In February I made a quick dash to Melbourne to talk at VALA2012.

The paper I originally submitted, ‘Mining the treasures of Trove: New approaches and new tools’, provided a general introduction to the use of digitised historical newspapers and the possibilities of digital history. You can download the pdf from the VALA2012 proceedings, or view online at Scribd.

I ended up presenting something a little different, focusing on my recent work around 1913 and extracting editorials from the Trove newspaper database. You can view the slides on Slideshare or watch a video of the whole presentation on the VALA2012 site.

2011 was a busy year. It’s hard to believe that it was only February when I first posted about my experiments mining the contents of the Trove newspaper database. Since then I’ve developed a set of digital tools, organised THATCamp Canberra, given a series of presentations on the possibilities of digital history, pushed ahead with Invisible Australians, and tried to develop my own digital research program. Oh yes, and endeavoured to earn enough money to feed the kids and pay the mortgage…

It looks like 2012 could be even busier, so before I lose track completely, I thought I’d pull together some of the past year’s exploits for handy reference. So here’s (most of) my presentations for 2011…

8 June 2011 — ‘Confessions of an impatient historian’
Scholars’ Lab, University of Virginia

• slides
• podcast

18 August — ‘Digital history: new tools and techniques’
National Museum of Australia

• links in Zotero

24 August — ‘Hacking the archives’
Archival description in an online world, Recordkeeping Roundtable, Sydney

• report

5 September 2011 — Digital research methods
Cultural heritage students, University of Canberra

• links in Zotero

14 September 2011 — ‘Every story has a beginning’
Keynote presentation at the Indexing See Change Conference (Australian and New Zealand Society of Editors)

• full text
• presentation

13 November 2011 — ‘Digital history: new tools and techniques’
Dragontails 2011: 2nd Australasian conference on overseas Chinese history & heritage, Museum of Chinese Australian History, Melbourne

• slides

30 November 2011 — ‘It’s all about the stuff’
National Digital Forum, Wellington, New Zealand

• full text
• video

7 December 2011 — ‘An introduction to digital history’
Digital December, State Library of NSW

• links in Google Docs

Videos from NDF2011 are now available online. Here’s the movie version of my talk It’s all about the stuff. I seem to spend a lot of time in the shadows…

This is the full version of a paper I presented at the National Digital Forum, 30 November 2011.

In 1901, one of the first acts of the Commonwealth of Australia was to create a system of exclusion and control designed to keep the newly-formed nation ‘white’. But White Australia was always a myth. As well as the Indigenous population, there were already many thousands of people classified as ‘non-white‘ living in Australia — most were Chinese, but there were also Japanese, Indians, Syrians and Indonesians.

Here are some of them…

The real face of White Australia

The administration of what became known as the White Australia Policy created a huge volume of records, much of which is still preserved within the National Archives of Australia. These photographs are attached to certificates that non-white residents needed to get back into the country if they decided to travel overseas. There are thousands upon thousands of these certificates in the Archives. Thousands of certificates representing thousands of lives — all monitored and controlled.

But is is too easy to see these people as the powerless victims of a repressive system. There were many acts of resistance. Some argued against the need to be identified ‘just like a criminal’. Others exercised control over their representation, submitting formal studio portraits instead of mug shots.

Most commonly and most powerfully, people resisted the policy simply by going ahead and living rich and productive lives.

My partner, Kate Bagnall, is helping to rewrite Australian-Chinese history by overthrowing the stereotype of the culturally isolated Chinese man living a lonely, meagre existence surrounded by gambling and opium dens. By mining the available records, by reading against the grain of contemporary reports and by working with family historians, Kate is documenting their intimate lives — their wives, their lovers, their families and descendants — the sorts of relationships that sent a shudder through the edifice of White Australia. Power can be reclaimed in many subtle and subversive ways.

‘The real face of White Australia’ is an experiment. It uses facial detection to technology to find and extract the photographs from digital copies of the original certificates made available through the National Archives of Australia’s collection database. The photographs you see here come from just one series, ST84/1. There’s no API to the collection so I reverse-engineered the web interface to create a script that would harvest the item metadata and download copies of all the digitised images. There are 2,756 files in this series. On the day I harvested the metadata, 347 of those files had been digitised, comprising 12,502 images. It took a few hours, but I just ran my script and soon I had a copy of all of this in my local database.

Then came the exciting part. Using a facial detection script I found through Google and an open source computer vision library, I started experimenting with ways of extracting the photos. After a few tweaks I had something that worked pretty well, so I pointed my aging laptop at the 12,502 images and watched anxiously as the CPU temperature rose and rose. It took a few emergency cooling measures, but the laptop survived and I had a folder containing 11,170 cropped images. About a third of these weren’t actually faces, but it was easy to manually remove the false positives, leaving 7,247 photos.

These photos. These people.

With my database fully primed and loaded it was just a matter of creating a simple web interface using Django for the backend and Isotope (a jQuery plugin) at the front. Both are open source projects. All together, from idea to interface, it took a bit more than a weekend to create, and most of that was waiting for the harvesting and facial detection scripts to complete. It would be silly to say it was easy, but I would say that it wasn’t hard.

What we ended up with was a new way of seeing and understanding the records — not as the remnants of bureaucratic processes, but as windows onto the lives of people. All the faces are linked to copies of the original certificates and back to the collection database of the National Archives. So this is also a finding aid. A finding aid that brings the people to the front.

According to Margaret Hedstrom the archival interface ‘is a site where power is negotiated and exercised’. Whether in a reading room or online, finding aids or collection databases are ‘neither neutral nor transparent’, but the product of ‘conscious design decisions’. We would like to think that this interface gives some power back to the people within the records. Their photographs challenge us to do something, to think something, to feel something. We cannot escape their discomfiting gaze.

But this interface represents another subtle shift in power. We could create it without any explicit assistance or involvement by the National Archives itself. Simply by putting part of the collection online, they provided us with the opportunity to develop a resource that both extends and critiques the existing collection database. Interfaces to cultural heritage collections are no longer controlled solely by cultural heritage institutions.

It’s these two aspects of the power of interfaces that I want to focus on today.

There are a growing number of examples where the records created by repressive or discriminatory regimes have, in Eric Ketelaar’s words, ‘become instruments of empowerment and liberation, salvation and freedom’. Nazi records of assets confiscated during the Holocaust have been used to inform processes of restitution and reparation. Government records have helped members of Australia’s Stolen Generations trace family members. Descendants of inmates incarcerated by American colonial authorities in what was the world’s largest leprosy colony in the Philippines, have embraced the administrative record as an affirmation of their own heritage and survival. Records can find new meanings. Power can be reclaimed.

Technology can help. Tim Hitchcock has described how something as simple as keyword searching can turn archives on their heads. Recordkeeping systems tend to reflect the structures and power relations of the organisations that create them. The ‘hierarchical and institutional nature of most archives’, Hitchcock argues, ‘contains an ideological component which is sucked in with every dust-filled breath’. But digitisation and keyword searching free us from having to follow the well-worn paths of institutional power. We can find people and follow their lives against the flow of bureaucratic convenience. We can gain a wholly new perspective on the workings of society. ‘What changes’, Hitchcock asks, ‘when we examine the world through the collected fragments of knowledge that we can recover about a single person, reorganised as a biographical narrative, rather than as part of an archival system?’

Projects such as Unknown no longer may help us answer that question.

Unknown no longer

It’s aiming to extract the names and biographical details of slaves from the 8 million manuscript documents held by the Virginia Historical Society. The documents include court records, receipts, wills and inventories. Here is a page from the ‘Inventory of Negroes at Berry Plain Plantation, King George County, Virginia’ for 1855, listing names, occupations and valuations.

Tim Hitchcock is one of the directors of London Lives a project that similarly seeks to find the people in 240,000 manuscript pages documenting the lives of plebeian Londoners in the 17th century.

