Broinowski, Adam

English

The Australian National University

03/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 1/9Miners in Mary Kathleen drilling for uranium , fromWalkabout episode 7, Rum Jungle (1958).Courtesy Ric Chauvel Carlsson   NFSA title: 32567 The National Film and Sound ArchiveHome › Research › Papers and projects › Superpit: Digging for uranium in the ...Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australiancultural imaginaryby Adam Broinowski in Film, Documents and artefacts, Indigenous Collections, Collection interpretation, Television,2,509 wordsThe mining industry has been a central force in shapingAustralian history in the 20th century. In fact, as isevident in the policy switch from the ‘Mining Super ProfitsTax’ (Rudd/Gillard government) to ‘Open for Business’(Abbott government)1, mining influence in Australianpolitics is direct and far-reaching. Any historicaldiscussion of mining, however, should not overlook thehistorical relations between the Aboriginal owners andsettler populations and their transnational partners.Since 1768, when the British Crown charged CaptainCook to take possession as 'first discoverers’ of thebounty to be had from the great southern continent,mineral wealth has been taken from this land by foreignpowers.2After destroying Aboriginal coastal settlements anddriving their owners inland, European settlers followed upby sending livestock (cattle, sheep) outback, setting upstations, and mustering desert peoples into various reserves and labour camps.3 On the whole, there was littleconsideration of their worldview or life ways beyond their utility to the settlers. This intensified when gold rush fevertook hold.In 1851 when gold was discovered in Victoria, there still was an element of magic to mining. Lone miners wouldfancy a spot, drop holes with pick and shovel, and chance their luck on a duffer or a strike. In exchange for hardwork, it was thought the old earth would ‘be good’ and yield its secrets. Gold could improve a miner’s station,educate his children, ward off sickness, and apparently lead to self-sufficiency. Yet the alluvial gold was soonmined out and individual miners had to fossick for overlooked spill. Large-scale mechanised deep mining operationsfunded by investors from the centres of capital (London, New York) moved in.03/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 2/9From Aboriginal perspectives, with communities now living on reserves and prohibited from accessing ceremoniallands and hunting grounds, rather than the elixir of life and the tool for emancipation, gold was the 'magnet andsource of destruction’ which had driven them into squalid conditions. Munda Nyuringu (Robert Bropho and Jan Roberts, 1983)  NFSA title: 54090 Warning: May contain names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.With coastal mining under the control of big business by the beginning of the 20th century, the promise of the ‘deadheart’ of central and northern Australia grew stronger in the settler imagination. Equated with 'Abraham of old’, fromthe 1860s to the early 1900s, those 'lone, sun-browned’ pioneers dreamed of mica mountains and gold reefs asthey rode into the ‘never never’, and they earned an indelible place in the national narrative for their trouble (Burkeand Wills, Lasseter, Stuart, Rev. John Flynn). The local Aborigines were indispensable to their missions and oftensaved their lives. Yet, because they were considered a ‘primitive’ or ‘stone age’ race with simple needs, theyremained nameless.03/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 3/9 Phantom Gold (Rupert Kathner, 1937) NFSA title: 10376Warning: May contain names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.After the Stuart Highway from Alice Springs to Darwin was built as part of an industrial frontline in 1942 (alsoknown as Uncle Tojo’s track), the myth of the dead heart was broken. In the nation-building projects of the 1950s,the ‘great inland wasteland’ was deformed by the ‘mineral exploration business’ that boasted 100 years of exports.Aspirational migrants and city youths were attracted by the potential for a free and happy or thrilling future. Some ofthese mine sites even became tourist attractions.But mining potential in the 1950s was about more than just economic boom. When Prime Minister Menziescommitted Australia to a concentrated program of mining uranium, the ‘super metal’, the decision was based on thesignificant concerns of the government for a perceived threat in the Asian region. Weapons tests had already begunin 1949 after the Anglo-Australian Joint Project was established in 