Oak Valley / Maralinga (Outback
SA)
When Deb started her 6 week
contract up at Oak Valley in mid October, I searched and searched for a map of
where it is and as the community is on Aboriginal lands, commercially available
maps are difficult to locate. The only
map I could find was this one below which is from the Bureau of Meteorology as
the community has an automated weather station.
The Maralinga Tjaruta (Jar-oot-Ja) Aboriginal lands covers an area of South Australia greater than 102,000 square kilometres and here is a map of their land from a SA Government website …
The opportunity for both Deb and I to experience Oak Valley was one we jumped at simply because Oak Valley is so remote … did I mention REMOTE!
Being an Aboriginal community on their
lands means that you must be approved by the tribal council before entering
their lands and how many people get the opportunity to experience firsthand, a
true remote community?
The community is there for their people
and the ‘white fellas’ assist to provide essential services and infrastructure
for the community such as a health clinic, aged care facilities, a general
store, a school and access to water and power.
Both Deb and I were very keen to
immerse ourselves into their culture and to experience firsthand traditional
Aboriginal customs and we have both been very fortunate to have been welcomed
into their community.
The accommodation there is very
comfortable given the extreme elements and it is always very hot and the red
dirt is everywhere. On one particular
day, the mercury climbed above 47 degrees!
The pic below is of the front of our unit / house we stayed in with the community ambulance out the front and my store ute under the verandah with “Betty”, one of the camp dogs that adopted us looking on.
Most houses are maisonettes
and assigned to the workers based on the job functions they are employed to do
and ours was the Nurses Unit.
The pic above is taken from the front
door of the unit, there are 2 bedrooms to the left and the back door can just
be seen as well. We had 3 air
conditioners with 2 running almost 24x7 and all buildings have big verandahs
around them to provide as much relief from the sun as possible.
As 99% of all water is trucked in from
a bore some 100kms away, flushing toilets are not practical so instead we have out houses that feature ‘long
drops’ … and here was ours …
Out the back of our yard is where a community solar
panel array used to be until the local kids thought it would be better off
smashed then operational!
Each unit has its own rain and plumbed
bore water tank with the bore water that is trucked in stored in the massive
community bulk water tanks at the other end of town.
The health clinic, general store and
office etc are located behind our house but would be about 100 meters away
which was far enough to walk to and from work in the heat … sometimes!
Here is the community general where I worked as the Community General Store Manager for a couple of weeks in October …
The community store truck which makes the 1,000+ kms round trip each week back to Ceduna for food and supplies is seen below parked next to the store …
Here is the school which has approximately 20 students and up to 5 teachers …
The fuel depot and bowsers for Diesel and Unleaded fuel selling for $1.80 / litre. The Oak Valley Office and Garage is located to the right of the fuel depot.
The community stores the bulk water trucked in by the tanker in massive tanks on stilts to maintain mains pressure and all the buildings and houses are connected to these tanks. There is also a huge "V" shaped roof that captures any decent rain fall the community may get. Given that over the last 3 years they have had less than 2.5 inches of rain, the community relies on bore water from one of a few bores available.
The community also has a Power House located some distance away from the houses because of the noise the 4 massive diesel engines make that combined, run 24x7 to provide electricity to the community.
The community members also have permanent
accommodation dwellings built from the same materials although many of them are
in various states of disrepair …
As they simply need to do with what
they have available, I had to include this pic below. I saw this 4x4 a few days earlier with only
three wheels as it drove down the main street and if you look closely, all 4
wheels are a different size! …
A great thing about living in a remote
community, the people there are all like minded and we rely on each other’s company
and often get together for meals to share our adventures and to simply
socialise.
The pic below was a BBQ we had one
evening where we all got together and the school teachers joined us as
well.
We even tried cooking a kangaroo tail in the coals of the fire and Deb was very keen to try it …
I picked through it to find some meat
and honestly it tastes like lamb, the tail is very fatty and stringy, but the
meat is nice if you can gnaw your way through to it.
I think witnessing (and smelling) the fur being burnt
off it first, and then the tail just being dropped as is into the embers to
cook was enough to initially put me off, but it is experiences like this that make living
here unique.
Just to clarify … we buy the roo tails
from the shop who get them from a butcher in Adelaide … they are a local delicacy and are
very popular in the community store.
Both Deb and I wanted to eat unique
Aboriginal foods such as kangaroo tail and widgety grubs, even give wombat and
goanna a go if possible whilst we had the chance to do so.