London Lives

More than three million names have already been extracted from the records of courts, workhouses, hospitals and other institutions. Work is continuing to link these names together, to merge these various shards of identity and piece together the experiences of London’s poorest inhabitants.

Remember me from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is working with photographs taken by relief agencies in the aftermath of World War Two. The photographs are of displaced children who survived the Holocaust but were separated from families. What happened to them? The project is seeking public help to identify and trace the children.

Remember me

These are all projects about finding people. Finding the oppressed, the vulnerable, the displaced, the marginalized and the poor and giving them their place in history. This is what Kate and I hope to do with Invisible Australians, the broader project of which our faces experiment is part.

Invisible Australians

‘Invisible Australians’ aims to extract more than just photographs. We want to record and aggregate the biographical data contained within the records of the White Australia Policy — to extract the data and rebuild identities.

But we want to do more, we want to link these identities up with with other records, with the research of family and local historians, with cemetery registers and family trees, with newspaper articles and databases we don’t even know about yet. We want to find people, families and communities.

It’s ridiculously ambitious and totally unfunded. But it is possible.

The most exciting part of online technology is the power it gives to people to pursue their passions. As with the faces, we don’t need the help of the National Archives. We need the records to be digitized, but that’s happening anyway and we can afford to be patient. Most of the tools we need already exist, and are free. In the past 12 months, for example, there have been a number of open source tools released for crowd-sourced transcription of manuscript records.

People with passions, people with dreams, people who are just annoyed and impatient, don’t have to wait for cultural institutions to create exactly what they need. They can take what’s on offer and change it.

Interfaces can be modified. It is amazingly easy to write a script that will change the way a web page looks and behaves in your browser. I was frustrated by the standard interface to digitized files in the National Archives of Australia’s Recordsearch database — so I changed it.

Before and after

Not only did make it look a bit nicer, I added new functions. My script lets you print a whole file or a range of pages and display the entire contents of the file on a pretty cool 3d wall.

I’ve shared this script, and a few other Recordsearch enhancements. Anyone can install them with a click and use them.

Wragge Labs Emporium

Interfaces are sites of power and we can claim some of that power for ourselves. Online technologies not only free us from the having to brave the physical intimidation of the reading room, they free us up to engage with the records in new ways. The archivist-on-duty would probably not be pleased if I pulled out some scissors and started snipping photos out of certificates. Or if I pulled a file apart and pasted it’s contents on the wall. But online we are free to experiment.

The power of cultural heritage organisations is perhaps expressed most forcefully in their ability to control the arrangement and description of their collections. ‘Every representation, every model of description, is biased’, note Verne Harris and Wendy Duff, ‘because it reflects a particular world-view and is constructed to meet specific purposes’. Archives, libraries and museums are already starting to share this power, by allowing tagging, or seeking public assistance with description through crowd sourcing projects. But most of the these activities still happen within spaces created and curated by the institutions themselves. Our cathedrals of culture might be opening their doors and inviting the public to participate in their ceremonies, but that doesn’t make them bazaars. The architecture stills speaks of authority.

In any case, people already have a space where they can explore and enrich collections — it’s called the internet.

It would be great to see cultural institutions doing more to watch, understand and support what people are doing with collections in their own spaces — following them as they pursue their passions, rather than thinking of ways to motivate them.

A quick example… You might have heard of Zotero, it’s an open source project that lets you capture, annotate and organize your research materials.

Zotero

One cool thing about Zotero is that you can build and contribute little screen scrapers, called translators, that let Zotero extract structured data from any old collection database. You might not be surprised to learn that I’ve created a translator for Recordsearch. Another cool thing about Zotero is that you can share the stuff that you collect in public groups.

Invisible Australians Zotero group

Put those two cool things together and what do you have? Well to me they spell out user generated finding aids — parallel collection databases created by researchers simply pursuing their own passions.

Linked Open Data greatly increases opportunities for collection description to leak into the wider web. If objects and documents are identified with a unique URL, then anyone can can make and publish statements about them in machine-readable form. These statements can then be aggregated and explored. Initiatives such as the Open Annotation Collaboration will hasten the development of these shared descriptive and interpretative layers around our cultural collections.

And of course all this descriptive and interpretative work can be harvested back to enhance existing collection databases. We could start doing it now — though I will spare you today my rant about the possibilities of mining footnotes.

As well as exploring the possibilities of user-generated content, cultural institutions are starting to open up their collection data for re-use. APIs are great (though Linked Open Data is better), and New Zealand is lucky to have an organisation like DigitalNZ which just gets it. People can and will make cool things with your stuff.

But again, we don’t have to wait for everything to be delivered in a convenient, machine-readable form. If it’s on the web anybody can scrape, harvest and experiment.

You probably all know about the National Library of Australia’s newspaper digitisation project — it’s building a magnificent resource. But I wanted to do more than just find articles. I wanted to explore and analyze their content on a large scale. So I built a screen scraper to extract structured data from search results, and then used the scraper to  power a series of tools. I have a harvester that lets you download an entire results set — hundreds or thousands of articles — with metadata neatly packaged for further analysis.

Harvester

Or what about a script that graphs the occurrence of search terms over time, and allows you to ask questions like When did the Great War become the First World War?.

When did the Great War become the First World War?

In the end I got a bit carried away and built my own public API to the Trove newspaper database.

Unofficial Trove newspapers API

I think it’s important to note that the tools I developed were guided by the types of questions I wanted to ask. While we should welcome APIs and celebrate their possibilities, we should also remain critical. APIs are interfaces, they too embed power relations. Every API has an argument. What questions do they let us ask? What questions do they prevent us from asking?

Even as we move from the age of lumbering, slow-witted data silos into the rapidly-evolving realms of Linked Open Data, we have to constantly question the models we make of the world. Ontologies and vocabularies are culturally determined and historically specific. Yes, they too are interfaces, complete with their own distributions of power and authority. But we can revisit and change them. And we can relate our new models to our old models, capturing complex, long-term shifts in the way we think about the world. That’s incredibly exciting.

All of this hacking, harvesting, questioning, enriching and meaning-making makes me think about the possibilities of grassroots leadership. Online technologies enable people to take cultural institutions into unexpected realms. They can build their own interfaces, ask their own questions, determine their own needs — they can point the way instead of simply waiting to be served.

You might wonder what the National Library of Australia thinks of my various scrapers and harvesters. I can’t speak for them, but I can say that they’ve awarded me a fellowship to explore further the possibilities of text-mining in their newspaper database.

The idea of grassroots leadership brings me back to the title of this talk — ‘It’s all about the stuff’. It seems to me that we tend to model the interactions between cultural institutions and the public as transactions. The public are ‘clients’, ‘patrons’, ‘users’ or ‘visitors’. But the sorts of things I’ve been talking about today give us a chance to put the collections themselves squarely at the centre of our thoughts and actions. Instead of concentrating on the relationship between the institution and the public, we can can focus on the relationship we both have with the collections.

It’s all about the stuff.

It’s all about the respect and responsibility we both have for our collections.

It’s all about the respect and responsibility we both have for people like this.

The clouds of radioactive fallout are descending and humanity is doomed to extinction. In Nevil Shute’s book, On the Beach, the inhabitants of Melbourne await their end – the final victims of a 37 day nuclear war that has destroyed the northern hemisphere. John Osborne, played by Fred Astaire in the film version, decides to die in the embrace of the one he loves. So donning his crash helmet and goggles, he pops his suicide pills while sitting behind the wheel of the Ferrari that has recently won him the Australian Grand Prix: ‘The car had won him the race that was the climax of his life. Why trouble to go further?’ For John, as for all, it was the end of the road.

