In the 1950s, CSIRO biochemist, Hedley Marston, became embroiled in what Roger Cross describes as ‘the single most important crisis’ of his professional life. Research into fallout from the British atomic tests in Australia brought Marston into bitter conflict with the government appointed Safety Committee. It was a dispute that involved many of the major players in the Australian scientific community, and one that culminated in ‘perhaps the most unseemly episode in twentieth-century Australian science’. This is a fascinating story of ‘jealousy, hate and power’ that takes us behind the facade of scientific detachment and adds to our knowledge of the politics and personalities involved in Australia’s atomic adventures.

Hedley Marston, Chief of CSIR/O’s Division of Biochemistry and General Nutrition, was approached by British authorities in 1955 to assist in studying the effects of radiation on animals. After initial firings in 1952-3, the British atomic testing program was about to recommence in the Monte Bello Islands, and at the newly-established mainland test site known as Maralinga. Marston decided to examine the take up of radioactive fallout in grazing animals by measuring the concentration of radioactive iodine in their thyroid glands. His research indicated that fallout was being deposited over a much wider area than the physicists on the Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee (AWTSC) had publicly admitted. Either they were fools or charlatans and Marston became increasingly determined to bring them down.

Roger Cross provides a detailed account of Marston’s anger and frustration as he tried to force the AWTSC, led by Leslie Martin and Ernest Titterton, to admit their errors. Attempts at mediation by Fred White, CSIRO’s Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Oliphant, Marston’s close friend, failed. Rancour and recrimination escalated as Marston strove to publish his findings, only to meet obstruction and delay. Even when his work was finally made public, the controversy continued, as the AWTSC sought to have a rebuttal accepted for publication. An unpleasant battle over who would have the last word was finally brought to a halt by Oliphant. In the end, Marston’s revelations seem to have had little immediate impact, but as Cross demonstrates, public opinion was already on the turn, as opposition to atmospheric nuclear testing, both in Australia and overseas, mounted.

Marston imagined himself a champion of science, a defender of truth, but Cross reveals a much more complex figure. Marston was egotistical and belligerent, ready to take the credit for his colleagues’ research into coast disease, and prepared to bully anyone who stood in the way of his ambitions. His high-standing within the agricultural community, and his carefully cultivated circle of influential friends, gave him a sense of power that he clearly relished. He was no anxious whistleblower. As Cross shows, most clearly in Marston’s correspondence with Oliphant, his attacks on the AWTSC were driven as much by anger and revenge, as by a desire to protect the public and defend the standards of science.

Roger Cross has given us a picture of a flawed man, a would-be hero barely able to rise above his own pettiness and insecurities. Our understanding of Marston and his bitter crusade is greatly enriched by Cross’s efforts to examine the personality of the man and not just the persona of the scientist. Unfortunately, we don’t gain as much insight into his opponents. Titterton clearly had an ego to match Marston’s, but Les Martin seems a much more enigmatic figure. From Cross’s account and other sources, it appears that Martin was uncomfortable with the public role assigned him as first chairman of the AWTSC. What doubts and torments might Marston’s provocations have engendered? Oliphant, as always, is difficult to pin down. At times he tries to soothe Marston, but on other occasions he carelessly fuels his friend’s burning rage. Might he have done more to help? It is a measure of the book’s success that such questions emerge. There can be no easy answers once we try to explore the human dimensions of scientific controversy.

The book provides a good read, even though the complex chronology of events makes it difficult to keep track of who said what to whom and when. It makes excellent use of oral and archival sources and is thoroughly documented. Of course, you end up wishing for a full biography of Marston, but that hardly detracts from the current volume. If only other attempts at scientific biography showed the same willingness to deal with their subject’s flaws and complexities.

Was this the most unseemly episode in twentieth century Australian science? Who knows? So little has been written about the feuds and conflicts. So much lies hidden behind euphemisms such as ‘a difficult man’, or ‘a controversial figure’. Roger Cross hopes that his story will aid our understanding of ‘the tensions that lurk behind the bland face of “science rhetoric” here in Australia’. Here’s hoping that others will follow his lead.

It’s rare for a book relating to the history of Australian science to draw the attention of the national media. But Australia’s Bid for the Atomic Bomb made the front page with its claims that the origins of major institutions such as the Snowy Scheme and the ANU could be found in the government’s frustrated longing for nuclear weaponry. Wayne Reynolds’ ‘controversial’ book, it was reported, made use of ‘recently declassified documents’ to ‘debunk’ conventional assessments of Australian government policy in areas such as defence, foreign policy, education and science. Exciting stuff… I just wish I liked the book more.

Reynolds weaves an intricate tale of a small nation with big ambitions. Imagining that the bomb would strengthen Australia both militarily and industrially, governments of both persuasions set out upon a doomed quest for atomic enlightenment. Hopes of a major role in an atomic-powered revival of the British empire were thwarted by Britain’s desire to renew its partnership with the United States. Disappointed, exploited and ultimately betrayed, Australian policymakers were nonetheless reluctant to give up on their dream. Reynolds tracks Australia’s hopes through a detailed web of negotiations, reports, and policy manoeuvres. The influence of the bomb, he argues, was felt across a wide range of government activities, from increased support for higher education to military involvement in Vietnam. Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb did much to shape its postwar priorities.