Deb and I were very keen to see how
they hunted for widgety grubs and one afternoon, when the temperature was well
into the mid 40’s, we took a few of the women and kids out to where they were
commonly found.
It was very interesting to learn from
the women what the trees and bushes they were looking for and I never
realised that the grub burrows into the root of a particular bush, lives in
there and when it rains, they surface to drink.
These burrows in the trunk of the bush indicate that there were grubs
underground.
It seemed very hard work to dig out the
sand and dirt from under the bush and we were very interested to learn from them and listen to some of
their stories about the history of this land, like signs that others had been here
before and that there were old camp sites around … all I could see was bush!
Here is Kathleen (left) and Janet
(right) digging away …
Janet located a swollen root, chopped it off the bush and handed it to me so I could see what they were looking for …
I was shown how to peel back the bark to find and extract the grub …
And here is the widgety grub ...
The texture of their skin was soft and supple and the women managed to find quite a few which they were happy with by the time we left to seek some relief from the sun.
When the British and Australian armies built the roads out here
back in the 1950’s and 60’s as part of the Maralinga works, they erected rain water tanks under shelter every
50 to 70 kms and we drove to a nearby shelter and cooked up kangaroo tails the
traditional way.
Kathleen dug a small pit in the sand,
filled the pit with wood and lit the fire to create embers in which to cook the
tails. The 5 roo tails are seen below on
the sand after the fur had been burnt off them.
Once the tails are placed into the hot
sand and embers, they are completely covered again in the hot sand and left for
a couple of hours to cook in a true bush oven.
And then it was meal time! We used an old oil drum as a table, a pocket
knife to cut the tails up and it was a challenge to eat a piece of tail
complete with skin, dirt and charcoal … but we did and had a great day out.
Somehow, us “white fellas” forgot all about
the grub bounty that day but on another occasion, Deb was “fortunate” enough to
try a widgety grub …
One of the great things about being up
here is that there is so much to see, even if it is barren landscapes and
endless miles of dirt roads as you never know what you will see.
One weekend, Thomas (the Operations
Manager), Glenn (the contracted truck driver), Deb and I went for a drive in the morning to
have a look around and we took the dirt road back south towards Cook
and we came across a sand dune ridge in the middle of nowhere so we stopped and had a look
around …
Here is Deb and Glenn looking for signs
of animal tracks …
As you can see, the landscape is relatively flat for miles
around and we were searching for camels that were known to be around this area … somewhere out there!
As we walked through the dunes, we came across many animal tracks and these are tracks from a small goanna in
the sand. You can see the marks the tail has
made from side to side as it walked up the dunes …
And other tracks from a small snake …
And even the circular rings in the sand
from the tiniest plant as the wind blows it around …
And here is me and my girl ...
On another day and another drive, we came across a
small goanna basking on the hot dirt road and Thomas (AKA the Lizard Man!) managed to chase it catch it by it’s tail …
We took some snaps and let him go …
On another occasion, Deb and Thomas spotted this little fella ...
And there are so many car wrecks around and here are a couple more ...
One of the sad things about this place is the number of camp dogs that are just left to fend for themselves in this very harsh place. Deb and I 'adopted' Betty and she followed us around the camp / community and was great company. Here she is in our back yard ...
This is 'Dino' a wild dingo that was often seen around the houses looking for food and water ...
On the way back towards Maralinga is
the Oak Valley airstrip which is 18 kms out of town and is used by the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) and by visiting charter flights that ferry specialists such as doctors that fly to remote communities.
It is very basic, only a small slab of concrete for the pilot to aim at when landing as the landing strip is all dirt. The air strip is fenced off to keep the wild animals such as camels off it at all times.
My stay in Oak Valley was over far too
quickly as I had to get back to Ceduna to collect Blade and my Land Cruiser
and head back to Adelaide as I had my truck driving lessons … but this time I
was going to the front gates at Maralinga and to hopefully meet Thomas there
before heading to Ceduna.
Heading back towards Ceduna, I just had to make a stop at the infamous road sign "Lift 'Em Foot" ...
Maralinga (Outback SA)
The British Nuclear tests at
Maralinga occurred between 1952 and 1963 at the Maralinga site and a total of seven nuclear tests were performed, and it was the site
also used for hundreds of minor trials, many of which were intended to
investigate the effects of fire or non-nuclear explosions on atomic weapons.
The pic below was sourced from the ABC and is of one of the actual nuclear tests carried pout at Maralinga and in the ABC article, it mentions
that fall out from one test drifted across Australia and as far east as outer Sydney!