1946. Prince Philip came and ‘left his mark in theSA desert’ when he opened the Maralinga test site in 1954 (known as ‘the Taranaki’) to permit the British to ‘shootanything they liked’, as the Minister for External Affairs, Richard Casey, put it in 1953. The site was part of theWoomera Range which was expanded from an initial 1,500 miles, to 270,000 kms by the 1980s, and was thenscaled back to 127,000 kms by the 2000s (see a map of the Woomera Protected Area on the Government ofSouth Australia minerals website).As the poisonous modern rituals of atomic testing were carried out (Monte Bello Island, Emu Fields, Maralinga),which included the use of Plutonium 239, both Australian and British officials repeated that the health risks werenegligible, despite extensive local radioactive contamination.403/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 4/9 Backs to the Blast (Harry Bardwell, 1981)  NFSA title: 40422 Warning: May contain names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.So while some Aboriginal people from Ooldea were moved from their traditional lands to Yalata prior to the 1956–57series of tests at Maralinga, there were still Aboriginal people using their camping grounds that passed through theMaralinga test site. As found in the Royal Commission (1975), the insufficient caution taken to ensure that allpeople were removed from the Area prior to tests was based on the false and negligent assumption that there wereno longer people living on this land. Members of the Pitjantjantjara, Yakunytjatjara, Tjarutja, and the Kupa PitiKungka Tjuta nations are said to have been exposed to radioactive contamination, whether in ‘black mist’ or otherforms. Along with many Australian atomic test veterans, they developed chronic illnesses, the complications fromwhich led to many premature deaths. 03/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 5/9Sir Howard Morphy announces the Cozinc Rio Tintotakeover of Mary Kathleen mine. From News Conferenceon Rio Tinto Takeover of Mary Kathleen Uranium Mine,Queensland (c1954).Courtesy Wendy Gilbert   NFSA title: 57472 Australian Atomic Confessions (Gregory Young, 2005)  NFSA title: 1177392 Warning: May contain names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.These ‘side effects’ were largely ignored as officials prioritised the plans to make Australia a ‘great power by 2000’(such as Philip Baxter, Chair of the Australian Atomic Energy Agency).5 When uranium finds at Rum Jungle andMary Kathleen were published, transnational contracts flowed in and mining yellowcake 24/7 began in 1956.Parts of the Range, which includes the MaralingaProhibited Area 400, are permanently contaminated (half-life of Plutonium 239 is 24,100 years, and stabilisationtakes 250,000 years). It continues to be used forweapons and rocket testing as it is presently leased tocontractors such as UK Defence and British AerospaceEngineering Systems. Plans are underway to openportions of the Area to mining.6Consistent with the Atoms for Peace program rolled outin 1953-54 by the Eisenhower administration, assuranceswere often made to the public in Australia and the UKthat nuclear power was, in fact, for civilian purposes,such as electricity production. This understanding can beseen in the celebrated documentary AustralianWalkabout, as part of a BBC television travel seriesfocusing on Australia made by the iconic duo Charles andElsa Chauvel.03/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 6/9A Mine Called Olympic Dam (1990)  NFSA title: 739898  Walkabout episode 7, 'Rum Jungle’ (1958)Courtesy Ric Chauvel Carlsson   NFSA title: 32567 The Chauvels also went further north from Mary Kathleen, to the Alligator River, Arnhem Land, in the Top End. In ascene where Elsa handled a skull in a sacred burial cave, and interpreted its rock paintings, the Chauvels did notappear to be aware that the law to protect and regenerate country, as enfolded in the cultural stories of theNgalakan people in this case, still held active meaning in the present. As the elder Bill Neidjie, from the BunitjAssociation in Kakadu stated in 1990, Aboriginal law is as eternal as the earth: 'Ground, rock, cave don’t move. Itdream. It story. It law.’7In Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, the rock escarpment is 2,000 million years old (pre-Cambrian). Withthe oldest recordings of human inhabitants in the world, there are countless burial grounds, and thousands of rockpaintings. It has a UNESCO world heritage listing.In 1977, when the bid to mine one of the largest uraniumdeposits in the world at Ranger 1 and Nabarlek in themiddle of the