Detailed archival research in Australia, South Africa, Canada, the USA, and the UK, has armed Reynolds with an impressive array of sources, which he uses to demonstrate Australia’s active and continuing interest in joining the atomic club. The ultimate failure of this quest, he suggests, has encouraged historians to overlook its significance. By starting with the bomb, and looking again at many postwar initiatives, this book offers an interesting perspective on the motivations of successive Australian governments, and the machinations of super-power politics. Anyone interested in topics such as Australian defence and foreign policy, Cold War spy scares, and the organisation of science for defence, might profitably peruse its pages.

But Reynolds wants to do more than merely draw attention to a previously ignored strand of Australia’s postwar history. The bomb’s influence was decisive, he argues. ‘Behind the great reconstruction schemes of the Curtin-Chifley Labor government, and later the conservative Menzies government’, the book begins, ‘lay the nuclear deterrent weapons program’: ‘Many of the great national projects, such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the Woomera Rocket Range and the Australian National University, were in large measure based on the assumption that Australia would one day be a nuclear weapons state’ (p. 1). While book’s focus on the bomb provides most of its strength, originality and narrative drive, Reynold’s expansive claims demonstrate that there are dangers in relying on such a narrow framework.

The ‘origins’ of the Snowy Scheme, Reynolds argues, lay not in the desire for electricity or irrigation. Such features merely ‘describe what the scheme became’ (p. 54). Instead he stresses its role in defence planning, and as a possible location for nuclear power plants. No doubt such possibilities were canvassed, but how do you balance them against the range of alternative influences? Reynolds doesn’t try. His history apparently begins in 1945, and so the Snowy’s expression of long-standing nation building ideals is ignored, as is the growing desire to promote industrialisation, and the fondly-held dream of bringing life to Australia’s arid lands. All these are peripheral, the bomb is central.

Moreover, despite a brief nod towards ‘the problem of the states’, Reynolds ignores the constitutional hurdles that faced the Commonwealth in pushing ahead with the Snowy scheme. Water and power were under the control of the states, so emphasising the defence aspects of the project offered a means of bolstering Commonwealth authority. Reynolds does little to help us understand the balance between the rhetoric and the reality.

The ANU is similarly cast as a product of the government’s bomb-consciousness. Reynold’s highlights the involvement of Mark Oliphant and Ernest Titterton in the development of the bomb, and provides evidence of Oliphant’s continuing interest in the military significance of nuclear physics. But Oliphant was a complex and contradictory character, and missing from Reynold’s account are Oliphant’s moral anguish over the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his frequent statements in favour of nuclear disarmament, his involvement in the Pugwash Movement, and his decision to have nothing more to do with the development of the bomb. The influence of the bomb it seems, it to reduce everything to black and white.

Underlying such assessments, however, is a more fundamental problem. The book fails to address the relationship between the destructive power of the bomb and the promise of cheap and abundant energy, foreseen in the industrial application of atomic energy. Reynolds assumes that interest was primarily focused on the bomb, as ‘power reactors were seen to be a distant possibility at the end of the war’. It all rather depends on your definition of ‘distant’. Certainly there is much to indicate, in both published and unpublished sources, that Australian governments were excited by the prospects for industrial development offered by the atomic age. The payoffs might not have been immediate, but they were assumed to be inevitable. Australia’s desire for atomic information, and all the machinations that ensued, cannot simply be explained as a ‘bid for the bomb’.

Of course, government interest may have swayed between the peaceful and the military applications of the atom, and it would be interesting to chart such changes across the postwar period. But this book only gives us the bomb’s side of the story. Emphasis would also have differed across government agencies, and it seems significant that Reynold’s research has focused on defence and foreign policy records. Greater use of CSIRO and AAEC material might have balanced the picture.

Apparently, the original manuscript of the book ran to nearly a quarter of a million words, so perhaps much contextual material has been lost in the trimming. It’s also fair to recognise that works which dare to offer ‘new perspectives’ can often overstate their case in the struggle to be heard amidst the babble of academic orthodoxy. If Reynolds had simply moderated his claims, it would be a better, though less provocative, book. I must admit, too, that I would have found the book considerably less annoying if Reynolds wasn’t so keen to portray himself as the raider of the lost archives.

When I saw press reports describing the book’s use of ‘recently declassified’ files, I assumed the publisher’s publicity machine had been at work. But Reynolds apparent struggle to wrest the truth from secretive government bureaucracies provides a continuing theme throughout the book. Records are hardly worth a mention unless they are ‘declassified’. The procedures of access clearance and the thirty-year rule are made to seem mysterious and arbitrary, while missing files and supposed silences are merely grist to the mill of this determined secrets hunter. One bizarre example relates to David Rivett’s attempts to negotiate the placement of Australian scientists at the Chalk River nuclear facility in Canada. ‘Rivett’s biographer is silent about the attempts to send CSIR scientists to work at Chalk River’, Reynolds notes, ‘but Canadian records reveal that he entered into an involved correspondence with his counterparts in Ottawa at the beginning of 1946′. Are we meant to assume that there is something significant, sinister even, in this supposed ‘silence’. Rohan Rivett’s biography of his father is far from being a detailed account of his scientific career, why would we even expect this particular episode to be included? And why ‘Canadian records’? I’m pretty sure Reynolds could have saved himself an international airfare if he had looked in CSIRO archives.

