Traditional owner groups win historic native title ruling in Victoria
The ruling gives the group the right to access the land, use its resources and protect sites, objects and places of cultural and spiritual significance.
The determination covers an area which includes Mildura near the Victorian border and stretches to the Australian border.
It's the first time an exclusive native title has been granted in Victoria.
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
They were on opposing sides at Hiroshima in 1945. Now, they're campaigning together
When Teruko Yahata and Bill Plewright meet for the first time, within minutes they are posing for a photo side by side, her hand clasping his hand. Against all odds, these two survivors of nuclear blasts have been brought together in an exhibition space in Perth. At nearly 88, Yahata is a diminutive Japanese figure, hair cut in a neat bob and a perpetual smile on her face. Plewright is taller, and his dapper suit and erect military posture hides that he's nudging his 97th birthday. Eighty years ago, a catastrophic event changed the course of both their lives. On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, then, three days later, on Nagasaki. Yahata was eight years old; Plewright was a young able seaman when his ship arrived in Japan in the aftermath of the bomb. Her experience of nuclear weapons was as an instantaneous explosion over a civilian target; his experience was as one of 16,000 Australian troops who served in Occupied Japan and later at nuclear weapon test sites – in his case, on the Montebello Islands off Western Australia. Yahata is one of a dwindling group of hibakusha, or survivors of Japan's nuclear blasts. Plewright is now one of the oldest remaining Commonwealth atomic-test veterans in the world. The pair's first – and very probably the last – meeting was at the travelling event, Never Again: The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Exhibition, held at the WA capital's Holmes à Court Gallery in May, at which each described their experiences of being exposed to nuclear weapons. Plewright says he will commemorate this week's 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb by sending an email greeting to Yahata in Japan. When he arrived in Japan, the young sailor had stood on a bridge near the Hiroshima 'epicentre' dome, barely two kilometres from Yahata's house. 'When I was on that bridge, we were so far apart yet so close,' Plewright tells Yahata in front of an emotional crowd. 'And now we are here, friend to friend. It's absolutely magnificent.' Despite their ages, both are activists in the global campaign to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They say the world will only be a safer place when every nation – including a recalcitrant Australia – signs up to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted in 2017. This week's 80th anniversary is special to them; by the time of the next commemoration, and certainly by the 90th anniversary, the Japanese hibakusha and the Australian ex-serviceman may no longer be able to bear witness. Black rain 'This is a map of Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing,' Yahata tells the exhibition crowd, her head peeking above the dais. 'Somewhere between the railway station and the river was our house. It was summer: the cherry blossom was in full bloom in the school grounds, the petals creating a pink-peach-coloured carpet.' You strain to listen to her accented English, yet the poignancy strikes deep: her words convey a child's perception of beauty in a once-safe world. The Pacific War had been going for nearly four years with intense fighting and terrible losses on both sides. To bring war to an end and Japan to its knees, it was deemed by the Allies that a new weapon of destruction should be unleashed on Japan, even on child citizens like Teruko Yahata. On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 aircraft dropped 'Little Boy' – a 15-kiloton atomic bomb – which exploded over the city of Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands of civilians and children. 'It was a fresh morning, clear and sunny,' recalls Yahata. 'In our family home, my paternal great-grandmother, grandmother, parents, older sister, me and two younger brothers lived. Eight members in total. 'After breakfast, I stepped down into the garden to go next door. At that moment, the entire sky flashed and was illuminated in bluish white. I immediately fell to the ground and lost consciousness.' The force of the blast had thrown her small body six metres from the back garden to the entrance of the family home. The bomb had exploded approximately 200 metres overhead. 'I was awoken by the sound of my mother's voice calling out and the image of my father carrying my great-grandmother on his back. There was so much smoke I could barely see.' The house interior was scattered with glass fragments from a sliding door. 'It was like we had been stabbed by a mighty spear. My mother began to pull bedding and futons from the cupboards, and as she did so I noticed fragments of glass sticking out of her back and her white blouse was stained a bloody red. 