With the onset of the Atomic Age, Australia set out optimistically along the yellow-brick road to peace and prosperity, but 50 years later, the Emerald City seems as far away as ever. Australia’s involvement with nuclear energy has been largely limited to the provision of raw materials – uranium to power other countries’ reactors, and test sites for Britain’s bomb program. To understand Australia’s nuclear history you need to focus not on the journey’s end, but on the journey itself. How was the road mapped? Where were the markers? And who was doing the driving?

the bulldozer

In 1944, a new road was rapidly taking shape in the Northern Flinders Ranges. A team of geologists and miners watched as the first bulldozer most of them had ever seen tore through the scrub, opening access to an isolated mine site. All this urgency was at the behest of the British government, who were keen to know the extent of Australia’s uranium supplies. The geologist and Antarctic explorer, Douglas Mawson, had discovered radioactive minerals in the Flinders Ranges many years before. Although some attempts had been made to take commercial advantage of them, such as through promoting the health-giving effects of the radioactive Paralana Hot Springs, the deposits were apparently of little value. All this seemed about to change. This was a road to the future.

The British government was, of course, cooperating with the USA in the development of the atomic bomb. All the uranium for the Manhattan Project had thus far come from the Belgian Congo, so it seemed wise to identify other potential sources. Mark Oliphant, the Australian-born physicist who was one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project’s British contingent, suggested the Flinders Ranges.

Oliphant always had an eye on Australian interests, and had alerted the Australian government to the wartime work on atomic energy as early as 1941. Oliphant’s ‘leak’ came via Richard Casey, then Ambassador to Washington. Casey asked Oliphant to prepare a memo outlining the developments, which was then forwarded to Sir David Rivett, the Chairman of Australia’s peak science organisation, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Rivett began to seek more information through his scientific contacts, and tried to arrange for increased Australian involvement in the work. He was, however, unsuccessful. This quest for information continued for the next decade and more, shaping much government policy. Uranium gave Australia a foot in the door, but no invitation to step inside was forthcoming. The atomic club was for members only.

This was all the more frustrating for it seemed that Australia was ideally placed to take advantage of all that this new technology might have to offer. Looking forward to the postwar world, Australia’s planners envisaged rapid industrial growth – the development of the manufacturing sector. But this could not occur without power, and traditional fuel sources appeared too limited. Add to this a large land mass, a growing population, uranium deposits, and a strong scientific base, and atomic power was a very attractive prospect indeed. Follow that bulldozer!

But just as Australia was about to set out along the road to atomic utopia, the landscape shuddered and changed. In the tracks of the bulldozer a signpost suddenly appeared. The way forward was no longer so clear.

the crossroads of destiny

At 8.00 am on the 1 July 1946 the inhabitants of eastern Australia tuned in to the atomic age. In a live radio broadcast from Bikini Atoll, they listened as the world’s fourth atomic bomb was exploded – ‘Bomb’s away! Bombs away!’ came the excited radio announcer’s call. Some weeks later, a fifth atomic bomb was detonated, again at Bikini. The blue waters of the atoll’s idyllic lagoon erupted skyward with the force of the explosion, signalling a dramatic end to the USA’s first peacetime atomic ‘test’ programme. The ‘target’ for these tests was a fleet of retired American and captured enemy warships, ‘manned’ by pigs, goats and other animals – some in uniform. By blowing up this junkyard menagerie the USA confirmed its status as the world’s only atomic power. In another attempt to win the favour of the bouncers guarding the doors of the atomic club, Australia offered up one of its own disused battleships for the honour of irradiation. The offer was refused, but Australia was allowed an official observer.

While the first three atomic explosions were planned and executed in secret, the Bikini atomic tests were conducted amidst well-organised publicity. The responsible authority, Joint Task Force One, arranged for extensive media coverage, aiming to make the test programme ‘the best-reported as well as the most-reported technical experiment of all time’. An Australian press representative fed a steady stream of stories back to the local media, heightening the sense of anticipation and causing some unexpected side effects. On 27 June, an evening lecture on cosmic rays by Melbourne University’s professor of physics, L.H. Martin, drew an unexpectedly large crowd of 500 people, overwhelming the 200 seat lecture theatre. This sudden interest in nuclear physics, it was claimed, was a result of the forthcoming bomb test.

The Bikini tests refocussed attention on the implications of atomic energy. Stunned by the news from Hiroshima, there had been little time to reflect on the meaning of this new, atomic age. But Bikini offered not only the chance for reflection, but a conceptual structure within which to contain it. Imagine again the radio broadcast on the morning of the first atomic test at Bikini, relayed nationally from the National Broadcasting Company of America. The technical distortions add a sense of otherwordliness as the commentators set the scene. The dramatic tension is heightened by the ticking of a metronome that continues right up until the point of the explosion. Finally the call comes through, ‘Bombs away!’, but then another voice cuts across the broadcast with a chilling warning: ‘Listen world, this is the crossroads’.

therefore choose life

At some point marked vaguely by the destruction of Hiroshima, atomic energy was assumed to have split the future of the world into two. Humankind was suddenly confronted by a ‘choice’, for atomic energy offered it the chance to pursue the well-worn path of war to its inevitable apocalyptic end, or to strike out anew towards a miraculous vision of peace and prosperity. The world was standing at a ‘turning-point’ where these two roads could be seen leading off into the future, the alternatives made clear by a signpost pointing one way to ‘Destruction’ and the other way to ‘Progress’ – this was the ‘crossroads’.

The message from Bikini was hardly subtle, the whole undertaking was code-named ‘Operation Crossroads’. It was a formula repeated ad nauseam in the local press. The atomic crossroads was a hackneyed image, recycled, reworked and re-emphasised many times following its original formulation. It became one of the favourite clichés of authors, speechmakers, commentators and journalists grasping for a pithy summation of the implications of atomic energy – a representation of the fundamental dualism that characterised reactions to this new technology.

But this sort of choice was a familiar one, appearing in many cultural guises. On the first Sunday after the destruction of Hiroshima, the Rev. C.N. Button of St Andrews Kirk, Ballarat, warned his congregation: ‘Humanity is at the cross-roads’. Button drew a parallel between the coming of the atomic bomb, and the choice laid down by God in Deuteronomy, ‘I have set before you life and death, cursing and blessing. Therefore choose life, that thou and thy seed may live.’ This was a theme elaborated by many religious commentators – in bestowing the gift of atomic energy on the world God was repeating the offer made to Israel, to either accept His purpose or be destroyed, it was a challenge, a choice. However, it was a loaded choice. The options were not equally weighted, for in presenting them God commanded His people to ‘choose life’. God is not suggesting to the people of Israel that they might like to consider idolatry, he is seeking to make his will known by imposing a particular conceptual structure upon options that already exist. What is offered is no real choice, but rather an affirmation of a pre-established order.

It is this type of ‘choice’ which is central to the crossroads image. The options it presents are not real alternatives, for it is assumed that you will want to travel along the positive route. The whole structure is organised around this assumption: the negative route is not given as a reasonable alternative, rather it is the threat, the punishment, which enforces the ‘correct’ choice. The crossroads were not invoked so that humankind could choose to go to hell or to be annihilated by atomic bombs – this could only happen if something went wrong with the whole set-up. The question with which the crossroads image confronted humankind was not which path to choose, but how to avoid straying down the wrong one. It did not offer the opportunity to make a decision about the priorities of human existence, instead it set the limits of what was assumed to be possible. A discussion about the social impact of a new technology was transformed through the language of the crossroads into an imperative to develop that technology. Humankind was called upon to follow the path sanctioned and defined by its presence in the crossroads structure as the only reasonable vision of the future – progress. The bulldozer offered us the only way ahead, but to where?

participating in progress

In 1948, the Australian public was given the chance to fall into line when the ‘Atomic Age Exhibition’ rolled into town. Sponsored by the major newspapers, the exhibition toured Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Although it had been originally designed and built in the UK, the exhibition was modified for Australian audiences, even including a sample of local uranium. In Sydney, the exhibition formed part of the Royal Easter Show, though popular demand forced it to continue beyond the Show’s usual closing. In Melbourne, where it was considerably expanded and renamed the ‘Atomic Age and Industrial Exhibition’, many thousands attended.