Why does any of this matter? Maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps other readers will enjoy the added sense of drama. But it bothers me because much of the cultural power of the atomic bomb resides in this thing ‘the secret’. If we merely play to its mysterious allure, we risk reinforcing the barriers it has helped erect around knowledge and authority. The greatest failing of this book, I believe, is that instead of trying to unravel the power and fascination of the bomb, it has fallen victim to it. Just as Hiroshima brought fancies of a future dominated by the atom, so Reynolds finds the bomb behind every door, hiding at the back of every cupboard. Just as the atomic secret divided the postwar world, so Reynolds deploys his mastery of ‘secret’ files to carry his argument and deny alternatives.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE in Australia is a field intimidated by its subject. Historians have been too slow to examine the local context of knowledge production and use, deferring to scientists and their uncritical catalogues of the past. Historical analysis has given way, too often, to the antiquarian plod or the celebratory frolic.

In nineteenth century Australia, ‘progress’ was a popular theme whenever the scientifically-inclined paused to reflect on their discipline. By the latter half of the century, science was developing an institutional base with the establishment of universities, societies and government posts. History helped locate this fledgling enterprise within a grand progressive tradition. Catalogues of scientific achievement provided a preface to current endeavours. Obituaries of local workers portrayed them, stuffed and mounted, within a gallery of revered pioneers; there were no Darwins or Newtons amongst them, but their lives were still dedicated to the same glorious ideals. The collecting of history parallelled the collecting of specimens – the main scientific activity within the colonies. Science progressed by the steady accumulation of plants, platypi and people.

By the end of the century, science was changing. Experimental science was beginning to displace natural history; professional scientists were edging amateurs out of the vanguard of progress. With more scientists, more societies, more publications and a never-ending parade of anniversaries to be commemorated, disciplinary and institutional studies became commonplace in the twentieth century – predominantly in scientific journals. As science fractured into increasingly narrow specialisations, history seeped in to fill the cracks, smoothing the narrative flow of scientific progress. Many of these historical efforts were of the ‘amateur-antiquarian’ variety identified by Michael Hoare (‘The History of Australian Science: Prospect and Retrospect’, Newsletter of the Australasian Association for the History and Philosophy of Science, no. 5, 1974), but some disciplines have been better-served. T.G. Vallance and David Branagan in geology, and R.W.Home in physics, have helped us to understand how disciplinary communities coalesced and changed (e.g. Vallance and Branagan, ‘The Earth Sciences: Searching for Geological Order’, The Commonwealth of Science: ANZAAS and the Scientific Enterprise in Australia 1888-1988, ed. Roy MacLeod, 1988; Home, ‘The Beginnings of an Australian Physics Community’, Scientific Colonialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, eds Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg, 1987). Astronomy has been remarkably well-endowed, with detailed institutional histories, Beyond Southern Skies: Radio Astronomy and the Parkes Telescope (1992) and The Creation of the Anglo-Australian Observatory (1990), as well as a recent general work, Explorers of the Southern Sky: A History of Australian Astronomy (1996).

Significantly, much of this work has been undertaken by scientists. Despite the oft-heard protest that scientists look forward, not backward, scientific institutions have been major supporters of historical research in Australia. In 1962, the Australian Academy of Science established the Basser Library as a ‘centre for the study of the history of Australian science’. Ann Moyal and Michael Hoare used research positions within the Library to effectively pioneer the field, creating bibliographical resources and outlining many of the broad historiographical questions. The Academy continues to publish the only specialist journal in the field, Historical Records of Australian Science. Within this journal, however, scholarly historical articles are juxtaposed with biographical memoirs of deceased Academicians, written almost exclusively by Fellows. The memoirs are far-advanced beyond the taxidermic tributes of the nineteenth century, but the relationship between the articles and the memoirs is uneasy. Such biographies, as with many disciplinary histories, do not just comment on science past, they help to define science present. Scientists writing history are helping to establish, both within the scientific and broader communities, what makes a scientist and what counts as knowledge. In a powerful sense, the history of science is science. This nexus has been largely ignored, robbing the field of much analytical insight.

A lack of access to sources has sometimes been blamed for this historical inertia. But no more. The Australian Science Archives Project (ASAP) provides details of archival and published sources through its online database, Bright Sparcs (http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/). Few other fields of Australian history are so well served. In addition, some naturalists’ journals have been published, and collections of correspondence are appearing. A major project is under way to collect and publish the voluminous correspondence of eminent nineteenth century botanist, Ferdinand Von Mueller. Over the past few decades, tools such as these have been put in place to support an active research community, but where is the activity?