'We felt sure there would be a second and perhaps a third bomb. So we believed we were beyond saving. As my mother spread a quilt over us all, I remember – and indeed will never forget – what it felt like as a child to be surrounded by my family in the warmth and security of that blanket.' Yahata remembers the eerie silence outside, the blackened houses nearby and huge drops of rain 'that soaked us to the skin'. Nobody knew at the time that it was radioactive 'black rain'. Then came 'a legion of ghosts, crippled figures of death and hundreds of bodies covered in dust; their skin was peeling off their arms and dangling from their fingertips, resembling old tattered rags.' Seeking first aid at her primary school three days later, Yahata encountered classrooms strewn with tightly packed bodies. 'Faces were blistered so badly that they could no longer open their eyes. The dead were being taken outside to the sports ground on makeshift stretchers. And rows of holes had been dug for the clusters of bodies to be thrown into.' On a table near the school gate, Yahata's eye was caught by rows of white paper bags. 'They were not filled with sweets, but the bones of unidentified cremated people.' After several days, the fires that were raging in the city began to subside. 'My mother and father went out looking for my father's friend. Under the blazing sun, shovel in hand, they stepped over the charred remains of corpses. Male and female, indistinguishable from one another. They took the skull of my father's friend home with them. Everyone put their hands together in prayer as we looked upon the transformed remains of a once bright and cheerful man.' By the end of 1945, the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had reached an estimated 140,000 people, 38,000 of them children. 'That the exact figure is not known is testament to the destructive nature of the bomb,' says Yahata. Many who escaped instant death – including members of Yahata's family – later died of radiation sickness, burns and other injuries. 'A girl who I went to school with as a student was exposed to the bomb one kilometre from the hypocentre [epicentre],' she says. 'One day, 16 years later, spots began to appear on her arms. She was diagnosed with acute leukaemia, but she still wished to live. I can clearly recall her words: 'I want to look up at the bright blue sky, wearing a beautiful dress and shoes to match … I just want to get better and to live, to live.' She died the following year at the age of 25.' In 2013, aged 76, Yahata began giving formal testimony – in Japanese and gradually by learning English – about the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. She joined a peace ship voyage to several countries, and since 2019 has been active as a witness speaker for the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. She has also been designated a 'Special Communicator for a World without Nuclear Weapons' by the Japanese government. 'I realised [each time telling the story] the cruelty and ugliness of war,' she says. 'And that once started, we become both perpetrator and victim.' Australia's atomic blasts When Bill Plewright visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the young Australian sailor was struck by the sight of Japanese orphans huddled in doorways. 'The thing that horrified me most was that some had webbed hands,' Plewright told the exhibition crowd following Yahata's testimony. 'Maybe they put their hands up to their faces with the heat. Some just had little holes on their face for a nose and little holes for ears.' He had arrived in Japan aboard HMAS Bataan in 1947 as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. The adventure was not all grim; he took photos of quaint streets and a fish market and drank Japanese Kirin beer with his shipmates. The invisible but deadly legacy of radiation exposure would only be understood much later. Plewright went on to become a direct witness to, and victim of, nuclear weapon explosions on his home soil. In October 1952, Britain's first atmospheric nuclear test bomb was detonated at the Montebello Islands, which lie 120 kilometres off the north-west coast of Western Australia. That first test, named Operation Hurricane, produced a mushroom cloud three kilometres high and covered the islands and northern parts of the Australian mainland with radioactive fallout. Two more nuclear tests, G1 and G2, were detonated on two Montebello islands in 1956; the final test, G2, was the largest nuclear explosion ever conducted in Australia, six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Able Seaman Plewright, by then 22, was on HMAS Shoalhaven the day of the first blast. His ship was conducting safety and security patrols out of visual range of the explosion, but Shoalhaven later travelled along an inshore route to rejoin the fleet and likely passed under the upper portion of a radioactive cloud seen drifting towards the mainland. 