The exhibition’s pin-up boy was the atomic genie, who made his appearance in a diorama depicting the first atomic explosion at Almagordo, New Mexico. Emerging from the atomic cloud, electrons whizzing around his head like bush flies, the atomic genie was another manifestation of the ‘choice’. Having been released from his prison within the atom, the genie awaited our command, would it be for good or evil?

In case even this symbolism was too abstract, a signpost was positioned in the middle of the exhibition, pointing one way to ‘Destruction’ and the other to ‘Progress’. Destruction in this instance was represented by a scale model of the bombing of Hiroshima, complete with flashing lights and sound effects for that authentic atomic annihilation experience. The path to progress, however, led through the commercial exhibits, where all manner of consumer and industrial goods were arrayed as icons of the coming atomic utopia.

Such visions of progress abounded in the fifties, promulgated by advertisers, encouraged by governments. Progress in the Atomic Age meant a modern household, full of the latest appliances, inhabited by a nuclear family (a term first used in 1945). It meant economic growth, industrial development, the investment of overseas dollars, and the growing dominance of multinational companies. Atomic energy, through the image of the crossroads, helped to confirm this route as necessary, as inevitable, even though atomic energy itself failed to live up to expectations.

recurring dreams

Mark Oliphant, who returned to Australia to establish the Research School of Physical Sciences at the Australian National University, was but one of the many atomic prophets who believed that the technology would help propel Australia forward into the ranks of the world’s leading industrialised nations. As well as cheap electricity, Oliphant envisaged atomic-powered desalination plants that would enable the irrigation of Australia’s desert regions. The Premier of South Australia, Thomas Playford, was particularly inspired by these sorts of possibilities. Undeterred that known uranium reserves were small and of low quality, Playford set out to see South Australia through an atom-led recovery.

Through persistence and good timing, Playford managed to extract a very generous deal from the USA for the development of the Radium Hill site. In 1950, the USA had just entered a new war, and their atomic weapons production program was in full swing – they wanted all the uranium they could get their hands on. Another deal between the USA and the Federal Government followed for work at the newly-discovered Rum Jungle deposits in the Northern Territory. The British, although they had knocked back Playford’s early offers, began to worry that they might be missing out. In 1956, an agreement was finalised to supply them with uranium from the Mary Kathleen mine, near Mount Isa. By the time these agreements had run their course, the USA and Britain were thankful to be relieved of their obligations. The Australian ore was low-yielding, and world uranium prices were steadily dropping. By the early sixties all the mines had closed. Uranium had not brought the economic windfall expected of it.

However, the efforts of Playford and others were motivated not just by the anticipated monetary returns. They wanted information. It was hoped that these sorts of cooperative arrangements would lead to a greater flow of technical data about the use of atomic energy for industrial purposes. Certainly this carrot was regularly dangled, but Australia only ever managed the smallest of nibbles. The Americans were bound by their own domestic legislation, as well as their commercial ambitions, while the British were bound by their obligations to the Americans. Australia’s hopes figured very small in comparison.

Nonetheless, Australia had managed to institute a modest program of scientific collaboration. A number of Australian scientists were sent to the British atomic research establishment at Harwell, to work in non-classified areas. These scientists, it was reasoned, together with a small nuclear physics unit, established at the University of Melbourne by the CSIR, would at least have some experience in the field. If Australia was finally admitted to the atomic club, they would have a few people who would know their way around.

The Australian Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1952 to formalise Australia’s research effort. The indications were that Britain would be more likely to release information if Australia had its own research to exchange. So the AAEC embarked on a research program suggested by the British, built an experimental reactor designed by the British, and waited for the pay-off. It never came. By the time Australia’s one and only nuclear reactor went critical, Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ program had freed up access to atomic information. Why bother going through the expensive and complex business of designing and building your own reactor when you could buy one off the shelf from Westinghouse? In any case, it had become clear that Australia’s fossil fuel supplies were greater than had been imagined. Australia no longer needed atomic power.

The AAEC continued on as an organisation without a mission, although there was a flurry of excitement in the early 1970s when a reactor was planned for Jervis Bay. It seems the plans were motivated, at least in part, by the desire for Australia to develop its own nuclear weapons capability. The options were much studied, but nothing eventuated. The chosen site, I have heard, remains empty – waiting…

Atomic energy did not provide electricity too cheap to meter, cars or planes that never needed refuelling, nor the means to launch Australia’s economy into the superpower range. Yet, the Atomic Age was real. We were changed by example. The afterimage remained clear long after the blinding flash of atomic possibilities had faded. Although it never lived up to the dreams of its prophets, atomic energy shaped Australia’s history by helping to define the meaning of progress. Instead of a map and compass to chart our way in the postwar world, we were presented with a road. There was no choice but to follow in the bulldozer’s wake.

the dread secret

The verb ‘to bulldoze’ preceded the bulldozer by several decades, its meaning being ‘to coerce by violence’ or ‘intimidate’. The meaning became machine – the bulldozer so-named because it transforms its surroundings by violence. Our atomic bulldozer is an apt metaphor indeed, for in carving out its road to the future, the atomic bulldozer was also defining the limits of acceptable behaviour – threatening those who dared to depart from the ‘straight and narrow’. If the vision of progress wasn’t enough to keep us in its trail, there was the other half of the crossroads equation – destruction, alienation, dissolution, death. The bulldozer entreated us to stay on the road – for our own safety.

At about 11.30pm on 5 October 1948, a student walking through the grounds of Melbourne University noticed a fire in one of the ex-army huts used by the Physics Department. He raised the alarm, but little could be done to save the building or its contents. The results of two years research into cosmic rays was destroyed, along with much valuable equipment. The wiring in these huts was notoriously bad and it seemed that the fire had simply been caused by a fault in one of the electrically-driven recording instruments. Or had it?

In Canberra, twenty-four hours later, the Opposition member, W.J. Hutchinson was on his feet, bringing the fire to the urgent attention of the House. He quoted reports that described the labs as carrying out ‘vital defence experiments in nuclear physics’. This cast the fire in a rather more sinister light. After all, communist fifth columnists around the world were trying to infiltrate defence establishments, perhaps this was no accident, but an act of sabotage. Perhaps the fire was lit to cover the theft of secret documents.

J.J. Dedman, the responsible Minister, dismissed these speculations. The research was in fundamental physics, and of no defence significance. However, the battle was rejoined the following day as the Opposition conjured ever more elaborate conspiracies. It seemed more than coincidence that Australia’s only atomic research laboratory had gone ‘up in smoke’. An exasperated Dedman could do little but repeat his assertions of the previous night, but the damage was done. The invocation of ‘atomic secrets’ added an immense rhetorical weight to the Opposition’s otherwise bizarre allegations.

The news of the destruction of Hiroshima had provoked much earnest discussion about dabbling with the ‘secrets of nature’. The liberation of atomic energy was both a victory for scientists, and a source of anxiety. Allusions abounded to Prometheus, Pandora, Adam and Eve, Faust, and, of course, Frankenstein – this was dangerous knowledge. Having discovered one of the secrets of nature, it seemed that humanity might have loosed a force beyond its control. This ‘dread secret’, this ‘sacred trust’, as US President Truman described it, carried with it a heavy responsibility. The secret needed to be guarded, the knowledge controlled, lest it be used to bring about humankind’s destruction.

