Avon Hudson (born 1937) is a South Australian RAAF ex-serviceman, nuclear weapons testing whistle-blower and co-author of the 2005 book Beyond Belief which he wrote with academic and historian, Roger Cross. [1] He has appeared in several documentary films about nuclear weapons testing in Australia.
Hudson was educated at Whitwarta in South Australia. He joined the Australian Air Force in February 1956 and served until February 1962 as a mechanic, machinery operator and driver. After six years with the RAAF, Hudson left the armed services and worked on the Snowy Mountains Project as a mechanic before working on the civil space program in Australia.
He worked at the Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury, South Australia as a driver and operator, then at the Woomera Rocket Range from April 1962 until March 1964 as a driver and operator. His next job was at the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station DSIF Deep Space Instrumentation Facility where he worked as a crane operator and maintenance technician from April 1964 to 1970. He continued to work in the space industry at Orroral Valley Tracking Station (1965-1970), Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station (1966) and Island Lagoon Tracking Station (1964-1970).
He worked on the Bougainville Island copper project from 1970 to 1971 and Sensus Building Canberra in crane maintenance from 1971 to December 1975. In 1975, he became a self-employed wood turner and antique dealer and restorer, eventually retiring in 2004.
Avon Hudson also served as an elected member of the Wakefield Regional Council for many years. [2] During his time as a councillor, Hudson formally established the region, which includes his hometown of Balaklava, as a "nuclear free zone"; consistent with his work as an anti-nuclear activist and educator.
While a member of the Royal Australian Air Force, Hudson was assigned to work at the Maralinga testing range during the period of minor trials which included the explosive scattering of plutonium. At risk of incarceration for exposing Commonwealth secrets, Hudson later disclosed undertakings of the British nuclear weapons testing period in South Australia (1956-1963) making multiple appearances in mainstream media from the 1970s [3] through 2010s. [4] [5] His disclosures delayed the return of the testing range to their traditional custodians, the Anangu people due to the inadequacy of clean-up measures, persistent contamination and associated health risks of ionizing radiation. He gave testimony to the Royal Commission into British nuclear testing in Australia in 1984 and 1985 and has continued to work as a spokesperson for nuclear veterans in South Australia since that time. Avon is an anti-nuclear activist and educator committed to explaining radiological hazards in accessible English – knowledge he has acquired over many decades of private study.
Avon Hudson's life was the subject of a public exhibition in February 2015, as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival in Balaklava, South Australia. The exhibition Portrait of a Whistle-blower presented artifacts and images which trace his journey from childhood through his RAAF service and his subsequent life as a nuclear whistle-blower. The exhibition was curated by photo-media artist Jessie Boylan, who also contributed images to the exhibition including reproductions of artifacts and portraiture of Hudson. The artifacts on display included photographs from Hudson's own collection, a piece of vitrified earth from Maralinga, a red umbrella Hudson once used to evade an undercover government agent who was following him, and two cathode-ray tube televisions displaying TV news broadcasts and documentary film footage.
The exhibition was launched as part of an expanded event called 10 Minutes to Midnight, presented by Alphaville and Nuclear Futures. The event combined history, art and discussion and was supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts SA. It featured three stages, including a projected video installation which created an impression of the nuclear test program and its effects and an open discussion with Boylan and Hudson. The event attracted a public audience which included nuclear veterans and their relatives who were able to share their experiences and ask questions. Additional contributing artists included Teresa Crea, Linda Dement, John Romeril, Nic Mollison and Luke Harrald. [6]
In 2020, Hudson was the lead subject in a short documentary film called Accounts of a Nuclear Whistleblower. He also appeared in Maralinga Pieces (2012), Maralinga Atomic Bomb Test Survivors (2007), Silent Storm (2003) and earlier titles. [7]
Hudson is a left wing social democrat and Labor supporter.
Woomera, unofficially Woomera village, refers to the domestic area of RAAF Base Woomera. Woomera village has always been a Defence-owned and operated facility. The village is located on the traditional lands of the Kokatha people in the Far North region of South Australia, but is on Commonwealth-owned land and within the area designated as the 'Woomera Prohibited Area' (WPA). The village is approximately 446 kilometres (277 mi) north of Adelaide. In common usage, "Woomera" refers to the wider RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC), a large Australian Defence Force aerospace and systems testing range covering an area of approximately 122,000 square kilometres (47,000 sq mi) and is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force.
Maralinga, in the remote western areas of South Australia, was the site, measuring about 3,300 square kilometres (1,300 sq mi) in area, of British nuclear tests in the mid-1950s.
Emu Field is located in the desert of South Australia, at 28°41′54″S132°22′17″E. Variously known as Emu Field, Emu Junction or Emu, it was the site of the Operation Totem pair of nuclear tests conducted by the British government in October 1953.
Between 1956 and 1963, the United Kingdom conducted seven nuclear tests at the Maralinga site in South Australia, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area about 800 kilometres (500 mi) north west of Adelaide. Two major test series were conducted: Operation Buffalo in 1956 and Operation Antler the following year. Approximate weapon yields ranged from 1 to 27 kilotons of TNT. The Maralinga site was also used for minor trials, tests of nuclear weapons components not involving nuclear explosions. Kittens were trials of neutron initiators; Rats and Tims measured how the fissile core of a nuclear weapon was compressed by the high explosive shock wave; and Vixens investigated the effects of fire or non-nuclear explosions on atomic weapons. The minor trials, numbering around 550, ultimately generated far more contamination than the major tests.