'I recall that we saw the fallout cloud, which drifted directly over the ship,' Plewright says. Yet the 1984 McClelland Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia rejected such claims, saying the ship was too far from the blast to be contaminated. Author Paul Grace has written a detailed account of the Montebello tests, titled: Operation Hurricane: The story of Britain's First Atomic Test in Australia and the Legacy that Remain s. Grace says he was prompted by his own grandfather's experience that exactly paralleled Plewright's – he served in Japan and on the Montebello Islands. 'Bill Plewright was certainly exposed on many more occasions, returning to the Montebello Islands for a radiation survey in November 1953 and two more atomic tests in 1956,' Grace says. The first 1956 test, G1, was detonated on Trimouille Island, part of the Montebello archipelago. 'We were not allowed to talk to anyone about what was going to take place,' says Plewright. 'And when it got very close to minus 10 countdown, we were told to turn away from the blast, close our eyes, put our hands over our eyes, and then the countdown started. It hit zero.' The split second of the blast is still etched in his memory. 'In that instant, we all saw the x-ray of the bones in our hands, so bright was the initial blast. We were told to stand by for perhaps a tidal wave. There was a ripple and the ship rocked a little, but our breaths were taken away from us when this huge [cloud] thing sucked up the oxygen for miles out. And it was a very frightening thing.' Plewright went back north in the aftermath of G2 to salvage equipment. 'There were very strict rules about what you could do and couldn't do, but I didn't understand when I went ashore. The whole area around where the bomb had gone off was glazed glass. And as you took a step, your foot sank through it.' Loading Plewright retired from the Australian navy in 1957 and is grateful to have survived into old age. But cancer, a stroke and other illnesses have dogged him; many of his navy mates did not survive beyond late middle age. Some suffered similar problems to Japanese survivors of the radiation blast; many believed their military exposure was the cause. So did Plewright, who would later become president of the Australian Ex-Services Atomic Survivors Association. 'After I got out of the navy, I had a little grain of sand that I felt in my neck and I would be scratching it until I was told to go and see a doctor. I put it off, but after a couple of years it was the size of a lemon. I wore a 14.5-inch neck shirt but with the growth I had to wear a 17-inch neck and my tie always disappeared to one side. So I went in and had surgery for a malignant growth. 'In a report that I had to give to the government [for recognition of the radiation injury], I told them about this. The remarks were that I did not seek medical attention because I was scared. I then suffered a heart attack and a stroke. Some years later, I had cancer of the bladder, and I'm happy to say that my oncologist, neurologist and my own GP got me through it. I've been seven years in remission. 'When William Penney, the father of the British bomb, came to Australia, he told the Australian Commonwealth that there was no danger to human or animal life. So much for, 'Nothing will happen to you.' 'I took our people through the royal commission and I battled with our government and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. They were covering up – we were guinea pigs, there is no doubt about it.' Plewright reached out to a worldwide organisation called Labrats, which operates out of the UK and represents the 22,000 Commonwealth servicemen who worked on nuclear tests in Australia and the Pacific. Plewright is now one of its oldest members. 'A lot of us had tests taken of blood and urine at the time, which the British government denied ever existed,' Plewright says. 'We had so much evidence that the test results did exist, that they were given 21 days by the High Court in London to produce it. Twenty-four hours later they were produced.' The UK government has not yet compensated its nuclear test veterans, although in 2022 then-prime minister Rishi Sunak awarded a service medal to all veterans who served at Britain's nuclear tests, including Australians at Montebello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga. Says Paul Grace, 'I'm pleased they made the medal available to Commonwealth veterans, both surviving and the next of kin of the deceased. It's a shame it took as long as it did.' The legacy of the nuclear tests has recently been exposed by samples gathered by Edith Cowan University scientists and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Marine-sediment samples from several of the Montebello Islands sent to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, the chief regulator for historic nuclear testing sites, have revealed plutonium levels up to 4500 times higher than samples taken 1000 kilometres away on the West Australian coast. The findings were published in June this year in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. Last month, Grace led an expedition of historians and servicemen relatives to the Montebello Islands 'to explore the human impact' of nuclear testing. 