The Maralinga site was contaminated with radioactive materials and an initial clean-up was attempted
in 1967. The McClelland Royal
Commission, an examination of the effects of the tests, delivered its report in
1985, and found that significant radiation hazards still existed at many of the
Maralinga test areas. It recommended another clean-up, which was completed in
2000 at a cost of $108 million. Debate continued over the safety of the site
and the long-term health effects on the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land and former
personnel.
In 1994, the Australian Government paid compensation
amounting to $13.5 million to the local Maralinga
Tjarutja people and they were
resettled in a new community called Oak Valley which is approximately 150 kms
west of Maralinga.
The entire Maralinga area is fenced off and remains a
restricted area today and here is the front gate at Maralinga, complete with a concrete
phone box called the “Tardis” (from Dr Who fame) and the steel table and chairs
are actually concreted in the ground.
The Tardis has an old wind up telephone to call the only person within
Maralinga who is the resident caretaker and only he can let you in.
Unfortunately, we were unable to get access and I left Maralinga determined to revisit another day and
headed south to the railway line at a siding called “Watson”.
When the British Military built Maralinga, they extended the
rail line from Tarcoola west and built a one lane bitumen road some 60 kms
north from the railway at Watson into Maralinga.
The pic below is nearer to Watson showing the old road and
the disused telegraph poles and the wires are long gone now.
Was this the original ”Bush Telegraph”, I wonder?
When I finally arrived at Watson, unfortunately there is
nothing there now to suggest how busy this area was some 60 years ago except
for a section of old line that has been dug into a long trench. Reports I have researched since suggest that
instead of building traditional platforms out here, the British laid the line
into the ground to enable them to more easily access the cargo on and off the
trains.
The
pic below shows the old lines in the foreground and the Trans Continental
Railway lines (Adelaide to Perth) in the background at the Watson siding. Also,
you can see some of the telegraph poles in the distance as well as the hills in
the far distance where Maralinga is located.
The only infrastructure here (thankfully) is a massive
telecommunications tower powered by an array of solar panels to provide
essential communications out here!
This is at Watson ... looking west towards Perth!
One of the other reasons I travelled back to Ceduna this way
was to visit the rarely seen monuments on the railway line that marks both the
joining of the rail from east to west and the start / finish of the longest
continuously straight stretch of rail in the southern hemisphere. These monuments are located somewhere along
the train line accessible only via a very bumpy and infrequently used emergency
use only bush track, between Watson and Ooldea which is about 50kms in
distance.
And here they are ... or what is left of them!
It was a real disappointment to see that both (one on each
side of the line) monuments had been all but destroyed and vandalised over the
years.
After a very slow and bumpy journey from Watson, I finally came across the first / last corner of rail heading as I headed towards Ooldea which is in the
background identified by the tall telecommunications tower and white power
station.
The Ooldea crossing was where I rejoined the dirt road back to Ceduna
and here is a pic of part of the endless dirt road that lay ahead ...
A defining landmark in this area is the Iluka Mineral mine
and the mined soils glow orange / pink in the afternoon sun. I tried to capture this stunning sight in the
pic below, but it is far more dramatic seeing it firsthand …
I arrived safely back in Ceduna by night fall and slept back
in the van in the caravan park that night.
The next day, I picked up Barb (the General Store Manager)
from the Ceduna Airport as she was returning to Oak Valley later that day.
I collected my Land Cruiser from the Maralinga Office, collected
Blade from the boarding kennels and then started the 800km journey back to Adelaide (again!!) to
finalise the financial my property settlement and to do my Heavy Rigid vehicle
(HR) truck driving course and assessment.
Here is a pic of a similar type truck I spent 10 hours
behind the wheel of and I scored 93% in my final on road assessment.
Now I have a HR Licence which permits me to
drive almost any vehicle up to 18 tonne in weight (up to a semi basically).
After a couple of weeks back in Adelaide, it was soon time
to head back to Ceduna, collect the van and haul it across to Penong. Penong is a small town 75kms west of Ceduna
and it would be our base in early December as Deb was the medical officer on
the week long Oak Valley school camp which was down at Point Sinclair, 20 kms
south of Penong.
In November,
(the Land Cruiser) travelled ... 1,894 kilometres,
Cheapest fuel was in Darlington,
SA where it was $1.359 / litre
Dearest fuel was in Ceduna, SA where
it was $1.559 / litre
So far, we have travelled 12,377 kilometres, the equivalent of Adelaide to Darwin and back to Adelaide, then back to Darwin and back to Adelaide again!.
(Adelaide to Darwin is 3,029
kilometres).
