“‘Where to?’ I said.
“Charlie pointed down a dirt track that led into the desert. Then he started stamping his feet and shaking all over. He was obviously trying to tell me something, but I was blowed if I knew what.”
The mystery was solved a couple of hours later when the freight train with the water and provisions arrived. As the water was transferred to a bowser in the back of his truck, Murdo got talking to one of the drivers. He told him about the soldiers and how nervous the aborigines were.
Murdo recalled: “The driver said there had been talk of a big new army base far out in the desert. It was supposed to be at a place called Maralinga. ‘Maralinga means thunder field,’ he said. ‘It’s one of their sacred sites. That’s why they’re so agitated. They don’t like people interfering with their spirits.’”
The next time Murdo went to the crossing there was no sign of the aborigines. They had just melted away into the desert. But there were plenty of signs of other activity. The ground, normally just featureless desert, had recently been churned up by a lot of heavy traffic. There were large tyre tracks and heavy boot prints everywhere. A lot of men and equipment had clearly landed at this remote outpost. And as far as Murdo could make out they were all heading in one direction: the place the aborigines called Maralinga.
Murdo was intrigued and asked around when the next freight train drew in, but other than the fact they were mainly British soldiers, no-one seemed to know anything. The guardsman on the train told him it was all ‘hush-hush’ and that he shouldn’t ask questions.
This, of course, only made Murdo want to find out what was going on even more. He could sense an opportunity. Soldiers, lots of them, and equipment; he could smell there was money to be made. Things at Coober Pedy had not gone to plan. He never found a single opal lying around. He realised he wasn’t going to make a fortune there. It was time to move on. He discussed it with Wally that night and they decided to head off to Maralinga and find out what it was all about.
Murdo recalled: “A week later we took off into the desert with just a few days supplies in the back of the Land Rover. We didn’t really know where we were going; we just followed the rough road which went more or less in a straight line west. Just before sundown on the first day, we saw a large aircraft flying quite low and heading into the desert just south of us. We took a left into the brush and followed. The plane seemed to come down about 20 miles ahead.
“We camped for the night and headed off in the morning. The terrain became harsher as we travelled. It was all low scrub and saltbush. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go there and was beginning to think we had got it wrong. We came across this huge flat plain of white limestone stretching away to the north as far as the eye could see.
Slap in the middle was a town of tents and wooden huts that didn’t appear on any map I knew off. On the edge of the town was an airstrip. We followed the road until we came to a sort of border post. Two guards ran out waving their guns and shouting at us to get out of the vehicle.
“We put our hands up, just like the cowboys, and then we burst out laughing at the thought. This seemed to break the ice because one of the soldiers suddenly grinned and put his gun down. We were taken to a guard house while we waited for an officer to arrive.
They wouldn’t answer any of our questions, but one of the lads, a Geordie, said they were all sick of the heat and the flies. I remember saying to him that he should try living in a rabbit hole in an opal mine, and he laughed. Eventually this officer arrived. He took one look at us and barked: ‘This is a restricted area. You could have been shot. Who told you to come here? What’s your business?’
“‘Whoa, whoa,’’’ I said. ‘We’re only looking for work.’
“The officer said it was a military camp and off-limits to civilians. It looked as though we were going to get the bums’ rush until I mentioned the aborigines and how upset they had been.
“The officer looked sharply at me. ‘You speak aboriginal?’
“’Sure do,’” I replied with more confidence than I felt. ‘Like a native.’
“The officer considered this for a while before saying, ‘And what do you do?’
“‘I’m a driver, Sir, says I, hoping to impress. ‘A good one. Been driving in the desert for years.’
“He grunted and nodded toward Wally. ‘And you?’
“Wally said he was a labourer with a good strong pair of hands. We told the officer, who turned out to be a captain, about our adventures gold prospecting in the bush and how we had ended up in Coober Pedy.
“Our voices were drowned out at that moment as another aircraft, a large freighter rumbled in toward the airstrip. ‘Well, there’s certainly plenty of work,’ said the officer more to himself than anything else. He seemed to come to a decision.
“‘Sergeant,’ he barked. ‘Give them a cuppa while I decide what’s what.’ With that he jumped into his Jeep and drove back off into the main camp. ‘You’re in,’ said the sergeant cheerfully. ‘But you might learn to regret it.’
“It was a funny thing to say, and I asked him what the camp was all about. Suddenly the sergeant lost his good humour.
“‘One thing you’ve got to learn about this place is that you never ask questions,’” he said, very sternly. ‘Start being nosey and they’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks. You got that?’”
The two men were taken into the camp where they were put to work with a contingent of about 40 civilian workers who did general labour duties, building huts, roads and runway repairs.
Murdo was put on border duties, mainly because of his knowledge of aboriginal, and spent his time patrolling the outer limits of the camp that separated the area from the rest of the featureless desert. They were warned several times about the need for secrecy and the dire consequences of talking to “outsiders” about what they had seen.
Murdo learned to keep his mouth shut, and his eyes and ears open. And it wasn’t long before he found out what Maralinga was all about.
Its official, that is to say British, name, was the sinister-sounding X200. It was a 450-square mile area of flat saltbush and desert that bore ample traces of the ocean that once covered it. Wave marks stretched into the distance and there were millions of fossil shell fragments.
X200 was the place chosen to be the test site for a series of atomic bombs the British planned to detonate later in the year. As the time for the tests approached, Murdo was assigned a job as a driver, taxiing sentries and officers on patrol far out into the desert in search of aborigines who wandered into the area. Many did, and Murdo’s knowledge of the language was a great asset in persuading the gentle people to leave.
His pal Wally, meanwhile, was given a job labouring with the construction workers who were rapidly building the new town which would eventually house thousands of servicemen.
Gradually the small town took shape. There were main streets with comforting, homely names like London Road, and Belfast Crescent. A post office, a hospital, several chapels, and a cinema were thrown up in double quick time.
In due course a football pitch was added as well as a barbers shop, two beer gardens, laboratories and workshops. There was even a VIP dining room with a grand piano which the officers gathered around to smoke cigars and enjoy a beer. The three-mile airstrip doubled as a cricket pitch and the entrance to the terminal was planted with white flowers flown in from England.
Murdo enjoyed himself immensely in the months before the testing began. He revelled in the pioneering spirit of the place. Unlike many of the arrivals he was already hardened to the tough and remorseless conditions. His specialist knowledge of the terrain soon made him indispensable to the soldiers of the royal engineers who toiled far out in the desert preparing suitable test sites.