'For us, it was a personal pilgrimage to understand the experiences of our forebears. Three of us are descendants of Montebello nuclear veterans, including me and Maxine Goodwin, the daughter of RAAF leading airman Max Ward, who died at 49 of blood cancer.' Plewright remains bitter about the protracted delay in heeding Australia's nuclear victims. 'I think of all the lies that I received from the Australian government and the royal commission, which did not act properly or ask our members relevant questions. Nothing was done, only millions of dollars spent to make them look good.' Suicide bombs As the Hiroshima exhibition event draws to a close, Yahata and Plewright are sitting in a corner, laughing and giggling with their interpreter as they share confidences. Soon Yahata will board a plane back to Japan, before departing again for another 80th anniversary event in the US. Yahata's visit was partly hosted by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which originated in Melbourne and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. 'Everything is jeopardised by these global suicide bombs,' says ICAN co-founder Tilman Ruff, a Melbourne-based, public-health physician who attended the exhibition. 'To think of Hiroshima's rivers being full of blackened bodies, of people who survived calling for water, of fragments of people's cups, clothes and bedding.' When he gives his speech, Ruff stands in front of a 12-metre-high nuclear missile prop: 'It's inflatable and, surprisingly, it fits into one suitcase.' Ruff has visited Japan and Hiroshima many times and spoken widely with anti-nuclear organisations on the health dangers of radiation, including that of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster. On one trip to Hiroshima, Ruff says he was drawn to a huge camphor tree, one of several trees obliterated by the blast, but whose roots miraculously survived and resprouted. 'I was told this tree was planted 500 years ago,' he says. 'It regrew against all expectations – it's still sprouting forth in every direction, and I was moved to see that beneath its boughs is a kindergarten. 'Yet arsenals are being expanded, and multiple nuclear-armed nations are in open conflict. The overall picture of disarmament is bleak. It's stalled and going backwards.' Ruff says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has a perfect opportunity to lead the way in signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 'This is the year if Albo is serious,' says Ruff. 'He was the major champion at the 2018 Labor conference when he put forward a resolution that if Labor got into government, he would sign and ratify the treaty. He's been returned by a massive political majority, so will Australia find the courage to act?' Loading Meanwhile, Ruff says, ICAN has a proud record of giving voice to witnesses who can describe exactly what nuclear weapons inflict on human beings – witnesses such as Yahata, Plewright and, importantly, Aboriginal survivors of nuclear testing in their homelands. 'The testimonies are more relevant today than they have ever been,' Ruff says. 'When they speak, you can hear a pin drop.' 'Who do you love? What do you love?' says Yahata at the end of her speech, carefully stressing each English word as she scans the crowd. 'If a single nuclear weapon was used now, mankind would cease to exist,' she tells them. 'All that I have left to do is to communicate the truth of the atomic bomb to the world, and to continue to sound the alarm bells.' She bows deeply. 'Thank you very much for listening.'
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
They were on opposing sides at Hiroshima in 1945. Now, they're campaigning together
When Teruko Yahata and Bill Plewright meet for the first time, within minutes they are posing for a photo side by side, her hand clasping his hand. Against all odds, these two survivors of nuclear blasts have been brought together in an exhibition space in Perth. At nearly 88, Yahata is a diminutive Japanese figure, hair cut in a neat bob and a perpetual smile on her face. Plewright is taller, and his dapper suit and erect military posture hides that he's nudging his 97th birthday. Eighty years ago, a catastrophic event changed the course of both their lives. On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, then, three days later, on Nagasaki. Yahata was eight years old; Plewright was a young able seaman when his ship arrived in Japan in the aftermath of the bomb. Her experience of nuclear weapons was as an instantaneous explosion over a civilian target; his experience was as one of 16,000 Australian troops who served in Occupied Japan and later at nuclear weapon test sites – in his case, on the Montebello Islands off Western Australia. Yahata is one of a dwindling group of hibakusha, or survivors of Japan's nuclear blasts. Plewright is now one of the oldest remaining Commonwealth atomic-test veterans in the world. The pair's first – and very probably the last – meeting was at the travelling event, Never Again: The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Exhibition, held at the WA capital's Holmes à Court Gallery in May, at which each described their experiences of being exposed to nuclear weapons. Plewright says he will commemorate this week's 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb by sending an email greeting to Yahata in Japan. When he arrived in Japan, the young sailor had stood on a bridge near the Hiroshima 'epicentre' dome, barely two kilometres from Yahata's house. 