Biographies have appeared for major scientific figures, though there are notable omissions and inadequacies. The ADB has paid increasing attention to scientists over the years, and its articles remain the authoritative sources for many significant workers. Scientist-cum-explorers have fared rather better, as in E.M. Webster’s biography of Leichardt, Whirlwinds in the Plain (1980). The belated impact of women’s history has encouraged efforts to recover the names and deeds of women whose contributions to Australian science has been heretofore overlooked. However, there have been few attempts to move beyond this cataloguing process, to analyse the structures and assumptions that circumscribe participation in the scientific community, though some of the contributors to On the Edge of Discovery (1993) do raise such issues. Recent years have brought a mixed bag of scientific biographies with subjects including Macfarlane Burnet, Crosbie Morrison and Ian Clunies Ross, but none really manage to blend the scientist with the person. The dilemma is revealed most clearly in Lyndsay Gardiner’s biography, E.V. Keogh: Soldier, Scientist and Administrator (1990) – Keogh’s scientific work is dealt with separately in an appendix by a scientist. Scientists will remain divided figures as long as biographers are intimidated by science.

Science has been quarantined within Australian history – unfamiliar and forbidding territory for historians – best avoided. W.K. Hancock, however, thought differently when he emphasised the economic significance of William Farrer’s wheat breeding heroics (Australia, 1930). Ernest Scott likewise showed no qualms when he took it upon himself to lecture the Australian scientific community on their own history (‘The History of Australian Science’, Report of ANZAAS, 1939). In the 1950s and 1960s science seemed to provide healthy fodder for historians exploring the boundaries of their discipline. Geoffrey Blainey recognised its importance within economic history, Geoffrey Serle mapped its development alongside other cultural markers, while George Nadel and Michael Roe began to explore the meanings and uses of science within Australian cultural history. An exciting program of research was unfolding, and yet faltered. Why?

The 1960s and ’70s brought a loss of faith in the benevolent bounty of science. Perhaps a growing sense of suspicion served to alienate rather than inspire historians, reinforcing not revealing the mythical ‘two cultures’ divide. Significantly too, the same period saw the rapid growth of the history of science as a separate discipline. The interests of such historians generally lay in the grand themes of science, such as the Scientific Revolution. Their models and mentors were international, not local. When attention was finally turned towards the history of Australian science, it was within such an international framework; Australia became a case-study in the diffusion of scientific knowledge. International conferences in 1981 (Scientific Colonialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, 1987) and 1988 (International Science and National Scientific Identity, 1991) explored, in a cross-cultural context, the development of the colonial scientific community and its interaction with Europe. Analyses of ‘colonial science’ extensively modified the crude diffusionist models. Roy MacLeod, for example, in his ‘Visiting the Moving Metropolis’ (Historical Records of Australian Science, 5:3, 1982), offered an alternate taxonomy, that recognised the complex trajectories of science and imperialism. Nonetheless, conceptions of Australian science have largely remained bound by the ‘top-down’ perspective assumed by the diffusionist program. Australia was a receiver of knowledge, not a creator of culture. As a consequence too much has been assumed and too little explained. The impact of isolation on the Australian scientific community, for example, has been much commented upon. Blainey’s clichéd ‘tyranny of distance’ is wielded as a causal mechanism without reflection upon the actual meaning of isolation within an Australian setting. Wade Chambers provides some antidote in ‘Does Distance Tyrannize Science?’ (International Science and National Scientific Identity, 1991), exhorting historians to challenge the ‘metaphorical power’ of ‘the myth of “tyrannical distance”‘. But his call-to-arms has brought forth few eager combatants.

Important contributions to our understanding of science in Australia have come from outside the mainstream discipline. Bernard Smith’s European Vision and the South Pacific: 1768-1850 (1960) drew attention to the way the land and its inhabitants were perceived by European scientists. Tom Griffiths’ Hunters and Collectors (1996) revealed how amateur scientists and collectors were involved in the construction of Australia’s past. Environmental history has similarly explored how science is involved in the complex relationship between people and environment. ‘Australia’ is revealed as a participant in this process, not merely a receptacle for transplanted institutions. Greater awareness of indigenous knowledge systems has also highlighted the limitations of diffusionist models. Aboriginal knowledge systems, where they have been examined at all, have tended to suffer from ‘first chapter syndrome’. Used as an introduction to the history of Australian science, Aboriginal knowledge is paternalistically portrayed as containing the seeds of our ‘modern’ understanding. By implication or design, Aboriginal knowledge is embraced as familiar and then discarded as incomplete – as proto-science. Non-indigenous scholars now recognise the power and sophistication of such knowledge systems. Works such as Singing the Land, Signing the Land (1989), are beginning to demonstrate how indigenous knowledge stands alongside, not prior to, the western mode of science.

In 1988, Roy MacLeod noted that ‘we await works of synthesis… a new Hancock, who will convey and interpret for us the scientific enterprise, from colony to Commonwealth in the making’ (‘Introduction’, The Commonwealth of Science, 1988). And beyond. Only Ann Moyal, in a Bright and Savage Land (1986), has dared to move towards such a broadly integrative project. But hers is the work of a pioneer – a sketch rather than a detailed analysis. The 1988 Bicentennial prompted a surge in history of science publications. However, the main works, The Commonwealth of Science (1988) and Australian Science in the Making (ed. R.W. Home, 1988), were collections of articles – hors d’oeuvres only at the history of science banquet. The pickings are sparser still in relation to twentieth century science. R.W. Home has rightly directed attention towards the impact of World War II on the scientific community (‘Science on Service’, Australian Science in the Making, 1988), but D.P. Mellor’s volume of the Official History, The Role of Science and Industry (1958), remains the most comprehensive account. Boris Schedvin’s history of the CSIR, Shaping Science and Industry (1987), stands out as a the story of a scientific institution within its political and economic context, and also as a history of Australian science in the early twentieth century. However, the companion volume on the CSIRO has never eventuated.

