Radium Hill (1954-61) town created for uranium mining in South Australian desert under strict secrecy
The swimming pool in the desert at the uranium mining town of Radium Hill. This was enabled by the two million gallon concrete tank (see background) taking water piped from the Broken Hill system.
Image courtesy Radium Hill Historical Association
Radium Hill, the town created for 1,000 people in South Australia’s harsh outback between 1954 and 1961, had300 working underground mining for uranium that was pivotal to the global Cold War military strategy.
As part of this strategy, the township was run under a contract secrecy agreement between the USA, UK, Australian and South Australian governments. Besides extensive paper work, this agreement demanded a security pass to enter Radium Hill and the American insisted that all privately-owned cameras be banned on the site. (Despite this, site manager Murray Stock recorded some significant moments.).
Radium Hull uranium mine was opened on November 1954 by World War II Burma campaign hero and Australian governor-general Field Marshall William Slim. The main shaft of the mine was 420 metres deep with a 40 metres headframe. Ore was crushed at a ball mill and treated on site at a surface concentrate mill using a heavy-media separation and flotation.
The town did have amenities such as South Australia's first drive-in theatre. There were only four cars in all the camp but people sat on empty explosives boxes to watch the films.
But, set in a desert environment covered in bindi, saltbush and mulga, a water supply became a high priority in the mine and town’s development.
Engineer Reg Bridge investigated a dam for Olary Creek to store 1,000 million gallons but saline springs, high evaporation, creek siltation and low unreliable rainfall ruled this out. Eleven bores sunk were dry or encountered saline water. Gall’s Well, six kilometres away, had brackish water. Besides dealing with this brackish water for washing, housewives all had a “charmer” (a piece of fencing wire) to deal with snakes invading homes.
Nearby Teasdale’s dam was enlarged in 1952 to hold 12-million gallons of runoff water, if it rained. Fresh water also was obtained from the South Australian Railways and transported 40km by ex-army road tanker from Olary (35,000 gallons per month). The water was stored in a 100,000 gallon steel tank salvaged from Power alcohol distillery at Wallaroo.
With projected consumption of fresh water by 1954 at 150,000 gallons per day, the New South Wales government and the Broken Hill Water Board agreed for the South Australian government’s engineering and water supply department, to install six-inch pipeline from the Broken Hill water supply system 85km away from Radium Hill at the Umberumberka Reservoir. Water flowed into a new 2,000,000-gallon concrete tank at Radium Hill in March 1954.
This would eventually enable the town to have the luxury of a swimming pool.