'When I was on that bridge, we were so far apart yet so close,' Plewright tells Yahata in front of an emotional crowd. 'And now we are here, friend to friend. It's absolutely magnificent.' Despite their ages, both are activists in the global campaign to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They say the world will only be a safer place when every nation – including a recalcitrant Australia – signs up to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted in 2017. This week's 80th anniversary is special to them; by the time of the next commemoration, and certainly by the 90th anniversary, the Japanese hibakusha and the Australian ex-serviceman may no longer be able to bear witness. Black rain 'This is a map of Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing,' Yahata tells the exhibition crowd, her head peeking above the dais. 'Somewhere between the railway station and the river was our house. It was summer: the cherry blossom was in full bloom in the school grounds, the petals creating a pink-peach-coloured carpet.' You strain to listen to her accented English, yet the poignancy strikes deep: her words convey a child's perception of beauty in a once-safe world. The Pacific War had been going for nearly four years with intense fighting and terrible losses on both sides. To bring war to an end and Japan to its knees, it was deemed by the Allies that a new weapon of destruction should be unleashed on Japan, even on child citizens like Teruko Yahata. On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 aircraft dropped 'Little Boy' – a 15-kiloton atomic bomb – which exploded over the city of Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands of civilians and children. 'It was a fresh morning, clear and sunny,' recalls Yahata. 'In our family home, my paternal great-grandmother, grandmother, parents, older sister, me and two younger brothers lived. Eight members in total. 'After breakfast, I stepped down into the garden to go next door. At that moment, the entire sky flashed and was illuminated in bluish white. I immediately fell to the ground and lost consciousness.' The force of the blast had thrown her small body six metres from the back garden to the entrance of the family home. The bomb had exploded approximately 200 metres overhead. 'I was awoken by the sound of my mother's voice calling out and the image of my father carrying my great-grandmother on his back. There was so much smoke I could barely see.' The house interior was scattered with glass fragments from a sliding door. 'It was like we had been stabbed by a mighty spear. My mother began to pull bedding and futons from the cupboards, and as she did so I noticed fragments of glass sticking out of her back and her white blouse was stained a bloody red. 'We felt sure there would be a second and perhaps a third bomb. So we believed we were beyond saving. As my mother spread a quilt over us all, I remember – and indeed will never forget – what it felt like as a child to be surrounded by my family in the warmth and security of that blanket.' Yahata remembers the eerie silence outside, the blackened houses nearby and huge drops of rain 'that soaked us to the skin'. Nobody knew at the time that it was radioactive 'black rain'. Then came 'a legion of ghosts, crippled figures of death and hundreds of bodies covered in dust; their skin was peeling off their arms and dangling from their fingertips, resembling old tattered rags.' Seeking first aid at her primary school three days later, Yahata encountered classrooms strewn with tightly packed bodies. 'Faces were blistered so badly that they could no longer open their eyes. The dead were being taken outside to the sports ground on makeshift stretchers. And rows of holes had been dug for the clusters of bodies to be thrown into.' On a table near the school gate, Yahata's eye was caught by rows of white paper bags. 'They were not filled with sweets, but the bones of unidentified cremated people.' After several days, the fires that were raging in the city began to subside. 'My mother and father went out looking for my father's friend. Under the blazing sun, shovel in hand, they stepped over the charred remains of corpses. Male and female, indistinguishable from one another. They took the skull of my father's friend home with them. Everyone put their hands together in prayer as we looked upon the transformed remains of a once bright and cheerful man.' By the end of 1945, the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had reached an estimated 140,000 people, 38,000 of them children. 'That the exact figure is not known is testament to the destructive nature of the bomb,' says Yahata. Many who escaped instant death – including members of Yahata's family – later died of radiation sickness, burns and other injuries. 