The Canberra Times

Friday, November 4, 2005

Page: 8

Author: Paul Malone

Ex-major finds chilling reading on Maralinga

Even 52 years after the atomic tests at Maralinga it is still chilling to read an official top-secret Defence Department document which says, “the Army must discover the detailed affect of various types of explosion on equipment, stores and men without various types of protection.”

Sitting at his home in the Canberra suburb of Fisher, one of the men who experienced the reality of the Maralinga tests, former Major Alan Batchelor, leafs through documents he has dug up in his retirement.

Now 76, Major Batchelor was a lieutenant and second in charge of the Australian Army’s engineering troop responsible for the engineering works in the forward area at Maralinga in 1957.

The documents gave him much food for thought.

Soldiers under his command installed the instrument shelters that were built from about 50m from the weapons towers, back to 300m.

With 60cm of concrete above them and 1000 sandbags protecting them, the shelters were designed to ensure the instruments survived the blast.

But someone had to go in to recover, or read, the instruments.

And the removal and replacement of the protective sandbags was left to Lieutenant Batchelor and his men.

Fifteen minutes after the blast they were on their way to recover instruments with readings that would have deteriorated had they been left a long time.

Within an hour of the blast they were at the closest shelter.

Major Batchelor said this operation meant they had to go into highly contaminated areas and they went back in without protective clothing.

“You just couldn’t work in that heat in protective dress,” he said.

Major Batchelor has had limited opportunity to tell his story.

But a new film, Australian Atomic Confessions, to be screened tonight at the National Museum, has provided him with one chance to air his views. The film (Australian Atomic Confessions by Kathy Aigner – ed) features a number of ex-servicemen and Maralinga Aborigines recounting their experiences of the tests.

Filmmaker Kathy Aigner said the long-suppressed voices of Army, Navy and Air Force personnel and traditional Aboriginal elders got a hearing in the documentary film (Australian Atomic Confessions-ed).

Major Batchelor said he became fired up about the issue about five years ago when he read the court case on a compensation claim by one of the members of his troop.

Major Batchelor said the serviceman got no compensation.

“By the time I read it, he was dead – multiple cancers.”