Australia's Ghost Town: The contaminated city Wittenoom

[Black Phoenix]

I know about Pryp'yat', Hashima Island, Kolmanskop, North Brother Island and Kennecott, but I didn't know that a place like this would exist in Australia.

[georges80]

Yeah, wittenoomm, drove through several times decades ago. There's a national park nearby at the gorges and back then all the roads were of course gravel with various tailings from the mine operations exposed to wind etc. Haven't been there for at least a couple of decades, so maybe a lot more has been cleaned up for the tourists and I assume more pavement has been put down.

You can listen to Midnight Oil's Blue Sky Mining album which in part is about that area and the company that mostly didn't care...

cheers,
george.

[Tony_G]

A beautiful part of the country up there. Back in the late '80s, I was visiting the ELF station on North West Cape and I still fondly remember playing indoor cricket, outdoor at the pub in Exmouth for a couple of nights. There are a bunch of runways up there that are just the runway itself, no structures, just many thousand feet of nice concrete that you can fly modern fighters, etc off.

TonyG

[VK3DRB]

This toxic material has been used since 2,500 BC, any yet only was first determined to cause deaths in the late 1930's. Millions of innocent people would have died form exposure to this material. Throughout Australia this material have been used in countless homes. The house I own has this crap in it. As a little kid I used to play with asbestos.

This story slaps some Greenies in the face when they say:"Its natural so its gotta be good". Two good questions to ask Muslims and Christians: "Who created asbestos?" Second question, "If the Almighty is all knowing and loves us so much, why didn't He warn us about dangers of asbestos and radon gas?" You won't find a credible answer anywhere.

A company called James Hardie continued to expose their own unprotected workers to asbestos fully knowing it would likely kill them. A mass of litigation ensued but the sociopaths who ran James Hardie moved their head office from Australia to the Netherlands to protect their shareholders. Recently the scumbags moved their head office to the tax haven Ireland. A despicable company if there ever was one. https://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/devils-dust/

Midnight Oil got it right about Wittenoom and CSR...

[coppercone2]

A beautiful part of the country up there. Back in the late '80s, I was visiting the ELF station on North West Cape and I still fondly remember playing indoor cricket, outdoor at the pub in Exmouth for a couple of nights. There are a bunch of runways up there that are just the runway itself, no structures, just many thousand feet of nice concrete that you can fly modern fighters, etc off.

TonyG

any ghost sightings of holt?

[Tony_G]

Not enough surf up there for old Harry...

TonyG

[coppercone2]

Not enough surf up there for old Harry...

TonyG

with my recent investigations of LF and hopefully VLF, I ran into his story and I found it quite interesting. Those transmitters look a little odd also.

[GlennSprigg]

I remember about 15-20 years ago, a mate of mine was contracted out to 'Maralinga' for the
'clean-up' after the nuclear tests performed by the British in the 1950's. (Outback Australia).

What they did, was to dig a series of gigantic holes, and bulldozed tons of radioactive top-
soil & general remaining junk. Then they filled it on top with tons of Silicon. (Fine sand). There
must have been some 'conductive' compound too, because they then inserted Giant probes,
and using massive generators, heated it until it formed a gigantic 'glass' slug on top, to seal
it in 'permanently', before finally burying all that. Sounds like it's out of some Science Fiction
movie, but that's what they did!!  They tried to get the British to foot the bill. (??)

[Tony_G]

with my recent investigations of LF and hopefully VLF, I ran into his story and I found it quite interesting. Those transmitters look a little odd also.

The favourite conspiracy theory was that he defected to China by swimming out to a Chinese sub somewhere off the beach. Decreasing the Australian population by one politician doesn't strike me as a bad thing so if the conspiracy theory is true, thanks China...

The best part of being inside the transmitter building was seeing the enormous switch they used to change between antennas - Imagine a T-bar switch about 6 feet tall spinning between 2 sets of contacts the size of suitcases. While in that part of the building they did a demo where they held up a normal flouro tube (48 inches from memory) and waved it around. There was enough radiated power to light it completely up.

In retrospect, I wonder if that was a good thing.

TonyG

[coppercone2]

with my recent investigations of LF and hopefully VLF, I ran into his story and I found it quite interesting. Those transmitters look a little odd also.

The favourite conspiracy theory was that he defected to China by swimming out to a Chinese sub somewhere off the beach. Decreasing the Australian population by one politician doesn't strike me as a bad thing so if the conspiracy theory is true, thanks China...

The best part of being inside the transmitter building was seeing the enormous switch they used to change between antennas - Imagine a T-bar switch about 6 feet tall spinning between 2 sets of contacts the size of suitcases. While in that part of the building they did a demo where they held up a normal flouro tube (48 inches from memory) and waved it around. There was enough radiated power to light it completely up.

In retrospect, I wonder if that was a good thing.

TonyG

the tuners are also very interesting for those installations. Variometer

http://www.navy-radio.com/commsta/cutler/naa-qst-6.JPG

[daqq]

I know about Pryp'yat', Hashima Island, Kolmanskop, North Brother Island and Kennecott, but I didn't know that a place like this would exist in Australia.

There are many abandoned places all over the world, villages and cities that died because the main source of income either ran out of resources or vogue, or because something nasty happened in the area. It's sad, but understandable

See:
https://englishrussia.com/?s=abandoned
(The site used to be better, but there are still gems worth mining)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_by_country

[MT]

I remember about 15-20 years ago, a mate of mine was contracted out to 'Maralinga' for the
'clean-up' after the nuclear tests performed by the British in the 1950's. (Outback Australia).

What they did, was to dig a series of gigantic holes, and bulldozed tons of radioactive top-
soil & general remaining junk. Then they filled it on top with tons of Silicon. (Fine sand). There
must have been some 'conductive' compound too, because they then inserted Giant probes,
and using massive generators, heated it until it formed a gigantic 'glass' slug on top, to seal
it in 'permanently', before finally burying all that. Sounds like it's out of some Science Fiction
movie, but that's what they did!!  They tried to get the British to foot the bill. (??)

Interesting, seams the whole clean up was controversial!

[VK3DRB]

I remember about 15-20 years ago, a mate of mine was contracted out to 'Maralinga' for the
'clean-up' after the nuclear tests performed by the British in the 1950's. (Outback Australia)...

... They tried to get the British to foot the bill. (??)

The British DID foot some of the bill. The British owned and instigated the atomic bomb test programmes in a few places like Christmas Island, Monte Bello Island and Maralinga. The Australian government cooperated with the Mother Country by using our own servicemen as guinea pigs. They also exposed much of South Australia (and part of Queensland) to high levels of radioactive fallout. But none of the money found its way to the servicemen, most of whom would die from cancer. The Australian government does not want to know about it. Some say they are waiting for all the servicemen to die. No real accountability.

In a similar way, the government-owned CSL was doing medical experiments on babies and infants in the St. Joseph's Babies Orphanage in Broadmeadows up until the early 70's.  CSL which is now a public company has washed its hands of their crimes against defenceless babies and infants. The government says it lost the records. CSL says they have no records (yeah, ). The Catholic Church says they have no records. All very convenient.

For the servicemen who were at Maralinga, and the defenceless victims of CSL's crimes, the organisations involved need to come clean, there needs to an apology issued and there should be compensation paid to the survivors and their children/grandchildren who have been affected medically.