Bristol Aircraft Company got the contract to design and build these buildings – they were all prefabricated and shipped out by sea.
"The hospital building is still in use today," Rob said.
"When I was out there the 'Boffans' (that's what they call the scientists) had finished their minor trials by April 1964 and they all flew back to the UK and left crews – about 340 people – at Maralinga, but during testing everyone had to be housed there.
"There were no shops or anything, everything came in by rail and then road.
"The actual test sites were about 40 mile from the village; we worked out there in '64; a lot of the recovery we were doing included explosives and stuff so we had to be careful.
"I had to go out with the ambulance in case of an accident, so my best friend was the bulldozer driver, he was a Pommy royal engineer, a nice bloke, I used to help him.
"He would bulldoze a strip, look at what was in there, go along, put findings in bins and then cart it back to the end of the air strip.
"We would put the drums in a big pit and set them on fire and the ammunition would go popping off and flying into the air – it was good fun but we set bushfires off everywhere.
"It was great."
Rob said there were no serious injuries – though one bloke was killed out in the field – he was electrocuted in a freakish accident; and another one was a cleaner who had a heart attack.
"And then there was another incident with a young girl who was on the train to Perth; she was going to hospital to have a baby but wasn't going to make it, so I had to go down, pick her up off the train and bring her back – just in time.
"It was the one and only baby born at Maralinga, a bit of a record that was," he said.
Asking Rob if he thought the authorities knew of the dangers of these tests he commented that the Brits did, but they did not let on.
"They knew what they were doing and they left the place in an absolute pitiful state," he said.
Rob said the authorities called out all the indigenous people from the land before the trials.
"Yes, they all left well before the tests; they had a Commonwealth long range inspector who would cruise the scrub to make sure they was no–one out in the area.
"He went out one time and found an aboriginal family in a 'ground burst' – it was a crater left from a test which measured 65 metres across the and 50 metres deep and they were camped in it – and it was red hot.
"They were brought back to the village and we scrubbed and washed them.
"They (aboriginals) were terrified because the authorities were in white overalls with masks and coverings all over them – they looked like aliens – the aboriginals were terrified.
"Eventually that group all died."
Rob said he found his time out there interesting.
"We had two ambulances out there, one for me, one for the 'black fella'.
"On Monday, Wednesday and Friday a DC3 would come up from Adelaide.
"Whenever a plane would come in we had to go out with the crash crew, next to the fire truck," Rob recalled.
"My first summer there it was 49 degrees – it was hot, and we were sitting on the tarmac."
Rob said some of the British Army personnel got very homesick as they had first been assigned to Christmas Island then sent onto Maralinga.
Some had not been home for four years.
Rob said one of the big news events while he was there was the sinking of the ship Voyager.
"There was a British communications officer stationed in a donga by himself.
"He asked me if Australia had a ship called 'Melbourne'.
"I said yes, to which he replied 'well it has just run over a destroyer and sunk it'.
"I replied to him 'bull', but his answer was that a flash signal had come through from the UK and he was not kidding me – it really had happened."
After Rob left Maralinga if he wanted to go back and visit he had to gain special permission.
On one such trip he was given a special task to do on behalf of Fran Bailey and her department – the Federal Government (Canberra).
It was to go through all the remaining records and photos at Maralinga and keep what could be used in setting up a museum.
Rob agreed and his interest in supplying photo boards for this museum continues to this day.
Recently Rob left for another trip to Maralinga with a set of five picture boards which he created to go on permanent display at the museum – now set up in a part of one of the 'dongas'.
"We knocked out a couple of walls and created a nice big room – there were also some theatre seating.
"We supplied some video clips and I gave them some coloured photos four years ago which are displayed.
"I went out one year and there was a new manager – an aboriginal man – I was driving to the airfield to get photos and this man told me I could not take photos at all.
"I told him that I had permission to take photos, but it did no good, so I have not been back since.
"But I still love the place."
Rob recalled that after the lands were returned to the Aboriginal people many of them would not go near the test sites – they called it 'devil's country'.