park was approved by the Frasergovernment, the Fox Report warned that mining wastewould have to be stored for a quarter of a million years.Aboriginal elders also warned that mining ‘sicknesscountry’ would lead to disaster.8With AUD $2.8 billion profit expected from uraniumexports from Ranger 1, and deposits at Ranger 3 evenlarger, the undertaking seemed non-negotiable andoperations at Ranger began in 1981. The Mirarrcommunity (Toby Gangale, Mirarr Senior TraditionalOwner) was coerced into agreeing to this in exchange for03/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 7/9the promise of support through material benefits and community projects. It was decided to release steady and‘safe’ amounts of ‘low-level’ radioactive waste from the Ranger tailings dam into the soil and the Magella riversystem.In the early 1980s, Yirawala, a spiritual elder of the Gunwingu people in Arnhem Land, gave two options: 'eithermake laws to protect us and stop the uranium mine, or Bula will wake and let his waters flood the earth’. Buladjang,which means ‘sickness country’, marked the place where Bula, the Lightning spirit, ended his journey and laydown. ‘Waking Bula’ referred to releasing his power, which is cocooned in the earth, by mining. When the Jawoynelders (Peter Jutbula, Sandy Barraway) divulged their knowledge of ‘Bula’s resting place’ in their legal claim to thesacred site in Guratba (Coronation Hill) in Kakadu, they too warned that disrupting Bula would make the 'new worldfall down’. 'You will lose your house in Darwin, big buildings, Canberra, overseas. He shake all around the place,even America … This is sacred ground you must not work.’9The claim was granted by Justice Donald Stewart, who stated in an interview that, 'It was a question of whetherwe fear the Jawoyn’s god … the apocalypse is [also] present in Revelations. It is not unique to the Aboriginalpeople … whether it will happen, you don’t know … [we had to] weigh up in a rational way the benefits of a “hill ofgold” against an “apocalyptic religion”.’10This logic did not carry to the main proponents of uranium mining. With regard to the proposal to mine Jabiluka 1,the positions of pro-mining representatives from government, transnational corporations, and certain Aboriginalgroups can be summarised in four key points:1. Water would be monitored and there would no health effects outside the property of the mine (Jabiluka).2. The impact would be minimal and damaged land would be rehabilitated.3. There is a moral responsibility to supply the world’s energy needs and support our lifestyle.4. Mining helps Aboriginal business and self-management and is more effective as a form of reconciliation.11During this conflict, Yvonne Margarula (Mirarr traditional owner) and Jacqui Katona (Gundjeihmi AboriginalCorporation) identified the primary problem as existing between evaluations of material wealth by the settler cultureand cultural life by the Mirarr. The Mirarr people claimed that their will and their right to determine what happens totheir country was never respected by the government during the process of making the decision to mine.When the Howard government lifted Australia’s ‘three mine’ policy in 1996, the Mirarr vehemently opposed theplans of Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) to develop the 3 Deeps mine at Jabiluka. This was supported bymore than 5,000 activists in the Jabiluka blockade which brought international attention to the issue.These warnings were finally confirmed when 1.4 million litres of acidic radioactive slurry leaked at the Ranger minein December 2013.The lack of reciprocity in Aboriginal-settler relations has stunted public understanding of the meaning and value inAboriginal cultures. Beyond the frames that limit the perceived value of the land within settler concerns, one caseof the successful protection of the commons from mining encroachments is Jeffrey Lee, the Djok park ranger ofKoongarah in western Arnhem Land. Lee rejected 'billions of dollars’ from energy corporations to protect his 'culturalland’.Another is the recent court victory of seven Aboriginal clans who rejected the proposal of a nuclear waste dump atMuckaty Station in June 2014. The refusal by these people to abandon their responsibilities to care for country, andtheir capacity to regenerate social meaning by de-centering the economy as the central driver of history, isexemplary.Given the ongoing damage caused by the Fukushima nuclear disaster since 11 March 2011, with the FukushimaDaiichi reactor said to have been fuelled by Australian uranium (at least in part), one wonders how many morewarnings