While historians may have successfully occupied territory on the other side of World War II, scientists largely remain in control of the recent past. Academic interest in modern Australian science has more typically been within the realm of science policy or sociology of science, although with some interesting results. Life among the scientists (1989), for example, describes a quasi-anthropological study of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research. Such studies should give historians cause for reflection. Methodologies and insights drawn from the social studies of science can, and should, inform the practice of historians. In the same way, historians of Australian science need to explore the cultural context of their studies, moving beyond an examination of the culture of science, towards an understanding of science as culture. Our knowledge of science, as well as of Australian history, will greatly benefit.

CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) and its forbears have undergone many transformations, reflecting twentieth century shifts in the relationship between science and government.

In the midst of World War One, impressed by Germany’s technological might, Prime Minister W.M. Hughes enthusiastically declared his support for the creation of a ‘national laboratory’. An Advisory Committee representing science, government and business was set the difficult task of reconciling this vision with the realities of federalism. After softening the proposal’s supposed centralist overtones, legislation was finally passed in 1920. The Institute of Science and Industry was established.

Unfortunately the Institute, led by G.H. Knibbs, was burdened with both an ambitious research program and a severely-limited budget. While some important programs were initiated, Australia’s national research effort seemed destined to fail until Prime Minister S.M. Bruce intervened. In 1926 he introduced legislation for a new organisation, stressing its role as a coordinator of scientific research across the states. The organisation would be guided by state-based committees, and governed by a council of scientists and industrialists. The crippled Institute was replaced by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). This pre-history is chronicled by George Currie and John Graham in The Origins of CSIRO (1966).

The management of this new organisation fell to a three-man executive. Although ultimate power was invested in the council, it was the executive that shaped the programs, the structure and the spirit of CSIR. For almost twenty years this comprised just three men – G.A. Julius, a respected businessman and engineer; A.C.D. Rivett, formerly Professor of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne; and A.E.V. Richardson, an agricultural scientist.

CSIR needed to provide evidence of science’s benefit to the nation if its future was to be secured. Consequently, it was decided to focus on the problems of the primary industries, still the country’s main source of wealth. Divisions of Animal Health, Animal Nutrition, Economic Entomology, and Economic Botany, were amongst the first established. However, it was a research program initiated under the Institute that gave CSIR its first public victory – a South American caterpillar was found to control the rapidly-spreading prickly pear.

But CSIR’s ambitions lay beyond problem-solving for industry. Rivett, in particular, was frustrated by the reactive, short-term nature of much of the work that CSIR was forced to undertake. Committed to the freedom of scientific inquiry, and certain of the benefits that long-term, fundamental research would bring, Rivett continually sought ways of encouraging such research within CSIR. The diversity spawned by this balancing act helped give CSIR/O its strength.

The Depression and the demands of defence self-reliance focused attention on secondary industry. In 1936, Julius led a government committee that recommended CSIR take on a number of new responsibilities associated with manufacturing. These included research in aeronautics, maintenance of basic standards of measurement, and the provision of an industrial research service.

CSIR’s move into the physical sciences was accelerated by World War Two. The Division of Industrial Chemistry, established to provide the desired research service, was joined by the Lubricants and Bearings Section. A Radiophysics Laboratory was created in secrecy to undertake the development of radar for local use. Staff numbers quadrupled from 1939 to 1945, and by 1949 CSIR was one of the largest scientific research organisations in the world. Boris Schedvin traces the organisation’s development up to 1949 in Shaping Science and Industry (1987).

The war not only changed CSIR, it changed attitudes to science. There could now be no doubt that scientific research was valuable – indeed, perhaps it was too valuable to be left in the control of scientists! Cold War hysteria and political opportunism merged in the late 1940s as the opposition parties attacked the CSIR for its handling of secret information. Rivett, the unabashed advocate for the freedom of science, was an easy target.

Under pressure, the government excised aeronautics research, and initiated an inquiry into CSIR. In 1949 the organisation was reconstituted, its administrative structure was overhauled, and its staffing decisions brought under the purview of the Public Service Board. CSIR became the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Close to retirement, Rivett could not reconcile himself to the new order, and so resigned.

Rivett’s martyrdom was made more poignant by the fact that under a new chairman, Ian Clunies Ross, CSIRO was about to enter its golden age. With strong support from the responsible minister, R.G. Casey, the organisation was at last able to undertake a substantial program of fundamental research. The radiophysicists turned their aerials towards the sun, becoming world leaders in the new field of radioastronomy. Industrial Chemistry gained international recognition in many fields of research. The success of myxomatosis in controlling rabbit numbers brought new public prestige, and a detailed program of wool research was undertaken.

