In 1949, with the chill of the Cold War descending across Europe, the USSR tested a nuclear weapon and the arms race was on. In September 1950, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee wrote to Australian PM Robert Menzies, who embraced the chance for Australia to be used as a nuclear test site by the British military. The Monte-Bello Islands, off the north-west coast of Western Australia were chosen as the site of the first tests.

Operation Hurricane
And so it was that on October 3 1952, the 1000 tonne warship HMS Plym came to be anchored off Trimouille Island with a 25 kilotonne nuclear weapon in the hold. At 0800 hours local time, the ship was blown away in 'a vast upheaval of water rising rapidly'1 and the British military at last had access to its own nuclear capability. The survey teams moved into the contaminated zone to recover their measuring devices. They recorded heavy contamination to the north of the blast zone, where most of the fallout was occurring. Unknown to the test personnel, the southerly Leeuwin current would wash the fallout back toward the Western Australian coast.

The decontamination procedure was a black comedy, with a contaminated landing ship sunk and staff accidentally exposed to radiation in the cleanup of the ships. Satisfied nonetheless, the team set sail for Fremantle, pausing to dump at least 30 barrels of radioactive waste into the sea.

A year later, the tests continued at Emu Field, in South Australia. The British Government exploded two smaller bombs in 1953, in operation 'Totem.' Then it was decided to return to Western Australia.

Operation Mosaic
On 16 May 1956, another poisoned mushroom cloud rose into the sky over the Monte Bellos, with the 15 kilotonne 'Mosaic G1' test. The destroyer HMS Diana was standing by, sealed as best as possible, with the mission of sailing into the fallout zone to test the effects of a nuclear attack on naval operations. On June 19, 1956 the largest test shot so far - 60kilotonnes - was fired from Alpha Island. Over 3,200 kilometres to the east, radioactive iodine concentrations silently increased a hundredfold at one monitoring station.2 Again the HMS Diana sailed into the fallout, requiring extensive decontamination. She was later refused entry into the port of Fremantle on account of her role in the tests.

Following the Mosaic shots, the Monte Bellos were left in silence, burned with a poison fire which can still be detected nearly 50 years later.

Refining Armageddon
The British then moved to Maralinga in South Australia between September 27, 1956 and October 9, 1957, and unleashed an orgy of tests on the sacred ground known to the Pitjantjatjara people as the "Field of Thunder". This time, military personnel were deliberately exposed to test the effects of radiation on live subjects. The Traditional Owners were left inside the test areas and many were horribly injured by the black rain that brought the radiation into their camp grounds. But the British military was more than satisfied with its genocidal creation.

'We have made a successful start. When the [nuclear] tests are completed, as they soon will be, we shall be in the same position as the United States or Soviet Russia. We shall have made and tested the massive weapons. It will be possible then to discuss on equal terms.'
U.K. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, 1957.

The Islands
The Monte Bello Islands today are listed as a biodiversity refuge, a cluster of 200 or so limestone outposts 80km from Cape Preston on mainland Western Australia. The largest island is Hermite, only 10km²; other major islands include Trimouille, North West and Alpha Islands. Largely isolated from the mainland, which has been ravaged by introduced species for the past 200 years, the islands are today are preferred nesting grounds for Hawksbill Turtles and Green Turtles.3

The Leeuwin Current
By an accident of geography, the west coast of Australia features a southerly ocean current, not a northerly current indicated on some maps. Not formally discovered until 1980, the Leeuwin Current runs past Fremantle, around Cape Leeuwin and out toward the Great Australian Bight, and is strongest in winter. At the time of the nuclear tests it was assumed that the heaviest fallout would be carried north and conveniently vanish from the biosphere. It was also assumed that waste from the tests could be safely disposed of in the sea, and an unknown quantity of radioactive solids and liquids were tipped over the side during both testing campaigns. We can only hope the Leeuwin Current leaves these Cold War memories undisturbed in the sediments of the Monte Bellos.