Author: Alan Parkinson
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
ISBN: 1398467227
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Get Book Here
Book Description
Maralinga. A uniquely Australian tourist destination. A remote site in the State of South Australia where thousands of Service personnel, mainly British and Australian, witnessed the deliberate contamination of pristine Australian bush with plutonium. Maralinga, where Britain exploded 22 atomic bombs in the 1950s and 60s. 15 of those bombs were exploded in the infamous Vixen B trials in a manner which spread plutonium over hundreds of square kilometres. This is the inside story of the clean-up of a tiny fraction of the contaminated area. It is the story of how workmen in sealed vehicles scraped up thousands of tonnes of contaminated soil and transferred it to a huge burial trench. It is also the story of how thousands of tonnes of debris, contaminated with plutonium, were to have been treated in a manner considered by both British and Australian specialists to be ideal, was turned into a botched job by a group with no nuclear expertise in order to save money. It is the story of how the outcome was declared world’s best practice by the newly formed Australian nuclear regulator, and was praised by the Australian government, but condemned by the federal opposition party. Maralinga has been returned to the Aboriginal owners, and tourists can now take their four-wheel drive vehicles to the site. They can walk on the cleaned area and learn something of the history. This book tells the rest.
Author: Elizabeth Tynan
Publisher: NewSouth
ISBN: 9781742234281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
"In the 1950s Australian prime minister Robert Menzies blithely agreed to a series of British atomic tests in the deserts of South Australia. These top-secret tests offered no benefit to Australia and left the public completely in the dark. This book reveals the devastating consequences of that decision."--Back cover.
Author: Frank Walker
Publisher: Hachette Australia
ISBN: 073363205X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Get Book Here
Book Description
'The story reaches out and grabs you by the throat' - Dr Clare Wright, historian and author of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka The facts are shocking. The treachery is chilling. The fallout ongoing. This edition contains a new author note with shocking new material that has come to light as a result of the groundbreaking original publication. Investigative journalist Frank Walker's Maralinga is a must-read true story of the abuse of our servicemen, scientists treating the Australian population as lab rats and politicians sacrificing their own people in the pursuit of power. During the Menzies era, with the blessing of the Prime Minister, the British government exploded twelve atomic bombs on Australian soil. RAAF pilots were ordered to fly into nuclear mushroom clouds, soldiers told to walk into radioactive ground zero, sailors retrieved highly contaminated debris - none of them aware of the dangers they faced. But the betrayal didn't end with these servicemen. Secret monitoring stations were set up around the country to measure radiation levels and a clandestine decades-long project stole bones from dead babies to see how much fallout had contaminated their bodies - their grieving parents were never told. This chilling exposé drawn from extensive research and interviews with surviving veterans reveals the betrayal of our troops and our country. 'An amazing tale – utterly gripping, it reads like a thriller' - Jon Faine, ABC Radio Melbourne 'This book will contribute to a much greater awareness and perhaps much more action on this issue' - Fran Kelly, ABC Radio National 'Walker demonstrates powerfully why, regardless of the context in which the testing took place, the emotional legacy of Maralinga will linger in the Australian psyche, just as do Gallipoli, Bodyline and Singapore. The cost in terms of damage to health, the environment and public trust in government will remain with us for generations to come' - The Australian 'Shocking revelations...' - Margaret Throsby, Midday Interview, ABC Classic FM 'An extraordinary story – there are things here that would make your hair stand on end' - Philip Clark, ABC Radio Canberra 'This book should be on the school syllabus' - Andrew O'Keefe, Weekend Sunrise
Author: Murray Stuart
Publisher: Good Beach Reads
ISBN: 0645942324
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Get Book Here
Book Description
This is a work of cllimate fiction set in Crocodile Dundee country in the Northern Territory of Australia. When the body of Alex Petersen, an employee of Parks Australia, is found at Gunlom Falls in Kakadu National Park, the Northern Territory Police are determined to uncover the truth behind his murder. Tensions are high between the Traditional Owners, government and a global miner, as the dispute over the environmental clean up of Ranger Uranium Mine continues. Meanwhile, is there a cover up of government funds behind a gas fracking mine on aboriginal land and a port too close to cultural sites in Darwin. An indignous paleo astronomy course field trip in Kakadu, brings together a young Norwegian marine biologist, an astronomer from Edinburgh, and an archaeologist from Sydney. As the disparate group of characters navigate between the worlds of politics and culture, they uncover secrets that could explain the murder.
Author: Judy Nunn
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458742679
Category : Aboriginal Australians
Languages : en
Pages : 564
Get Book Here
Book Description
During the darkest days of the Cold War, in the remote wilderness of a South Australian desert, the future of an infant nation is being decided without its people's knowledge. A British airbase in the middle of nowhere; an atomic weapons testing ground; an army of raw youth led by powerful, ambitious men - a cocktail for disaster. Such is Maralinga in the spring of 1956. Maralinga is a story of British Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner, who accepts a twelve-month posting to the wilds of South Australia on a promise of rapid promotion; Harold Dartleigh, Deputy Director of MI-6 and his undercover operative Gideon Melbray; Australian Army Colonel Nick Stratton and the enigmatic Petraeus Mitchell, bushman and anthropologist. They all find themselves in a violent and unforgiving landscape, infected with the unique madness and excitement that only nuclear testing creates. Maralinga is also a story of love; a love so strong that it draws the adventurous young English journalist Elizabeth Hoffmann halfway around the world in search of the truth. And Maralinga is a story of heartbreak; heartbreak brought to the innocent First Australians who had walked their land unhindered for 40,000 years. Maralinga a desolate place where history demands an emerging nation choose between hell and reason.
