Maralinga in Aussie Readers

Jan 19, 2017 Kathryn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reading-list-2017, fiction, 5-stars, audiobooks, australian-authors

This is a brilliant book by Judy Nunn and my first 5★ read of 2017. As an Australian, I had heard of Maralinga and knew that it was the site of nuclear bomb testing at some point in the 20th century, but I wasn’t aware of the details or of how it may have affected the native Aboriginal people.

I listened to this, and it was a quite distressing read at times, and so sad to see how cheaply life was held by some in positions of authority.

Deirdre Rubenstein narrated this beautifully, and I didn’t wan ...more

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Dec 22, 2011 Bree T rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: australian, mystery, historical-fiction, romance, aww2012, espionage

It is 1954 and Elizabeth Hoffman, a smart woman in her early 20s is looking to break into the cutthroat and men-only world of feature reporting and investigative journalism. She’s been given a job by a paper who doesn’t care if she’s male or female and she is using it to get a better foothold before submitting her resume to the large London papers. While covering a military event in Aldershot, the ‘home of the British Army’ she meets Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner.

For Gardiner, it is love at first s It is 1954 and Elizabeth Hoffman, a smart woman in her early 20s is looking to break into the cutthroat and men-only world of feature reporting and investigative journalism. She’s been given a job by a paper who doesn’t care if she’s male or female and she is using it to get a better foothold before submitting her resume to the large London papers. While covering a military event in Aldershot, the ‘home of the British Army’ she meets Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner.

For Gardiner, it is love at first sight and despite the fact that he’s two years younger than Elizabeth he knows that she is the woman he wants to marry and spend the rest of his life with. Elizabeth is slower to come to the party, focused on her career and not willing to be one of those women that marries and goes off and has babies and never goes back to work. She resists her feelings for Daniel, working on getting the job in London she so desperately desires. Feelings don’t go away though and after some time, the two of them come to an understanding.

Then they get word that Daniel is to be posted to the desert in South Australia on a promise of a rapid promotion. No one really knows much about what the posting is for, although there are rumours – the British military are going to undertake nuclear testing. It’s the height of the Cold War and although allies, Britain and the United States are still in their own race to develop and test nuclear weapons. And what better place to test something dangerous than in the middle of no where. Gardiner meets bushman Petraeus Mitchell at Maralinga, the liason for the Aboriginal communities. Mitchell, fond of a drink, is a tough bugger but the atrocities he has seen spill out of him one night, leaving young Daniel horrified. The local nomadic Aboriginal community, who move through the area to a waterhole that is the backbone of their land, were supposed to be rounded up and removed from the area. But it seems as though they didn’t manage to find all of them.

When Elizabeth receives devastating news in London, it arouses her journalistic instinct. She’s sure she’s being lied to by the British military but what she doesn’t realise is just how far up the chain this lie goes. She’s prepared to go halfway around the world to discover the truth behind just what is going on at Maralinga….

Recently I decided to make a conscious effort to balance out my reading a little more and stop ignoring the books sitting on my TBR shelf that had been there some time. I had a bit of fun deciding to choose a title that had been there for about a year and ended up picking up Maralinga. I went to an event last year with the author, Australian TV and stage actress Judy Nunn (you can read about that here) and she was such an amazing speaker, so passionate and enthusiastic that I ended up buying myself a huge pile of her books, 4 of which I got signed by her. She wrote something different in each one, relating to the book itself and the dedication in this one is that it will contain a few shocks.

I have to admit, I had no idea about Maralinga until listening to Nunn talk and it seems that I’m not alone. There are plenty of Australian’s who know relatively little about it, as many facts were kept from the Australian public until after the McClelland Royal Commission exposed many facts about what had occurred there in 1984-5. I was born in 1982 and this was not something I was ever taught about in school.

Maralinga is a work of fiction, but it weaves in real events with thorough research. It was hard not be drawn in, this was a fascinating story, basically an entire population of a country oblivious while another country’s army exploded nuclear bombs in their backyard. Nunn plays up on the rumours that local Aboriginals were poisoned by the tests, including some really disturbing snippets from the point of view of various local nomadic Aboriginal families. While it’s never been proved that things like this did happen, it’s never been totally proved that they didn’t either.