By the late 1960s, public enthusiasm for science had begun to cool. In government circles there was a demand for increased planning and accountability. Reviews and inquiries proliferated throughout the 1970s culminating in the 1977 report of the Birch Committee, which, while it recommended some structural changes, was basically content with CSIRO’s mix of pure and applied research.

Within ten years the rise of economic rationalism had changed the climate once more. A report by ASTEC, adopted by government, argued that CSIRO should concentrate on application-based research, closely linked to the needs of industry. After so long, perhaps, Rivett’s fears were finally realised.

The Cabinet of Curiosities

Learned friends, a little over twelve months ago, I had the honour of addressing another distinguished gathering. My subject on that occasion was a rather unusual artefact that my colleagues and I had discovered – an item we came to call ‘The Cabinet of Curiosities‘. In the intervening months we have continued our researches into this object and have uncovered some disturbing facts. To be blunt, I believe that we have unearthed evidence of a widespread and long-standing conspiracy.

I warn you now that being made privy to our researches may expose you to intimidation and scorn, perhaps even derision. You may be forced to confront evil forces beyond your imaginings – forces that seek to compress our understanding, to contain our creativity, to maintain our silence. Yes you may be called into battle against those evil powers encircling and ensnaring us – politicians, accountants, managers, and science communicators…

I warn you now so that you have the opportunity to leave, to block your ears, or hide beneath your tables…

Thank you, you are a brave and sturdy lot indeed.

Let us first go back to the beginning – to the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities‘ itself. For those of you who were not present at the Cabinet’s unveiling last year, let me recapitulate our initial findings.

The Cabinet’s origins were obscure. It is known that some two hundred years ago a young botanist by the name of Joseph Banks visited these shores and collected a great number of plant and animal specimens. These were transported to Britain aboard the Endeavour, contained within an assortment of wooden chests. While it appeared there may be some connection with these, this Cabinet was clearly a much more complex item.

Indeed, it was reminiscent of the collector’s chests assembled by gentlefolk in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Such chests often displayed natural history specimens along with human artefacts. The memento hominem, on the other hand, was biographical in intent. Presenting items that together told the story of a life. What could not be doubted was that this Cabinet also told a story. It is in seeking to unravel this story that we began to discover the Cabinet’s meaning – and, might I add its warning.

A clue to the purpose of the Cabinet was contained within an inscription found on the top panel. If I might read it:

This Cabinet holds many treasures. Two hundred years of Australian science are arrayed for exploration and reflection. The curiosities contained are those of Australia’s men and women of science, and your own. Open, examine and understand.

There follows a quotation, dated 1939, from Sir William Bragg:

‘The spirit in which knowledge is sought, and the manner in which it is used, are more important, more real, than knowledge itself’ – Sir William Bragg, 1939.

Two hundred years of Australian science… in a box. It seems preposterous, a mere folly. But as we shall see, its intent is far from frivolous.

And so to the unravelling… If we are to explore ‘Australian science’ as the inscription on this Cabinet suggests, we might perhaps examine what we see… or see what we examine… Australia offered new horizons for scientific discovery and yet these were largely perceived through old eyes – European eyes. This changed of course, but how and when?

Then, of course, there is the matter of communication. Science cannot function without it, and yet Australian scientists were isolated – victims we presume, perhaps too hastily, of the ‘tyranny of distance’. But what did isolation mean, and how was it overcome?

One might also examine the role of empire – those political and economic forces that create the space within which science is able to flourish. Or is science more of a participant in this process than a product?

In our initial study of the Cabinet we therefore identified three themes:

• The way in which the Australian environment was perceived… ‘all things queer and opposite’, as was inscribed on the minute book of a scientific society in Tasmania;
• The counterposed forces of isolation and independence;
• And the role of science, as some commentators have described it, as the ‘handmaiden of empire’.

My colleagues and I believe that these themes correspond to the three sections of this Cabinet of Curiosities… Did I mention there were three sections, divided thus, and held together by this arrangement of iron bars and locks.

In this first section, corresponding we suppose to the first theme, there are four trays. The first contains a series of paintings which, to my eye, represent a verdant land despoiled, then restored. Remaking upon remaking. Re-vision upon revision. It is difficult to imagine that our colleagues of some 130 years prior regarded the bush as silent, and sought to introduce British songbirds to alleviate this auditory oppression. But they did. However, amongst these same scientists were the first to argue for protected areas to preserve the Australian environment. This Cabinet offers no glib slogans, no easy answers, suggesting, nonetheless, that in remaking we are…remade.

The second tray, appears to be a map. This land, of course, became known to science through exploration, through mapping – the creation of legends, both cartographic and otherwise. Many of our famous explorers were scientists – Leichardt, a naturalist; Wills (of Bourke and…) was lured away from the Magnetic Observatory on Flagstaff Hill in Melbourne. But what conventions were used in such mapping? What was sought, and what was found?