Guarded against whom? The idea that atomic energy had been given to the USA as a ‘sacred trust’, neatly divided the world into those who could be trusted, and those who could not. If the USA had been blessed (or cursed) with the dread secret, then it was because the USA, and not its enemies, could be depended upon to do all that was good and true. The USA would defend the secret from those who would turn it to evil purposes. In the developing Cold War atmosphere, it was not difficult to hang a name on this threat – communism. This was the dark force waiting to devour those who stepped from the road to progress.

freedom through control

The manufactured hysteria that surrounded the Melbourne University fire was far from an isolated incident. The Opposition had for some time been attempting to discredit the Labor Government and CSIR by pointing to communists in their midst. In mid-1948, reports appeared in the press suggesting that the USA was withholding ‘atom secrets’ from Australia because of concerns about the security of CSIR. This was denied at the time, but the Opposition used the Estimates debate in late September to resurrect the controversy, brandishing leaked documents that clearly ran counter to the official denials. In a brutal tirade of allegation and innuendo, Opposition members attacked CSIR, questioning a number of appointments and viciously smearing its Chairman, David Rivett. Dedman and Prime Minister Chifley struggled unsuccessfully to defend their Government against this ‘evidence’ that it was endangering the country’s security and standing by being ‘soft’ on communism. It was in the midst of this bitter conflict that the fire occurred, arming the Opposition’s parliamentary brawlers with yet another blunt instrument to bludgeon the beleaguered Chifley government.

US officials certainly were suspicious of Australian security, but ‘atom secrets’ were hardly the issue, as they had no intention of divulging this sort of information to anyone. It seems that the ‘secrets’ in question related to guided weapons development, necessary for the research Australia was undertaking in cooperation with the British at the Woomera Rocket Range. ‘Atom secrets’ was a big red warning label to slap on any defence-related information. It immediately placed this information in the most dangerous and most vital category – the sort of information that communist spies were most desperate to obtain. To prove oneself worthy of ‘atom secrets’, you had to be willing to deal with communism. To show itself capable of controlling atomic energy, a government had to be able to control its people.

The Chifley Labor government tried hard to establish its security credentials. When it seemed that work on the Woomera Rocket Range might be disrupted by unions concerned about its impact on an Aboriginal reserve, the government introduced the Approved Defence Projects Protection Act. Amongst other draconian provisions, this Act provided for up to 12 months jail for any person who advocated the obstruction of an ‘approved defence project’. Such an attack on free speech in peacetime was unprecedented. Significantly, this act formed the basis of legislation introduced later to establish the AAEC, and to clear the way for the British atomic tests. The government had previously argued that the Crimes Act contained all the provisions necessary to protect defence-related projects, but the new act signalled more effectively the seriousness of the government’s anti-communist intentions.

Continued attacks on security within CSIR forced the government to excise all defence-related research and to reconstitute the organisation, bringing it more closely under the provisions of the Public Service Act – CSIR became CSIRO. All employees were thenceforth required to take an oath of allegiance. Rivett could not agree to these changes, which he saw as attacks on the fundamental freedom of scientific research, and resigned. It was a bitter end to the career of a man who had contributed so much to the development of science in Australia. The consequences of the new order quickly became clear when in 1949, Tom Kaiser, a young CSIRO physicist studying in the UK, was identified at a ‘communist inspired’ demonstration outside Australia House. Although Kaiser was not involved in any ‘secret’ research, his interest in nuclear physics was enough to set the alarm bells ringing. The CSIRO Executive demanded that he return to Australia immediately. He refused and was sacked. The full story of Kaiser’s political crucifixion is yet to be told, but it is now clear that he was under surveillance before he even left Australia. Indeed, security officers had tried to have his request for a passport refused. This makes the manner of his ‘identification’ at the rally all the more intriguing.

Such legislative reforms were still not proof enough of Australia’s trustworthiness, however. To directly answer the concerns of the US about the handling of secret information, the Chifley government overhauled the country’s internal security apparatus, establishing the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in 1949^. ‘Atom secrets’ figured prominently in any public discussion over the need for such measures. Dangerous knowledge needed special precautions. Atomic energy had helped redefine the nature of freedom.

Having campaigned hard on the anti-communist issue, the new conservative government, elected in December 1949, needed no encouragement to fire up the bulldozer and gouge deeper and more viciously than their predecessors. The image of ‘atom secrets’ fitted well within the environment of fear and threat engendered to support their program to outlaw communism. Even though Australia’s own atomic developments were, as we have seen, very limited, atomic energy remained a prime concern of the security establishment.

In 1954, George Briggs, a mild-mannered physicist who had eschewed all political involvement, was called before the Royal Commission on Espionage (the Petrov Commission). Briggs had acted as a scientific adviser to the Australian delegation to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission in 1946-7. His appearance before the Royal Commission was prompted by a reference in one of the documents handed over by Petrov upon his defection. The document identified ‘Don Woods’ as a person of possible value to Soviet intelligence, and described him as ‘Secretary of the adviser of Dr E on “Enormaz”‘. The reference seemed to point to Donald Woodward, Technical Secretary of CSIRO’s Division of Physics, headed by Briggs. But what was ‘Enormaz’? Petrov had failed to identify the code word, despite the insightful prompting of ASIO’s Deputy Director-General, who suggested ‘The nearest I can think of “Enormaz” is big’. Edvokia Petrov finally identified it as referring to Soviet interest in the atomic bomb.

Despite Briggs’s involvement in the UNAEC there was no way that Woodward could have had access to information relating to the atomic bomb. Nonetheless, Briggs was brought before the Commission, in closed session for security reasons, and questioned as to whether any of the secrets of the Western world in relation to atomic energy had happened to reside in his office safe. The grip of the atomic secret was strong indeed.

defending democracy

Not even ASIO’s best efforts were enough to convince the Americans and the British to start the flow of atomic information, but there were other ways to prove ourselves worthy of initiation into the atomic club. Selling uranium didn’t do the trick, even though it was often stressed that the uranium was being supplied for the defence of the Free World. So why not go that one step further? In 1950, the British were looking for somewhere to test their own atomic bomb. The Americans wanted to place too many conditions on the use of their test facilities, so the British Prime Minister asked his Australian counterpart, Menzies, if Australia could provide a site. With little hesitation or consultation, Menzies said yes.

The first test was held in 1952 in the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia. The following year two more atomic devices were exploded at Emu Field, part of the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia. The first of these, Totem I, is thought to have been responsible for the ‘black mist’ – a mysterious cloud that descended upon aboriginal communities to the north-east of the test site, causing vomiting, diarrhoea, skin rashes and sore eyes. The long-term health effects have never been determined.

Two more bombs were exploded in the Monte Bello Islands in 1956, before testing was transferred to a permanent site – Maralinga. Seven atomic tests were conducted at Maralinga between 1956 and 1958. So-called ‘minor trials’ continued on until the early sixties. While these trials did not involve the detonation of fission devices, they did result in the distribution of large amounts of radioactive material.

Ever optimistic, the Australian authorities looked upon the British atomic tests as another opportunity to gain access to information about atomic energy. However, for the first three tests they insisted on no formal scientific involvement. No doubt they realised that this would place the British in a difficult position, as any such arrangement would be frowned upon by the Americans. After much negotiation, three scientists were permitted to attend the tests on Australia’s behalf. Their background and connections made them politically acceptable, but they had no formal authority. Despite the grudging nature of Australia’s scientific involvement, the Australian government went to some lengths to stress the cooperative nature of the undertaking.

With the establishment of the Maralinga test range, it was decided to formalise arrangements somewhat, and an Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee was established. This Committee comprised primarily the three scientists who had attended the previous tests. While the committee was supposed to ensure the safety of the tests, it was wholly dependent on information provided by the British. The Safety Committee’s main role seems to have been as a means of public reassurance. Concerns about fallout could be diffused by reference to these eminent scientists who were conscientiously protecting Australia’s interests.