Author: Alan Parkinson
Publisher: Dogwise Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Get Book Here
Book Description
In April 2000, a $108 million clean-up of the former British A-bomb test site in outback South Australia was being wound up. It was declared a success and the Maralinga tjarutja Aboriginal people were reassured that it would be safe to move back onto their lands. It was claimed to be a world first, the biggest and most successful clean-up ever.But leaked documents show that behind the scenes, the project had been increasingly troubled. Some key insiders, including the government's advisers, say that the job was never finished properly. In the process of the clean-up, Australia put large amounts of plutonium into several unlined, unguarded holes in the ground, the toxic waste blowing across the land in dusty clouds. the site is a devastating legacy to nuclear testing, not to mention the Aboriginal people who have been told it is safe to live there.Alan Parkinson was the official adviser to the project, but after he voiced his concerns about the dangers of the shortcuts that were being taken, he was removed from the project and told to be quiet. Refusing to be silenced, Alan has been fighting for an inquiry for six years. this is his story.
Author: Yalata
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1741766486
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 79
Get Book Here
Book Description
'Maralinga - the Anangu Story is our story. We have told it for our children, our grandchildren and their children. We have told it for you.' In words and pictures Yalata and Oak Valley community members, with author Christobel Mattingley, describe what happened in the Maralinga Tjarutja lands of South Australia before the bombs and after.
Author: Adrian Tame
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1760852201
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Get Book Here
Book Description
The matriarch of Australia’s most violent and notorious criminal family, and allegedly the inspiration for the award-winning film Animal Kingdom, tells her side of the story. Kathy Pettingill is a name that’s both respected and feared, not only by Australia’s criminal underworld, but by many in the Victorian police force. As the matriarch at the head of the most notorious and violent family of habitual offenders in Australian criminal history, her life has revolved around murder, drugs, prison, prostitution and bent coppers – and the intrigue and horror that surround such crimes. Her eldest son, Dennis Allen, was a mass murderer and a $70,000-a-week drug dealer who dismembered a Hell’s Angel with a chainsaw. Two younger sons were acquitted of the Walsh Street murders, the cold-blooded assassination of two police officers that changed the face of crime in Melbourne forever. One of the two, Victor, was gunned down himself in the street 14 years later, becoming the third son Kathy has buried. In this revised and updated authorised edition of Adrian Tame’s bestselling The Matriarch, Kathy Pettingill reveals the chilling truth behind many of the myths and legends that surround her family, including her experiences in the blood-spattered charnel house at the centre of Dennis Allen’s empire of drugs and violence. But this is no plea for pity. Forthright and deeply disturbing, like its subject, The Matriarch pulls no punches. Updated and revised for a new generation, this true crime classic is as terrifying and powerful as when it was first published.
Author: Judy Nunn
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 1742741843
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 770
Get Book Here
Book Description
A riveting novel that tells the story of Sydney and the people who shaped its character, its skyline and its heart. BOUND FOR DESTINY In 1788, Thomas Kendall, a naïve nineteen-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself bound for Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land beneath the Southern Cross. GREED AND HONOUR Thomas fathers a dynasty that will last more than two hundred years. His descendants play their part in the forging of a nation, but greed and prejudice see an irreparable rift in the family which will echo through the generations. It is only at the dawn of the new Millennium - as an old journal lays bare a terrible secret - that the family can finally reclaim its honour... A LEGACY UNFOLDS Beneath the Southern Cross is as much a story of a city as it is a family chronicle. Bringing history to life, Judy Nunn traces the fortunes of Kendall's descendants through good times and bad, wars and social revolutions to the present day, vividly drawing the events, characters and issues that have made the city of Sydney and the nation of Australia what they are today. --------------------- 'Mistress of the ripping yarn.' SUN-HERALD '500 pages of perfect reading.' AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY 'Perfect summer reading.' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 'A master of what she does.' WEEKLY TIMES 'A stunning blockbuster.' WOMAN'S DAY 'A prolific writer of bestsellers.' THE AGE
Author: Pamela Rushby
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 1743099762
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Get Book Here
Book Description
A remarkable story about a little-known tragedy in Australian history. It's 1900. thirteen-year-old Issy McKelvie leaves school and starts her first job - very reluctantly - as a maid in an undertaking establishment. She thinks this is about as low as you can go. But there's worse to come. Issy becomes an unwilling rat-catcher when the plague - the Black Death - arrives in Australia. Issy loathes both rats and her father's four yappy, snappy, hyperactive rat-killing terriers. But when her father becomes ill it's up to Issy to join the battle to rid the city of the plague-carrying rats. 'A brilliant and richly evocative insight into a fascinating and little-known aspect of our past.' -- Jackie French, Australian Children's Laureate.