The next tray offers a rather different perspective – it looks up, to the heavens. As well as a new land, Australia offered a new sky for exploration. On being appointed Governor, amateur astronomer, Sir Thomas Brisbane, exclaimed ‘With a virgin sky, what might not be achieved?’ Indeed, astronomers like John Tebbutt followed in Brisbane’s wake, carving out an international reputation. But astronomical achievement is surely more than just a matter of geographic positioning. The means and the will are also required – there are many views to be figured.

The last tray in this section is, curiously, empty. Have its contents been lost, or was it left deliberately blank. It may be that its silence speaks more eloquently than any installation. Asking us whose voices are heard and whose are not. Even as we begin to perceive the contours of western science in Australia, we become aware of its meeting with alternative ways of knowing – those of the country’s original inhabitants. This emptiness perhaps represents opportunities missed, paths not taken, messages not heard – or… yet to be heard? It may lay empty… waiting.

Now let us direct our attention to the second section – this bank of six drawers. As I have mentioned, our hypothesis is that this section relates to issues of isolation and independence, and indeed the complex interrelationship of the two. Interestingly, the drawers seem to be grouped in pairs.

From the first pair peers the puzzling platypus, a reference perhaps to the perceived oddness of the land examined in the first section, but a symbol, too, of new knowledge. How is knowledge created? Its claims authenticated? The naturalist George Bennett laboured over many years to unravel the mysteries of the platypus’s reproductive system. Bennett procured and pickled a plenitude of platypi. He observed them in the field, and gathered many reports, nonetheless, it was his correspondent in Britain, Sir Richard Owen, who drew the conclusions. Owen firmly believed that the platypus gave birth to live young, and Bennett deferred to his well-positioned colleague, despite evidence he had collected that suggested they lay eggs. But was this the only option for colonial scientists? Were they of necessity confined to roles as mere collectors servicing the British men of science?

The second pair of drawers appears to elaborate upon this theme, moving the focus to botany and taxonomic determinations. The main reference would appear to be to Australia’s premier nineteenth century botanist, Ferdinand von Mueller. Mueller travelled widely throughout the country, collected and described thousands of specimens and yet was allocated a subsidiary role in the production of the Flora Australensis. Authority was reserved to a British expert with ready access to the botanical type-specimens stored at Kew Gardens. Sensible enough. Like Bennett, the Baron found himself on the outskirts of a scientific network centred on Europe. But wait… the picture is more complex, for Mueller himself was the centre of a network of collectors throughout Australia – people of varying background and experience, whose loyalty and diligence Mueller deliberately cultivated. There are networks within networks, worlds within worlds. Each drawer we unlock opens more paths for exploration.

It is communication that knits together these networks and sustains these relationships. In the third pair of drawers we find hints of correspondence, the remnants of a science practised over time and distance. By careful analysis, we have identified William Henry Bragg as the author of a number of these fragments. Other images seem to refer to Frank Macfarlane Burnet. Significantly, both were Nobel prize-winners, Bragg for physics and Burnet for medicine, though almost half a century separated their awards. Perhaps more important, however, is the contrast in their career paths. Although Bragg began his research in Australia, isolation from the leading practitioners forced him to move to Britain. Burnet, on the other hand, rebuilt the field of immunology from within Australia. Apparently he felt no such isolation. Why this difference? The Cabinet asks us.

From the personal to the political – the final section encourages us to investigate the political and economic context of science in Australia. Curiosity is not the only factor that shapes research. Indeed, the first drawer reminds us of the many, potentially devastating problems that faced the agricultural industries in the early decades of this century. Introduced pests and weeds, animal diseases and soil quality were included in the challenging check-list presented to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research when it was established in 1926. Australia’s research agenda thus reflected its economic position – though this arrangement was not without its tensions.

Fragments of scientific formulae discovered within the final drawer have been found to relate to radio astronomy. You will recall that this exciting field of endeavour arose out of radar research during the Second World War. Australian scientists led the way. Indeed, the war reshaped Australia’s scientific community, and science itself emerged from the war with a new, should I say awesome, reputation. The consequences of this are only hinted at. There is so much to consider. Layer and layers of meaning. Questions… many questions…

These were the limits of our original hypotheses, and I would like to express once more gratitude to my esteemed colleagues in this endeavour – Greg St John, David Watt, Lisa Cianci, Nola Farman, David Nugent, Kate Murphy, Neil Roberts, Antoinette De Morton, Peta Cross, and Adrian Jones. Since then we have continued our studies both here and abroad, travelling with the Cabinet by ship to London for further research. We have been most fortunate in discovering a set of papers (you might call them records) relating to the Cabinet and its creators, in particular to the activities of an individual whom we know only by the pseudonym Professor Duckbill.

It would appear that most of our original hypotheses were correct, some of Duckbill’s notes elaborate on the basic themes of the Cabinet, and I quote:

The Cabinet of Curiosities is intended to provide a representation of the development of science in Australia. Or is that the development of Australian science? Is there a difference? What does it mean to say that Australia has developed its own scientific culture?… Questions about the development of science in Australia cannot be easily divorced from questions about science itself. Science is international, but it is also local, it permeates our lives and our histories. By exploring the experience of Australian scientists we learn more about the way science is disseminated, encouraged and, indeed, retarded. But by reflecting on the processes and structures of science we gain new perspectives on the Australian experience.