But what of the interests of the Australian servicemen carelessly exposed to dangerous levels of radioactivity. Or of the aboriginal people, relocated, irradiated and ignored. Attempts to clean up the Maralinga range continue, but the stain can never be removed. Health and freedom were sacrificed for the protection of democracy, and in the name of progress. The images of the crossroads and the secret provided distorting lenses through which such perverse equations somehow seemed to make sense. The momentum of the atomic bulldozer carried us beyond reflection, beyond caring.

Nevil Shute’s cataclysmic war was, fortunately, never fought. But the atomic bomb has been deployed nonetheless. The main battleground was the future and the strike was quick and decisive. As the fallout cleared we found there was but one road left – our choices had been obliterated – and so we began our journey to the present, stumbling over the broken landscape.

What am I doing here? I work for a non-profit organisation attached to the University of Melbourne. What can I say about “Doing Business on the WWW”? You all know universities have it easy, large IT departments, huge bandwidth connections – it’s a different world!

But life’s not quite like that at ASAP. For a start, ASAP (the Australian Science Archives Project) is totally self-funded. Through consultancies and grants we support our activities, aimed at preserving and making accessible Australia’s scientific heritage. We’ve been doing it now for ten years.

I’m sure you’d be surprised at the richness of Australia’s scientific past. The problem is both to communicate that richness to a wide audience, and to provide specialist resources for researchers – all on a non-existent publishing budget. As you’ve probably guessed, we are increasingly using the WWW to achieve these ends. Along the way we have established one of the main sites in the world for information on the history of science, technology and medicine. On the WWW a small organisation can have a big impact. Our experience demonstrates that there is much to be gained when the information producers rise up and take over the means of distribution – there is a world to win and you have nothing to lose but your evenings!

Our quest for world domination began modestly in 1993 when we made a few plain text documents available through the gopher and ftp sites of the Coombs Computing Unit at ANU. A year later we published our first WWW page – again a fairly modest effort. Gradually we added resources: general information about who we are and what we do; copies of our newsletter; the text of some of our published guides to archival collections. These were all documents we had created for different purposes. They were just sitting around, feeling lonely and unwanted on the hard disk of my computer, until the WWW gave them the chance to be reborn. Text became hypertext.

With this new life came new meaning. Publishing on the WWW is not the same as running off a couple of thousand glossy leaflets. The sense of connection between publisher and the reader is more immediate, more direct. Once the leaflet has been taken, scrunched into pocket or bag, the connection is broken. On the WWW, your readers are your guests. They have come through your door, marched up to the reception desk and asked to be told all about you. They can question you, they can complain, they can make orders or leave their contact details. When you publish on the WWW you don’t just distribute information, you open a pathway for communication.

Recently we were visited by an archives student from the University of Washington. He came out to Australia specifically to do his practical work with us. Why? Because he had found us on the WWW. He read about us and the sorts of work we do and made contact. Would he have been as likely to follow up his interest if he had come across a copy of our newsletter in his university’s library? I don’t think so. The WWW provides a sense of community that overlays its informational content. There are people behind the documents.

The more you participate in this community the better. While I was putting together our first WWW documents I began to collect links to other history of science related resources on the Net. I thought I might as well make this list of links available to others, so on to the WWW it went. This has grown into the WWW Virtual Library for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, with links to over 150 sites and with around a thousand users per week. This is work we undertake for the good of the community, but the spin-offs are substantial. We now have a significant international presence. The Director of ASAP recently spent twelve months overseas visiting universities in Europe and the US. He was surprised to find how many people were aware of ASAP. How did they know us? Through the WWW of course. This sort of exposure in turn creates new opportunities for cooperation and development, opportunities that we could never have planned.

Too much WWW is never enough, after our initial foray we were quickly hooked. All of a sudden new possibilities began to emerge. We had for some time been discussing the possibility of developing a multimedia CD-ROM on the history of Australian science. We already had a database containing information on over 2,000 Australian scientists from the 18th century to the present. We knew that there was plenty of pictorial material and sound. What we didn’t have was money, and in the dark days before Creative Nation such ‘high-tech’ initiatives were viewed suspiciously by funding bodies.

Then came one of those moments of inspiration: “Why don’t we do it on the WWW?” It seems obvious in hindsight, but at the time it was pretty exciting. Once again it was a case of liberating our data – of taking material that we already had, equipping it for life on the WWW, and then sending it out into the world. I simply HTMLified reports from our database, ran the output through a few simple macros and ended up with thousands of little HTML files – kludgey but effective, it was on the WWW within a few weeks of the initial inspiration. Bright SPARCS (Scientists Present in Australia’s history Resource CD-ROM) had become Bright SPARCS (Scientists Present in Australia’s history Resource Collection Strategy).

Thanks to the WWW, a stalled project was given new life, a good idea became a useful resource. But the WWW incarnation of Bright SPARCS is quite different to the original proposal. It is a work-in-progress, rather than a finished product. It is the framework for an ongoing, collaborative endeavour, not just an electronic publication. By making what we have available, we are encouraging other people to do our work for us. Through their corrections and additions Bright SPARCS will grow and mature.

At the same time we are undertaking collaborative projects that link into Bright SPARCS, creating a detailed resource network. We recently produced a WWW version of Physics in Australia to 1945 a biographical and bibliographical register of Australian physicists. This is cross-linked with Bright SPARCS, so that a single click will switch you between resources. Similarly we are in the process of developing a WWW edition of the Australian Society of Archivist’s Directory of Archives in Australia. Once again this will be integrated with Bright SPARCS – a user will be able to follow his/her researches through to the point of finding the contact details of repositories holding archival materials relating to Australian scientists. In both cases the basic data was already in electronic form, it was just waiting to be liberated. Just think of the potential resources that you must have locked away in your computers. This cruel oppression must stop. Your data wants to be free!

But let’s not leave printed documents out of our revolution. The Australian Academy of Science recently provided us with funds to scan and process over 100 detailed biographical memoirs of Australian scientists, originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science. Freed from the printed page, these articles too have joined the Bright SPARCS movement.

Data gathers data. The WWW grows not by consuming resources, but by linking them. The document that you liberate from your hard disk may be the seed for something much larger, even unexpected.

The WWW now provides the focus for most of our outreach activities. It is also useful as an internal staff communication device. ASAP has offices in Melbourne and Canberra, as well as workers at a variety of sites throughout Victoria. All of our staff have access to the Internet, and email is our main form of communication. The WWW provides us with the equivalent of a staff noticeboard in the tea-room. This is the place where notices are posted, and where embarrassing photos are displayed. By using forms and cgi scripts all staff can contribute without having to know much about HTML. It’s a means of maintaining communication and building solidarity.

ASAP has achieved all that it has with minimal resources. Most of our WWW development has been done by our Canberra Office, which until early this year, meant me. Our only connection to the Internet, until a few months ago, was a dial-up line to the ANU. More recently we established our own server, and I had to learn the hard way about Unix system administration. Being in Canberra we receive little technical support from the University of Melbourne. We are pretty much left on our own, but I believe this is an advantage rather than a handicap. We have been forced to develop our own skills and ideas, we have seen the world rather than a single institution as our audience. Unfettered by bureaucracy, unable to avoid responsibility, small organisations are in an excellent position to harness and express the enthusiasm which drives all that is best in the WWW.

As I have said, the WWW is more than just a publishing medium, but how much more? Who knows? The WWW is a continuing experiment. New uses will be found, new types of resources will be developed. You cannot know how your organisation will use the WWW, until you start using it. Those organisations that will benefit the most will be the ones high on enthusiasm, who fling open the drawers of their filing cabinets and push the WWW to its limits. It’s a journey into unmapped territory, an adventure.

