Page 29 - CAMPAIGN Winter 2021

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fortnightly from Adelaide. We had plenty of records and some cassettes and used to organise a dance every weekend. It was something to do. Tony played tennis (Tony was nick named Tony after Tony Mottram who played in Davis Cup for England).
I remember Lenny Beadell, a very nice fellow who worked on building the road from Woomera to Maralinga. He had a young Aboriginal boy with him, and that young boy had to stay outside of Woomera. He surveyed the area looking for the Aboriginal people who may have been walking through the test site, unbeknown to others.
Tony’s work activities were very secret. I had to sign a secrecy agreement before going to Woomera. We were not formally warned about the dangers of working around radiation, but I was instructed that when Tony was driven home from work, he had
to shower for a couple of hours.
The children were not allowed to play with him, I was not allowed to touch him, and his clothing was put into a bag and taken away and clean clothes returned later. This happened every time he went as an observer on the plane to document all the information that came from the exercise. It went from over Ceduna, which was also affected. He had to set up all of the monitoring equipment and analyse the results once he got back and maintain the equipment.
Tony didn’t come home every night; sometimes he worked for a couple of days. He also worked at Pine Gap, doing the same work. They needed someone who had knowledge of the exercise and use of the electronic equipment and that was him.
An English couple, Margaret and Bill Parkin used to look after my son when I was working. Mark was
just a little tyke and had a little cot on the screened back veranda which I bought from a Navy man. We kept in touch with Margaret and Bill for quite a while after moving to Salisbury. Bill was working with Tony at that time.
Although we had no health warnings at all, we eventually realised the damage that comes with exposure to radiation. Tony became very unwell; he developed cancer of his reproductive organs.
We had to sign paperwork to prevent us from talking about our experiences at Woomera. Tony was not allowed a Gold Card as he had technically not served outside of Australia. There were many others who also developed cancers, some dying quite young. A lot were falling off their perches”.
Postcard with kind permission from the Beadell family.
CAMPAIGN WINTER 2021