'A girl who I went to school with as a student was exposed to the bomb one kilometre from the hypocentre [epicentre],' she says. 'One day, 16 years later, spots began to appear on her arms. She was diagnosed with acute leukaemia, but she still wished to live. I can clearly recall her words: 'I want to look up at the bright blue sky, wearing a beautiful dress and shoes to match … I just want to get better and to live, to live.' She died the following year at the age of 25.' In 2013, aged 76, Yahata began giving formal testimony – in Japanese and gradually by learning English – about the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. She joined a peace ship voyage to several countries, and since 2019 has been active as a witness speaker for the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. She has also been designated a 'Special Communicator for a World without Nuclear Weapons' by the Japanese government. 'I realised [each time telling the story] the cruelty and ugliness of war,' she says. 'And that once started, we become both perpetrator and victim.' Australia's atomic blasts When Bill Plewright visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the young Australian sailor was struck by the sight of Japanese orphans huddled in doorways. 'The thing that horrified me most was that some had webbed hands,' Plewright told the exhibition crowd following Yahata's testimony. 'Maybe they put their hands up to their faces with the heat. Some just had little holes on their face for a nose and little holes for ears.' He had arrived in Japan aboard HMAS Bataan in 1947 as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. The adventure was not all grim; he took photos of quaint streets and a fish market and drank Japanese Kirin beer with his shipmates. The invisible but deadly legacy of radiation exposure would only be understood much later. Plewright went on to become a direct witness to, and victim of, nuclear weapon explosions on his home soil. In October 1952, Britain's first atmospheric nuclear test bomb was detonated at the Montebello Islands, which lie 120 kilometres off the north-west coast of Western Australia. That first test, named Operation Hurricane, produced a mushroom cloud three kilometres high and covered the islands and northern parts of the Australian mainland with radioactive fallout. Two more nuclear tests, G1 and G2, were detonated on two Montebello islands in 1956; the final test, G2, was the largest nuclear explosion ever conducted in Australia, six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Able Seaman Plewright, by then 22, was on HMAS Shoalhaven the day of the first blast. His ship was conducting safety and security patrols out of visual range of the explosion, but Shoalhaven later travelled along an inshore route to rejoin the fleet and likely passed under the upper portion of a radioactive cloud seen drifting towards the mainland. 'I recall that we saw the fallout cloud, which drifted directly over the ship,' Plewright says. Yet the 1984 McClelland Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia rejected such claims, saying the ship was too far from the blast to be contaminated. Author Paul Grace has written a detailed account of the Montebello tests, titled: Operation Hurricane: The story of Britain's First Atomic Test in Australia and the Legacy that Remain s. Grace says he was prompted by his own grandfather's experience that exactly paralleled Plewright's – he served in Japan and on the Montebello Islands. 'Bill Plewright was certainly exposed on many more occasions, returning to the Montebello Islands for a radiation survey in November 1953 and two more atomic tests in 1956,' Grace says. The first 1956 test, G1, was detonated on Trimouille Island, part of the Montebello archipelago. 'We were not allowed to talk to anyone about what was going to take place,' says Plewright. 'And when it got very close to minus 10 countdown, we were told to turn away from the blast, close our eyes, put our hands over our eyes, and then the countdown started. It hit zero.' The split second of the blast is still etched in his memory. 'In that instant, we all saw the x-ray of the bones in our hands, so bright was the initial blast. We were told to stand by for perhaps a tidal wave. There was a ripple and the ship rocked a little, but our breaths were taken away from us when this huge [cloud] thing sucked up the oxygen for miles out. And it was a very frightening thing.' Plewright went back north in the aftermath of G2 to salvage equipment. 'There were very strict rules about what you could do and couldn't do, but I didn't understand when I went ashore. The whole area around where the bomb had gone off was glazed glass. And as you took a step, your foot sank through it.' Loading Plewright retired from the Australian navy in 1957 and is grateful to have survived into old age. But cancer, a stroke and other illnesses have dogged him; many of his navy mates did not survive beyond late middle age. Some suffered similar problems to Japanese survivors of the radiation blast; many believed their military exposure was the cause. So did Plewright, who would later become president of the Australian Ex-Services Atomic Survivors Association. 