The development of WWW resources is not simply an investment in technology, it’s an investment in people and ideas. As our experience shows, the WWW can open up unexpected opportunities, but you have to set things going. This a not just a world of IT expertise, but of imagination and creativity. And no I don’t mean fantastic graphics that consume huge amounts of bandwidth. I mean finding new methods of communication, new uses for existing resources – taking that database that sits on your hard-disk and turning it into a innovative, accessible resource. I’m sorry, but you’re not going to be able to hire somebody to have your ideas for you. You know your organisation, you know your subject. You have to make the connections. Say goodbye to your evenings, say hello to obsession, the WWW has arrived to take over your life.

If the WWW is to be more than just a second-rate marketing tool we have to pay more attention to the important issue of bandwidth – intellectual bandwidth. There has to be space for innovation. Lack of imagination and the heavy hand of managers will do more to restrict our use of the Internet than any technical bottlenecks. Within our organisations we have to use the WWW not just as a tool, but as an incubator of new ideas, as the canvas upon which our grandest dreams are sketched out.

In the Riverview Observatory, Father O’Connell readied his seismographs – seven of them. The possibility of breakdown had to be considered, and now, with the coal miners out – a blackout at the wrong moment … So the clockwork instruments were oiled and tested, set up alongside their electric successors. Springs taut, whirring, they waited. No anomaly would escape the methodical priest.

But when the time came, when the Bomb was exploded, nary a flicker was registered on the caefully prepared charts. The shockwave from Bikini never arrived. No vibration was detected in Sydney. Yet it was there, that subtle tremor. A ripple moved across the earth, shifting the ground beneath our feet. A ripple formed as some massive bulk shifted, flexed, deep, deep down.

§§§

A winter morning in Melbourne, 1946. On the kitchen stove the porridge thickens and burps, solidifying. Attention is focused on the wireless set, as Phyllis watches her parents bicker.

‘I’m sure its the ABC’, insists her mother, hands on hips.

‘Yes … yes’, her father, oblivious, drives the tuner on through peaks of signal and wash.

‘You passed it’.

‘Wait … just wait. There, that’s it’.

‘See’.

‘I can’t hear’, protests Phyllis.

‘Come over’, her father draws her to him and the family stands gethered in the kitchen, listening.

Yes folks it’s live. Everyone can play their part without leaving home – witnesses to the atomic age. Settle back now and enjoy the extravagnza, just ‘No noise thanks’ and ‘Keep out of the way’. Extras on the set of the future.

‘We are now crossing to our reporter aboard the observation ship …’ The American commentary is being relayed around the world. No expense spared on this premier public performance. Breathlessly the scene takes shape. Dawn over Bikini Atoll and the doomed test fleet. In chains or cages, pigs, goats and rats eat, shit and be merry. A compelling experiment in metaphor. The seconds tick away.

Tick tick.

Over the radio a metronome is used to heighten the dramatic effect.

Tick tick tick.

Standing between her parents, Phyllis reaches up and takes their hands. Holding tight she closes her eyes.

‘Hrumphh!’ a pig snorts indignantly. But too late!

‘Bombs away!’ the broadcaster cries. Then in that moment before detonation another voice breaks in, slicing through time: ‘Listen world, this is the crossroads’.

§§§

The future is now, is 1948. Phyllis stands at the crossroads. Short for her thirteen years, the signpost looms above her, standing unmistakeably at the focus of the exhibition. It’s two arms exclaim a choice: ‘PROGRESS’ or ‘DESTRUCTION’. Two paths lay open, two roads ahead …

‘Funny’, thinks Phyllis looking at the map in the souvenir booklet, ‘the arrows only go one way.’

Brusquely a rack of suits bundles past Phyllis and takes up its position in front of one of the dioramas. It is hot again today and, in moving, the official party casts a wake of sweat that eddies around Phyllis. She wrinkles her nose and moves over to the gamma ray display – ‘EVERY CLICK IS AN ATOM EXPLODING’. Tick tick tick. Phyllis holds her breath.

Harold Giddy, the accountant made good, is ringmaster in Murdoch’s unexplained absence. ‘As you would understand Premier, the Herald’s aim in sponsoring this Atomic Age and Industrial Exhibition is to present atomic energy in terms that the average man-in-the-street can understand.’

Indeed the Promotions Department, for it was the Promotions Department that organised the exhibition, had gone to great lengths to ensure that this was so. Armed with R.I. Brightwater’s definitive volume, Product Recognition in the Advanced Physical Sciences, they had road-tested the atomic idiom to see how it weathered the harsh Australian linguistic conditions. PROGRESS and DESTRUCTION had scored well in all their tests. ‘Death rays’, ‘billiard balls’ and ‘a golden age of peace and prosperity’ had also demonstrated a high level of familiarity. The preferred unit of measurement, of course, was shown to the ‘teacupful’.

‘The exhibition’, continues Giddy, ‘displays the possibilities for good and evil, with an emphasis on the constructive uses of atomic energy.’ A man of capital and a frustrated engineer, Giddy feels desire rise as he surveys the industrial and technical displays that fill the bulk of the hall. Ah sweet progress.

‘A golden age of peace and prosperity, Premier, if …’, he stops, looking for unspoken understanding in Hollway’s distant gaze. If … The socialists are still in Canberra, communists in the unions – a firm line is needed.

Thomas Tuke Hollway stares through Giddy to the diorama. A young premier, a young party – his promise to deal with the unions only partially fulfilled. But at this moment Hollway sees that Giddy’s golden future will somehow never be his. His credentials are impeccable, yet he feels cursed, doomed to be eternally turned from the door of the club – ‘I’m sorry sir, we have our instructions’ – by a bouncer who looks just like…

Hollway is lost in the New Mexico desert. The diorama shows a group of stick-figure scientists looking to the horizon and a burst of light that signals birth – codename ‘Trinity’. And there amidst the dark and billowing clouds – CONGRATULATIONS ITS A BOY! – there the atomic genie stands. All bronzed red and muscles, hands with fingers spread, held as a wizard might in calling on mystic powers. Bohr electrons whizz around his head like bush flies. This is the exhibition’s pin-up boy.

‘Letters of blood or letters of gold?’ asks Hollway quietly.

‘Yes Premier, indeed’, insists Giddy, ‘and only a teacupful of uranium…’

‘EXCUSE ME’. The words are heard as a rumble that set the display boards rocking. Exhibition-goers nervously eye the exits.

‘A … a … teacupful of …’ Giddy stops, noticing Hollway, pale and reverent. Following his gaze, Giddy comes upon the genie, who speaks again.

‘If I can just..’ The genie painfully flexes his fingers and hands. ‘A bit stiff’, he explains. When finally relaxed, he sighs and steps from the cloud, right on to the stick-figures. CRUNCH! Poor little Oppenheimer. ‘Ooops’ says the genie as he scrapes the unfortunate physicist from the sole of his large, glowing foot.

There are screams and a rush for the doors. Flee flee the clumsy radioactive giant!

‘Oh’ he says, embarrassed, ‘I didn’t mean to …’

Phyllis, meanwhile, crouches hidden behind a partition and watches. The genie sits down on a scale model of the devastated Hiroshima, triggering a recorded commentary that describes the approach of the American bomber. KABOOM! Ending with suitable sound effects and a flash of light. Just like being there yourself. The genie giggles.

Giddy is calmly accommodating. ‘How … unexpected’, he says, approaching cautiously.

‘Really?’ the genie asks, suprised. ‘You mean you don’t recognise me?’

‘Oh well, of course’, soothes Giddy, ‘You are the embodiment of the inevitible progress of science, evidence of man’s increasing control over the forces of nature. At the same time you are a challenge to humankind’s moral and spiritual development. You present a choice …’

‘I bring you blessing and cursing, life and death’, says the genie in his most bored tone of voice. ‘Ho hum’.