The Pila Nguru, often referred to in English as the Spinifex people, are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Australia, whose lands extend to the border with South Australia and to the north of the Nullarbor Plain. The centre of their homeland is in the Great Victoria Desert, at Tjuntjunjarra, some 700 kilometres (430 mi) east of Kalgoorlie, perhaps the remotest community in Australia. Their country is sometimes referred to as Spinifex country. The Pila Nguru were the last Australian people to have dropped the complete trappings of their traditional lifestyle.
The term Southern Australia is generally considered to refer to the states and territories of Australia of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and South Australia. The part of Western Australia south of latitude 26° south — a definition widely used in law and state government policy — is also usually included.
The Maralinga Tjarutja, or Maralinga Tjarutja Council, is the corporation representing the traditional Anangu owners of the remote western areas of South Australia known as the Maralinga Tjarutja lands. The council was established by the Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984. The area is one of the four regions of South Australia classified as an Aboriginal Council (AC) and not incorporated within a local government area.
The McClelland Royal Commission or Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia was an inquiry by the Australian government in 1984–1985 to investigate the conduct of the British in its use, with the then Australian government's permission, of Australian territory and soldiers for testing nuclear weapons. It was chaired by Jim McClelland.
The town of Balaklava is located in South Australia, 92 kilometres north of Adelaide in the Mid North region. It is on the south bank of the Wakefield River, 25 kilometres east of Port Wakefield.
Australia does not possess weapons of mass destruction, although it has participated in extensive research into nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the past.
Sir Oliver Howard Beale KBE was an Australian politician and diplomat. He was a member of the Liberal Party and served in the House of Representatives from 1946 to 1958, representing the New South Wales seat of Parramatta. He held ministerial office in the Menzies Government as Minister for Information (1949–1950), Transport (1949–1950), Supply (1950–1958), and Defence Production (1956–1958). He retired from parliament to serve as Australian Ambassador to the United States (1958–1964). His son Julian also entered politics.
Rear Admiral Kevin John Scarce, is a retired Royal Australian Navy officer who was the 34th Governor of South Australia, serving from August 2007 to August 2014. He was succeeded by Hieu Van Le, who had previously been his lieutenant governor. He was Chancellor of the University of Adelaide from 2014 to 2020.
Nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining and export, and nuclear power have often been the subject of public debate in Australia, and the anti-nuclear movement in Australia has a long history. Its origins date back to the 1972–73 debate over French nuclear testing in the Pacific and the 1976–77 debate about uranium mining in Australia.
Operation Totem was a pair of British atmospheric nuclear tests which took place at Emu Field in South Australia in October 1953. They followed the Operation Hurricane test of the first British atomic bomb, which had taken place at the Montebello Islands a year previously. The main purpose of the trial was to determine the acceptable limit on the amount of plutonium-240 which could be present in a bomb.
Alan Parkinson is a mechanical and nuclear engineer who lives in Canberra, Australia. He is also a whistleblower who wrote the 2007 book, Maralinga: Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up which exposed deficiencies in the clean-up of the British atomic bomb test site at Maralinga in South Australia.
Frank William Walker is an Australian journalist and non-fiction writer. He writes non-fiction books, mostly on military history including about the British nuclear tests at Maralinga, in South Australia.
The United Kingdom conducted 12 major nuclear weapons tests in Australia between 1952 and 1957. These explosions occurred at the Montebello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga.
Sir Leslie Harold Martin, was an Australian physicist. He was one of the 24 Founding Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science and had a significant influence on the structure of higher education in Australia as chairman of the Australian Universities Commission from 1959 until 1966. He was Professor of Physics at the University of Melbourne from 1945 to 1959, and Dean of the Faculty of Military Studies and Professor of Physics at the University of New South Wales at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in Canberra from 1967 to 1970. He was the Defence Scientific Adviser and chairman of the Defence Research and Development Policy Committee from 1948 to 1968, and a member of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission from 1958 to 1968. In this role he was an official observer at several British nuclear weapons tests in Australia.
The RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC) is a major Australian military and civil aerospace facility and operation located in South Australia, approximately 450 km (280 mi) north-west of Adelaide. The WRC is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a division of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The complex has a land area of 122,188 km2 (47,177 sq mi) or roughly the size of North Korea or Pennsylvania. The airspace above the area is restricted and controlled by the RAAF for safety and security. The WRC is a highly specialised ADF test and evaluation capability operated by the RAAF for the purposes of testing defence materiel.
The Vixen series of nuclear tests were all safety experiments, in which a bomb mechanism with live core is subjected to abnormal conditions, such as fire, shock and electrical malfunctions to determine whether a nuclear criticality occurs. The obviously successful result is no nuclear criticality, but the high explosives that trigger the fission bomb may explode, destroying the bomb and spreading the core material over a localized area.