'After I got out of the navy, I had a little grain of sand that I felt in my neck and I would be scratching it until I was told to go and see a doctor. I put it off, but after a couple of years it was the size of a lemon. I wore a 14.5-inch neck shirt but with the growth I had to wear a 17-inch neck and my tie always disappeared to one side. So I went in and had surgery for a malignant growth. 'In a report that I had to give to the government [for recognition of the radiation injury], I told them about this. The remarks were that I did not seek medical attention because I was scared. I then suffered a heart attack and a stroke. Some years later, I had cancer of the bladder, and I'm happy to say that my oncologist, neurologist and my own GP got me through it. I've been seven years in remission. 'When William Penney, the father of the British bomb, came to Australia, he told the Australian Commonwealth that there was no danger to human or animal life. So much for, 'Nothing will happen to you.' 'I took our people through the royal commission and I battled with our government and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. They were covering up – we were guinea pigs, there is no doubt about it.' Plewright reached out to a worldwide organisation called Labrats, which operates out of the UK and represents the 22,000 Commonwealth servicemen who worked on nuclear tests in Australia and the Pacific. Plewright is now one of its oldest members. 'A lot of us had tests taken of blood and urine at the time, which the British government denied ever existed,' Plewright says. 'We had so much evidence that the test results did exist, that they were given 21 days by the High Court in London to produce it. Twenty-four hours later they were produced.' The UK government has not yet compensated its nuclear test veterans, although in 2022 then-prime minister Rishi Sunak awarded a service medal to all veterans who served at Britain's nuclear tests, including Australians at Montebello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga. Says Paul Grace, 'I'm pleased they made the medal available to Commonwealth veterans, both surviving and the next of kin of the deceased. It's a shame it took as long as it did.' The legacy of the nuclear tests has recently been exposed by samples gathered by Edith Cowan University scientists and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Marine-sediment samples from several of the Montebello Islands sent to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, the chief regulator for historic nuclear testing sites, have revealed plutonium levels up to 4500 times higher than samples taken 1000 kilometres away on the West Australian coast. The findings were published in June this year in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. Last month, Grace led an expedition of historians and servicemen relatives to the Montebello Islands 'to explore the human impact' of nuclear testing. 'For us, it was a personal pilgrimage to understand the experiences of our forebears. Three of us are descendants of Montebello nuclear veterans, including me and Maxine Goodwin, the daughter of RAAF leading airman Max Ward, who died at 49 of blood cancer.' Plewright remains bitter about the protracted delay in heeding Australia's nuclear victims. 'I think of all the lies that I received from the Australian government and the royal commission, which did not act properly or ask our members relevant questions. Nothing was done, only millions of dollars spent to make them look good.' Suicide bombs As the Hiroshima exhibition event draws to a close, Yahata and Plewright are sitting in a corner, laughing and giggling with their interpreter as they share confidences. Soon Yahata will board a plane back to Japan, before departing again for another 80th anniversary event in the US. Yahata's visit was partly hosted by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which originated in Melbourne and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. 'Everything is jeopardised by these global suicide bombs,' says ICAN co-founder Tilman Ruff, a Melbourne-based, public-health physician who attended the exhibition. 'To think of Hiroshima's rivers being full of blackened bodies, of people who survived calling for water, of fragments of people's cups, clothes and bedding.' When he gives his speech, Ruff stands in front of a 12-metre-high nuclear missile prop: 'It's inflatable and, surprisingly, it fits into one suitcase.' Ruff has visited Japan and Hiroshima many times and spoken widely with anti-nuclear organisations on the health dangers of radiation, including that of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster. On one trip to Hiroshima, Ruff says he was drawn to a huge camphor tree, one of several trees obliterated by the blast, but whose roots miraculously survived and resprouted. 'I was told this tree was planted 500 years ago,' he says. 