Going Nuclear in the Outback

The Outback majors on crazy towns. Tiny communities, stranded in an inland sea of sand and scrub, hundreds of miles from anywhere. Yet even after the Martian landscape of Coober Pedy, Woomera, South Australia, is pretty special.

Woomera sits on the edge of a bona fide nuclear wasteland: the Woomera Prohibited Zone, a landscape more blasted than heath, which skirts the made road for hundreds of kilometres and stretches far, far back into the wastes.

Prohibited? Hell, yeah. It’s prohibited because, with the Cold War at its hottest, when the British and Australian governments wanted a handy space in which to test their nukes, Woomera was where they chose.

Unfortunate, really, for the Indigenous people whose land this was. They wandered the desert, right through the 1950s, hunting, gathering, pretty much untouched, living in camps, enjoying life on a land so barren that not even the most land-grabbing of pastoralists had pushed them further into the interior.

Then two towns sprang up, out of nowhere. Woomera, and Roxby Downs, 90-odd k further up a newly built road, to, well, nowhere. Not a problem. Plenty of room for all…

And then they started testing.

They were bright as a million suns, some of these bombs. Sprouting giant mushrooms out of dark desert dust, clouding the sky.

In their wake? Strange visitations. Falling hair. Bleeding gums. Burn marks on the skin. Animals with strange diseases. Sicknesses which the Elders couldn’t name…

How many died? Nobody knows.

Australian Indigenous people didn’t count as citizens or make it onto censuses until the 1960s. Only the whites counted enough to be, well, counted.

So, to the defence forces and aerospace companies who still make up the essence of Woomera’s population, the Simpson Desert was, like Bikini Atoll, as good as empty.

It’s still here, Woomera. Still alive. A strange little place. A company town. Slabbed out of breezeblock, red brick and corrugated iron to house rocket scientists, physicists, engineers, with missile models soaring over the town, the crumpled remains of test launches and satellites housed in their own barbed wire cages, airbrushed murals of Indigenous kids and rich violet sunsets descending over the Mad Max flatlands.

There’s an optimism about it, despite its dark past. A 50s Americana feel to it, as though transplanted from suburban Vegas to the planet’s expansive south, or borrowed from The Truman Show. Wide, expansive, weirdly empty streets draw dust devils from the badlands which stretch out into infinity: gums and acacia wilt and choke, piny in the heat.

A huge, blue pool, big enough for the town’s entire population of 350 to use at once, lies empty behind a 50s retro bright white frontage. The town theatre shows animated films weekly when the school is open.

It’s the sort of place where one might, without entire irony, Hoover on Benzedrine, take the edge off with Valium, then craft a Jello salad, awaiting the return of one’s chopper pilot husband from another secret mission into the desert…

What else? Two museums (one closed, both with extensive theodolite displays), a bowling alley, a diner, gift shop, a hotel (with “Night Shift” signs in lieu of do not disturb”), and, of course, the missile park…

An odd one, the missile park. Though some of the technology built here is used for satellites now, and all of it was pioneering in its day, it’s odd to see such an unashamed celebration of, well, weapons of mass destruction.

They tower over you, some of them. Skylark, like a bright red lippie rolled up to the blue sky, baking in the broiling sun where playing fields watered to a hallucinatory Technicolor green run down to the desert expanse.

Z scampers to an old Qantas plane, from the days when the name stood for Queensland and the Northern Territory. He hops into the gunner’s seat of a WWII Bofors. Poses for photos laying down anti-aircraft fire in the sky…

The lady who runs the general store came to Woomera from Northern Ireland in the early 70s. And, like a lot of folk, she’s still here. Still got her accent, though the kids and grandkids are Aussies through and through.

She’s keen to talk. Who wouldn’t be?

“Are you new here?” she asks. “Or are you just passing through?”

“Just passing through,” I say. “We came from Alice Springs, stayed at the Eldo, headed for Adelaide.”

I scope her stock. It’s surprising. And not just because of the shiny array of subsidised fruit and veg.

There’s an epic array of magazines devoted to quilting, sewing, patchwork, even spinning: more than you’d find in your average major mall bookstore. I guess that’s what the women do, out here in the heat when the men are at work, the telly begins to pall and it’s too early to start drinking.

I’m headlong into the Gibber Gabber, the local newsletter, named for the type of desert in which Woomera sits. It leads, like other Outback news offerings I’ve absorbed along this trip, with Santa’s arrival in town last month. Progresses to years in review, meditative, op-ed pieces by luminaries such as the Head of Base Support for British Aerospace…

In the book selection at the giftshop, I pore over thee oeuvre of local hero Len Beadell, author of Bush Bashers, Blast the Bush, Beating About the Bush, Too Long in the Bush and (yes, really) Still in the Bush, who explored and built roads across much of the surrounding desert, naming them for his family.

He’s fighting for shelf space with Tom Clancy and SAS veteran Andy McNab. Nothing on John McDouall Stuart, the first known explorer to have crossed the continent from South to North. Though there’s some fabulous teatowels for the ladies, and my mother can’t resist.

Back at the store, the noticeboard has its own tale to tell. No yoga, wellness or spiritual healing here, though someone has lost four parrots and is hoping they can be found. It’s a garage sale gone micro. Completely bonkers.

One guy, who’s finally leaving town, is flogging off some rifles and ammo from his extensive collection, not to mention a fishing rod (barely used!). An optimist wants twenty-five bucks for his computer case (no innards)…

The barman at the Eldo Hotel came here from Adelaide and has been here, he tells me, for four whole years. “Does it ever get busy in here?” I ask him, looking around the passers-through who cluster in groups before the big picture windows.

“Sometimes,” he says. “When the defense force are in town. Some days, you can barely see across the room.”

“Do you get a lot of girls out then?” I ask, thinking of the slappers who cluster round every British military base in the country, looking for a soldier.

He looks at me. There aren’t many girls in Woomera. There’s not much of anything in Woomera. But it’s a fascinating place to be, when you’re passing through.