‘On the one hand this’ continues Giddy, indicating the Hiroshima model, ‘On the other …’

‘On the other – rocket ships to the stars, ocean liners that never need refuelling, power too cheap to meter …’ Beckoning to Giddy, the genie leans over and whispers conspiratorially, ‘Is that what you really want?’

‘Yes,’ Giddy straightens, ‘we all do.’

‘Oh’ says the genie, bored again, ‘I just thought …’ Silently the genie examines the scaled-down ruins of Hiroshima. ‘Cheap special effects’, he mutters.

‘Pardon?’ queries Giddy.

‘Loud noises and flashing lights – Welcome to the show!’ The genie claps his hands. FLASH! The simulated bomb burst is triggered again. This time, however, two children hiding near the model are vapourised, and the backdrop bursts into flames. ‘Ooops’ says the genie.

‘Ah … I just have to make a telephone call.’ Giddy backs out of the hall, leaving only Hollway and Phyllis, still hidden, with the careless man of the future.

The genie begins a one-sided conversation with the awe-struck Premier:

‘I’m really a character player you know. I’m used to roles with a bit of depth. Horror yes, but character as well. Recently though there’s been more and more of this macho shit. Frankenstein’s monster, or saviour of the universe, or both… Ah sweet progress -I’ve got to get out of these trashy sci-fi extravaganzas.’

Hollway answers, vaguely nodding, ‘I know what you mean.’

Giddy slips back into the hall. Approaching slowly he whispers to Hollway, ‘It’s OK, they’ll be here soon.’ Then to the genie, boldly, ‘So, what do you intend to do now?’

‘Ummm … aren’t you supposed to tell me. I though that was the whole idea … Who are they anyway?’

‘They … ah … we … that is … you’, Giddy’s stammering is propitiously halted as the doors burst open to a determined phalanx of press officers. Striding at their head is the purple-robed figure of Rudolph Iscariot Brightwater himself, international discourse consultant and conceptual troubleshooter. This is PIRG (PURGE), the Public Image Response Group established by Brightwater at the request of the Australian Government. ‘Its lucky I was in the country’, he says, hurrying through the exhibition, golden ponytail streaming behind.

‘For the newspapers Mr Brightwater?’ an aide asks.

‘”We must be increasingly vigilant to guard against those pernicious forces that would endanger our Australian way of life” … Use a family shot.’

‘Yessir.’

Brightwater nods briefly to Giddy and comes to a halt in front of the genie. Without speaking, he snaps his fingers at the bronze giant and points to a large pair of white overalls held out by one of his aides. Meekly the genie dons the overalls and is led away by the PIRG team to a hastily contrived photo opportunity.

‘All under control’, pronounces a satisfied Brightwater. He shakes Giddy’s hand and pats Hollway on the back, ‘Courageous Premier – courageous and defiant.’ Annointed thus, Hollway follows Giddy silently from the hall.

Turning to leave, Brightwater stops. ‘Well, well … an observer.’ Phyllis had been spotted. ‘You saw everything – how lucky you are.’ He held out his hand to the nervous child, who hesitantly emerged from her concealment.

‘Lucky?’ she asked.

‘Very lucky, the luckiest girl in the world … to have been a part of this.’ A sweep of his arm looses a stream of sparkles that, glittering, flutter to the floor.

‘But those children … I thought … I was frightened.’

‘Let us have no irrational fears. Preparedness is our only defence. Our enemies do not place the same value on human life that we do. what is your name my dear?’

‘Phyllis.’

‘Come Phyllis, there’s no time to lose. let me show you wonderland.’ Brightwater grabs Phyllis by the hand and drags her around the exhibition. Through the industrial and manufacturing exhibits, past fly-spray, refrigerators, toys, radios, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners … Suddenly he stops, hands outstretched in revelation, ‘All this will be yours!’

‘F-flyspray?’

‘The FUTURE!’

Slowly Brightwater begins to turn on the spot. To pirouette. Faster and faster, soon a spiralling blur, a tornado. Phyllis feels herself being drawn in. She resists but cannot hold on. WHOOSH! She’s away.

§§§

Phyllis lands with a thud on the broken back of Old Father Time, or is that the Rosenbergs? I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore Ethel.

Crowds of Munchkins with dirty, smeared faces, freed briefly from their menial jobs, gather around Phyllis. They sing:

‘Flash! Bang! The Japs are dead. Evil Japs, wicked Japs. Flash! Bang! The wicked Japs are dead.’

‘Back to work!’ Brightwater, clad now in a gleaming white lab-coat, snarls and cracks his golden whip. The Munchkins scatter to the strains of ‘Flash! Bang! The Commos die’, while Brightwater floats towards Phyllis like a high-tech butterfly.

‘Welcome to the new age my dear. Everything you could ever desire is available here … and at an extremely reasonable price. Scientists have been working tirelessly to provide you with a happy and healthy life – a life of leisure. Look!’ Brightwater points his whip towards a strange object in the sky. Sickly, phosphorescent green it glows – a city, a suburb, a shopping centre.

‘Its not far Phyllis, just a little way beyond. Always keep to the freeway and remember’, laughs Fairy Brightwater, ‘There’s no place like ho-ome’.

Dazed, Phyllis takes a few faltering steps onto the desolate asphalt. Suddenly vast chasms open on either side. She hears a rumbling behind and turns to see the genie aboard some steamroller contraption, bearing grimly. There is no way but on, ever on, until at last she staggers and falls. Sticky, tarry hands reach up from the road and seize her. Sinking down they take her into darkness and forgetting.

§§§

Phyllis, now grown, wakes with a start on the couch in front of the TV. The baby is crying. She sits up and stares at the framed tapestry hanging on the lounge-room wall – ‘There’s no place like home’. She embroidered it herself, yet something rankles, biting at her memory.

Her child, fed, nursed and changed, is sleeping again. Phyllis hurriedly prepares her husband’s dinner – no time to lose. She listens to the radio while slicing vegetables. A news report – another series of atomic tests is to take place in Central Australia. What? Atomic tests? Where? The Prime Minister speaks, eyebrows audibly bristling, ‘Let us have no irrational fears…’ Phyllis drops the knife with a clatter. Stooping, elbows on the kitchen table, head in hands, she closes her mind. After a few minutes she stands again. THUD! Her head hits the ceiling. ‘How curious’, she thinks.

Crawling with difficulty through the tiny doorway, Phyllis makes her way into the lounge and switches on the television, seeking an explanation from the source.

The wrestling is on.

The good guy, the one in the clean, white singlet emblazoned with a golden ‘H’, is climbing up on the ropes. His opponent, the evil foreigner, lies prone in the centre of the ring. Lauching himself from the top rope, the man in white falls crushingly on the evildoer – the atomic drop! Arms raised, victorious, the genie flashes a Chesty-Bond smile at the camera. And winks.

Phyllis screams and the house collapses, leaving her amidst a pile of pasteboard and dust. Standing unsteadily she sees, in the distance, a purple-robed figure who waves. Yes, there is only one way now. Striding over houses, factories, onward to the precipice.

‘Welcome to the crossroads!’ calls Rudolph Iscariot Brightwater, ‘Glad you could make it!’

Phyllis waves back, but keeps on. The contained logic, the containing logic, offered only one choice – and that was freedom.

§§§

FREEDOM

Electroshock is used to bring unconsciousness. Then, with head tilted, the sharp, pointed leucotome is placed under the eyelid, on the occipital bone. WHACK! Splintered bone and into brain. Back and forth, the leucotome blindly severing. Ah sweet progress. Science at last grants Phyllis her freedom.

The genie, dressed now in a grey, three-piece suit, closes the file and replaces it in a pile on his desk. He turns slowly to the camera, smiles and says, ‘I am become death, shatterer of worlds’.

THE EXHIBITION IS OPEN DAILY