Maralinga isn’t just a story about the nuclear testing, it’s also a love story but that part wasn’t the novel’s greatest strength. I liked Daniel and I liked Elizabeth but them together didn’t really work for me and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I think it was mostly the effort they went to in order to remain friends when Elizabeth was still shunning relationships that when they actually did step it up to the next level, it still felt like they were just friends to me. I never really got the urgency of her feelings until she decided to give up everything and go to Australia and search out the truth of what was really going on a Maralinga. Then I got it.

Meticulously researched and also wonderfully written, this is a really fascinating blend of the truth and embellishment. I actually read this book in a day, and it’s a pretty hefty size but I found it an easy page-turner and it kept me invested the whole way. There were some twists and turns that I didn’t see coming. It showcases the beauty of our desert wonderfully and also gives us a really progressive, ahead-of-her-time protagonist, someone to admire for her principles and just how far she will go to know the truth.

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Jan 20, 2022 Gaynor rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Based on history, this novel tells a story which takes place in an area of South Australia which was turned over to British nuclear scientists to test nuclear bombs similar to those dropped on Japanese cities in 1945. The background to this novel is horrifying and tragic and resulted in a devastating betrayal of the Australian people, especially our indigenous population.
The US would not agree to share its nuclear technology with the UK, much less the loose-lipped Australians. Without consulting Based on history, this novel tells a story which takes place in an area of South Australia which was turned over to British nuclear scientists to test nuclear bombs similar to those dropped on Japanese cities in 1945. The background to this novel is horrifying and tragic and resulted in a devastating betrayal of the Australian people, especially our indigenous population.
The US would not agree to share its nuclear technology with the UK, much less the loose-lipped Australians. Without consulting cabinet the then Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies made a deal with the British to allow them to use underpopulated areas of Australia to test the horrific weapons. The UK felt threatened by the Russians and the French were ahead in their understanding of nuclear warfare as well. Sadly, despite the sacrifices made by the Australians, the British ultimately betrayed the Australian government by refusing to share the technology and data gained during the tests. This is background which you will not find in the novel, but is now information readily available in Australia to those who are interested. It is still surprising though how many Australians do not know what happened on the Montebelle Islands (WA), or at Emu Plains and Maralinga (SA).
Sometime in my youth I watched with horror a documentary where a whistle blower from the CSIRO, provided evidence about the carelessness of the British scientists, the complicity of the Australian scientists and the wanton disregard for the well-being / safety of the indigenous people who called Maralinga home. The truth turned out to be even worse than this documentary, and the novel cannot expose any more than a fraction of the horrors associated with this time.
After watching the whistle blower's documentary, I remembered a strange day in 1956 when I was about 5 years old. Our home was to the south east of Maralinga, perhaps 500km from the test site. On this particular day it was very cloudy and quite windy. My dog was "spooked" by something and stayed indoors all day whimpering under my chair. This would have been about the time that Adelaide's atmosphere contained radio active material 900 times more than was considered safe.
As for the novel itself, I persisted with it because it was about a time in history of interest to me.
The author goes into a lot of detail describing the psychological games that the characters play. I am not sure that the detailed sex scenes add anything to the story, but the subplot about the suffering of the Aborigines was heartbreakingly real. Those who cannot face reading the non-fiction title, "Maralinga; The chilling expose` of our secret nuclear shame and betrayal of our troops and country" by Frank Walker could perhaps read this novel instead. ...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Mish rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: australian-authors

I started this book really not knowing a great deal on the nuclear testing conducted at Maralinga in the mid 1950. But after reading this I was appalled and shocked to find out that this did actually happen to our beautiful country, and risked the lives of our people. In this story the Author combines historical fact and fiction to give us a riveting tale of power, corruption, suspense and romance.

The British and Australian government joined forces to recruit young, energetic and naïve army off ...more

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