'It regrew against all expectations – it's still sprouting forth in every direction, and I was moved to see that beneath its boughs is a kindergarten. 'Yet arsenals are being expanded, and multiple nuclear-armed nations are in open conflict. The overall picture of disarmament is bleak. It's stalled and going backwards.' Ruff says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has a perfect opportunity to lead the way in signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 'This is the year if Albo is serious,' says Ruff. 'He was the major champion at the 2018 Labor conference when he put forward a resolution that if Labor got into government, he would sign and ratify the treaty. He's been returned by a massive political majority, so will Australia find the courage to act?' Loading Meanwhile, Ruff says, ICAN has a proud record of giving voice to witnesses who can describe exactly what nuclear weapons inflict on human beings – witnesses such as Yahata, Plewright and, importantly, Aboriginal survivors of nuclear testing in their homelands. 'The testimonies are more relevant today than they have ever been,' Ruff says. 'When they speak, you can hear a pin drop.' 'Who do you love? What do you love?' says Yahata at the end of her speech, carefully stressing each English word as she scans the crowd. 'If a single nuclear weapon was used now, mankind would cease to exist,' she tells them. 'All that I have left to do is to communicate the truth of the atomic bomb to the world, and to continue to sound the alarm bells.' She bows deeply. 'Thank you very much for listening.'
Sky News AU
2 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Aussie tree pruning expert lifts lid on legal dos and don'ts of combating encroaching vegetation over neighbourhood fence
A tree pruning expert has lifted the lid on what Aussies can legally do to combat common neighbourhood disputes over encroaching vegetation. It's the thorny issue that can quickly replace the driveway wave and chit chat with brewing vengeance and a trip to Bunnings for a pair of clippers. Overhanging branches which extend beyond property lines can block sunlight, drop leaves and fruit, and potentially damage property, leaving neighbours frustrated and getting their pennies' worth out of their blower. However, before people take matters into their own hands and start an all-out war with the joint owner of their fence, Warren Yaghmour from True Blue Tree Lopping in Sydney took to TikTok to offer some advice. And the dos and don'ts of hacking into neighbours' rogue trees are clear: follow Australian standards and individual council regulations. As for throwing the branches back over the fence? A hardline don't. "Don't chuck the branches back over is definitely the first rule of thumb. That will just get you in all sorts of a mess," said Warren in a recent video. 'Of course, everything has to go Australian standards and council regulations," he added. 'So we're only allowed 10 per cent, we're not allowed to touch the canopy of the tree, so the top branches you're not allowed to prune. 'It's all the lower stuff as close as we can, and all cuts go to Australian standards, and they're back to the collar." Warren said cutting only half of the branches is a no-go. Elaborating on how best to avoid sitting beside your angry neighbour at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), the expert urged people to familiarise themselves with their local council's regulations. 'You've got to find out every single suburb's council, and then go through their list and see what you're allowed to do and what not,' he said. 'Different species of trees require different assessments, and sometimes you're allowed to trim big branches and sometimes not.' Warren said taking the time to know which plants can be trimmed and at what height can be the difference between a hefty fine in the mail or not. People took the comments with their own individual grievances, with one person asking what happens if the vegetation is blocking solar panels. In that case, Warren said the foliage can be trimmed back if it grows over "to your side." Another person questioned what only cutting the lower branches would achieve when it's the top ones that wreak havoc on the gutter or roof. Warren insisted it's putting away the low-hanging vegetation that "minimises the mess and branches rubbing on gutters and the roof". One more person declared it should be the neighbours' responsibility to maintain their trees and clippings. "I always throw the clippings back. Why should I have to bin it! Not to mention the fence is buckled too," the person said. More people were not having a bar of Warren's council spiel, with one person saying: "No council will stop me removing a tree over my roof." "If only the council followed their own regulations," another person said. According to the NSW Trees (Disputes Between Neighbours) Act 2006, a council permit is needed to prune or remove a tree, but the type and condition of the tree may result in an exemption from approval. Compensation for damage to property caused by a tree on a neighbour's land can also be sought through the Land and Environment Court.