the authorities and their transnational partners need. The image in Phantom Gold of a lone Europeansettler in the desert who hunts for gold while dying from thirst, may indeed come back to haunt us.03/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 8/9 Phantom Gold (Rupert Kathner, 1937) NFSA title: 10376Warning: May contain names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.Adam Broinowski is an Australian Research Council (ARC) post-doctoral research fellow in the School of Culture,History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. The NFSA SARfellowship research is part of his larger ARC research project, Contaminated Life: ‘Hibakusha’ in Japan in theNuclear Age.References1See Back, Alexandra 2014, ‘Tony Abbott raises eyebrows after linking WWII D-Day memorial with policies onmining and carbon taxes’, Brisbane Times, 2 June.http://www.stockandland.com.au/news/metro/national/general/tony-abbott-raises-eyebrows-after-linking-wwii-dday-memorial-with-policies-on-mining-and-carbon-taxes/2700563.aspx2‘Secret Instructions, Cook’s voyage 1768–1771: Copies of Correspondence, etc. 1768–1771’, National Library ofAustralia MS 2. Accessed September 2013 from, http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms2-s56-e-cd.3In 1881–1903 after gold was discovered in Falls Creek, Kalgoorlie, Gympie Hill, Burra, populations in WesternAustralia rose dramatically and gold was making up 80 per cent of WA exports. The goldfield towns includedMenzies, Laverton, Kalgoorlie and Leonora. Aboriginal people were forced to work, were hunted down if theyescaped, and could be charged for trespassing if they left the reserve to go walkabout or for ceremony. Theirmixed-race children became wards of the state who learned to run and hide when they saw a white horse. Even in1978, no Aboriginal person could invite any non-Aboriginal person onto Aboriginal reserves in Western Australia.Roberts, Janine 1978, From Massacres to Mining: The colonization of Aboriginal Australia, CIMRA and War onWant, London.4See also Tynan, Liz 2013, 'Dig for secrets: the lesson of Maralinga’s Vixen B’, The Conversation, 26 July 2013.5Reynolds, Wayne 2000, Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb, Melbourne University Press, Victoria; Fortress03/03/2015 Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary // National Film and Sound Archive, Australiahttp://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/papers/2014/07/01/superpit-digging-uranium-australian-cultural-imaginary/ 9/9Australia (Peter Butt, 2001), NFSA: 507758.6The APY and MT peoples have applied to have the prohibition lifted so as to prevent (non-nuclear) rocket andsurveillance tests continuing on their land. 'Interview with Andrew Collett’ 2013, The Anangu Lands PaperTracker, recorded 17 June 2013, http://www.papertracker.com.au/radio/interview-with-andrew-collett/.7Black Australia (Darrell Sibosado and Michael Brogan, 1990), NFSA: 239897.8The Fox Report also recommended that the Traditional Owners’ decision not to permit the mine not be recognised.See: Impact of Mining: Alligator Rivers Region, Kakadu National Park (David Roberts, 1981), NFSA: 43668 ;Jabiluka (David Bradbury, 1997), NFSA: 333811 ; Land of the Apocalypse (Ruth Berry and Robert Plasto-Lehner,1991), NFSA: 682154 ; Dirt Cheap (David Hay, 1980), NFSA: 2325 ; Walking Through a Minefield (Cathy Henkel,1999), NFSA: 416592 ; Walya Ngamardiki: The Land My Mother (David Roberts, 1978), NFSA: 381355 ; Yirawala,The Picasso of Arnhem Land (Sandra Le Brun Holmes, 1982), NFSA: 808283 ; Red: Land and Politics (DarrellSibosado and Michael Brogan, 1989), NFSA: 241410.9Land of the Apocalypse (Ruth Berry and Robert Plasto-Lehner, 1991), NFSA: 682154.10Land of the Apocalypse (Ruth Berry and Robert Plasto-Lehner, 1991), NFSA: 682154.11These are the more commonly repeated justifications, among others. Impact of Mining: Alligator Rivers Region,Kakadu National Park (David Roberts, 1981), NFSA: 43668 ; Land of the Apocalypse (Ruth Berry and RobertPlasto-Lehner, 1991), NFSA: 682154 ; Walking Through a Minefield (Cathy Henkel, 1999), NFSA: 416592.TagsAboriginalChauvelIndigenous AustraliansIndigenous cultureKakaduMiningoutbackuraniumShare: email print facebook twitter CommentsBe the first to post a comment!About the authorAdam BroinowskiThe National Film and Sound Archive of Australia is an Australian Government Agency.

Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary

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Superpit: Digging for uranium in the Australian cultural imaginary

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