The passing of Bob Ellis recalls his faithful accompanying of the 1984–1985 royal commission into the British nuclear tests conducted in South Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. He went 'to England and back' and, as he described it, 'to each black polis' of the royal commission hearings.
Ellis' article on the Wallatina hearings (The National Times, 3–9 May 1985), described what he named as the commission's 'worst story of all' — Edie Milpudie's telling of herself and her family camping, in May 1957, on the Marcoo bomb crater.
She told of being 'captured by men in white uniforms ... forcibly and obscenely washed down, miscarrying twice and losing her husband who to prove to the soldiers he knew English, sang, "Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so."
'And how the soldiers shot their beloved irradiated dogs.'
'The bad parts of the story,' Ellis went on, 'the miscarriage and afterward, were communicated to Jim (Commissioner McClelland) in secret session, in the distance in the bush, with Edie's women friends giving her comfort, and prompting with giggles and nudges her reminiscence of a story they knew by heart, already an old legend.
'Jim called these women the best in the world, unstinting comforters, inextinguishable friends ... '
Five years later I had the privilege myself of meeting Edie Milpudie at her Oak Valley camp in the SA Maralinga lands. Many of the Yalata elders had prepared me in a way with the constant mantra: 'Milpudie — she went through the bomb.'
Re-reading the Ellis article the night before, I was surprised to find tears stinging my eyes. It's so good, I realised, when truth is recognised and held up for our freedom — in the recognition of the 'upsidedown-ness' of our lives and history. 'What has been hidden will be made known and shouted from the housetops.' 'The truth will set you free.'
"She told of being captured by men in white uniforms, forcibly and obscenely washed down, miscarrying twice ... And how the soldiers shot their beloved irradiated dogs."
At our meeting, nothing much happened. But after that personal encounter Edie's story became even more real to me. I knew her family in the following years and so am a witness, however many times removed, to the sufferings and terrible ill health which has afflicted them throughout the generations.
In July 2004, a six-year anti-nuclear campaign spearheaded by Aboriginal women, who themselves had suffered in