South Australia 1950s stage for Australia to play hopeful victim of UK and US disdain for its nuclear ambitions

United Kingdom defence minister Duncan Sandys (centre left) arrives in Sydney in 1957 for a tour of Australia and New Zealand, greeted by Australian defence minister Philip McBride and defence and supply minister Howard Beale. Inset: The sites for British nuclear bomb tests in Australia during the 1950s.
Image by W. Brindle, courtesy Australian national archives. Map courtesy Wikipedia.

South Australia in the 1950s was the stage for Australia to play the hopeful victim of British and American disdain for its nuclear ambitions.

South Australian premier Tom Playford was a nuclear enthusiast and expat nuclear physicist Mark Oliphant was at the crux of the western world’s nuclear technological advances.

Early in World War II, Britain had the Tube Alloys nuclear weapons project that merged with the American Manhattan Project, with Canada also involved.The British government expected the United States would continue sharing nuclear technology after the war.

But, as Oliphant had warned, the Americans' 1946 McMahon Act ended technical cooperation. Fearing renewed United States isolation and losing its great power status, the British government restarted its own nuclear research effort.

Britain was still Australia's largest trading partner and strong cultural ties were bolstered by strongly pro-British Australian prime minister from 1949, Robert Menzies. Most Australians had British descent and Britain was largest source of subsidised immigrants, with its ex-servicemen and families qualifying for free passage. Australian and British troops fought together in the Korean war and Malayan Emergency.

Australia had close defence ties with Britain through the Australia New Zealand and Malaya (ANZAM) area in 1948. Australian continued to integrate with Britain and reinforced British forces in the Middle East and Far East. The Australian government hoped to work with Britain on nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Nuclear power was considered with hydroelectricity for the post-war Snowy Mountains Scheme but the 1948 UK-USA arrangement cut Australian scientists off from previous technical information. Britain wouldn’t share it with Australia, fearing it might jeopardise the relationship with the United States, and the Americans were reluctant after the Verona project revealed Soviet espionage in Australia. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 1949 excluded Australia from the western alliance.

Yet in 1952, the United Kingdom tested its first nuclear weapon in Operation Hurricane in the Montebello Islands off Western Australia. A year later, the first nuclear tests on the Australian mainland were made in Operation Totem at Emu Field in the Great Victoria Desert of Australia.

Australian supply minister Howard explained in 1955: “England has the knowhow; we have the open spaces, much technical skill and a great willingness to help the Motherland. Between us, we should help to build the defences of the free world, and make historic advances in harnessing the forces of nature.”