Duckbill concludes:

The Cabinet of Curiosities is neither about science, nor Australia, but about the sites at which these two meet – within the experience, achievements, hardships and glories of Australia’s men and women of science.

But for us the question that remains is – ‘WHY?’ Why did Duckbill go to all this trouble? Why embed a dissertation on Australia’s scientific past within such a odd structure? Why did he choose to communicate through these mysterious signs and symbols, through hints and insinuations rather than a more conventional means of discourse. The answer is – conspiracy. A conspiracy to suppress all attempts to explore the history of Australian science. Duckbill’s papers reveal that he spent many years seeking to raise awareness and understanding of Australia’s scientific past, until he was eventually overtaken by the forces of ignorance and banal utility.

The Cabinet was the only means of communication that remained, its messages were buried deeply enough to escape the notice of those conspiring against such narratives. Its very complexity and richness of meaning allowed it to pass into posterity where someone might discover it and begin to unravel its stories. It is an encoded message that has slipped past the censors of memory, the dictators of our past, the manufacturers of our …’heritage’.

But where is the evidence of this conspiracy? I tender first a publication which may be familiar to you – A History of Australia, by Manning Clark. Volumes 5 and 6 of this mammoth work encompass the period 1888-1935, but a perusal of their indices is revealing – there are no entries for science… nothing. But surely more recent works have redressed this imbalance? I further tender Volume 4 of the Oxford History of Australia. This volume covers the period 1901-1942, a time of great change in Australian science, which included the establishment of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Let us look under ‘science’… nothing. Hmmm, perhaps under Council for Scientific and Industrial Research? Ah yes, page 226:

The National-Country Party administration… made a major initiative of the Commonwealth Institute of Science and Industry, recognised and greatly expanded in 1926 as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

That appears to be all…

Where is science in Australian history? To quote from some of Duckbill’s early writings:

What sorts of images are conjured up when we think about Australia’s history? Intrepid explorers perhaps? Brave Anzacs on the shores of Gallipoli? Or maybe gold rushes, and the development of the wool and wheat industries. But science and scientists? How many Australian scientists can you name? Can we really say Australia has a scientific heritage?

“Can we really say…”, is this an indication that Duckbill was already aware of the ways in which Australia’s scientific heritage was being marginalised, if not actively suppressed? His next passage provides us with some compelling evidence:

Have you ever looked closely at the faces on the $100 note? On one side is Douglas Mawson, antarctic explorer and geologist. On the other side is the astronomer John Tebbutt. That’s right, they’re both scientists. What about the $50 note? There you will find Ian Clunies-Ross, chairman of the CSIRO from 1949-1959, and Howard Florey, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on penicillin. Yes, another two scientists. On the $20 note? Laurence Hargreaves, aeronautical engineer…

So, by special arrangement with my bankers, I have a $100 note with me tonight. If you inspect it as Duckbill suggests, you will find no scientists. Nor on any of the other notes. Scientists have been erased from our currency! I ask, who is responsible for this? Surely some evil conspiracy to obliterate all evidence of Australia’s scientific achievements is afoot?

Ahhh, you say, there is no conspiracy, after all are we not in the midst of ‘Science Week’, a period specifically set aside to celebrate Australian science? Am I alone in finding something disturbing, nay insidious, in this event – in this science week. Is this just another way of partitioning science off from the rest of our culture, of maintaining the separation so obvious in our history books. We dedicate a week to science, so we can ignore it the rest of the year. And instead of promoting inquiry into the way science is tightly bound to the whorls of our history, our society, our very being, we are treated to a cavalcade of the queer and the quizzical – a celebration of trivia.

The time is past for putting eggs in milk bottles!

The time is past for gooey green slime!

It is time to know who we are!

Duckbill did, at one point, begin to investigate the role of science in our understanding of what it is to be Australian. To quote him:

The stump-jump plough, the Coolgardie safe – there are examples of technological innovation wedded to versions of our national identity. The idealised bushman had an ingenious streak that always enabled him to ‘make-do’, no matter what the circumstances. But such innovation was constrained by a narrow, conservative pragmatism, that dared not think beyond immediate needs. For every Victa mower or Hills hoist, there are many other inventions or ideas that were ignored, rejected or ridiculed. Lawrence Hargrave, a brilliant inventor whose work did much to hasten the development of powered flight, commented in 1892: ‘The people of Sydney who can speak of my work without a smile are very scarce’.

How is this to be overcome, Duckbill argues:

An understanding of Australia’s scientific heritage might help prise open the grimly locked jaws of narrow-minded pragmatism. The portrait of the Australian who merely responds to circumstances could be replaced by one of the imaginative thinker, the long-term strategist, the creative spirit, the visionary. The history of Australian science can provide a reservoir of images and examples to build this new identity, and establish a creative environment for future growth and prosperity.

But we should recognise there is a danger here as well – a danger that in seeking to gain popular attention we may ourselves trivialise Australia’s scientific past, reducing it to a parade of the ‘great men of science’. It is all to easy to lapse into the cult of hero worship, to reduce people to icons. As a culture we are scared of complexity. It is simplest and safest to put scientists in boxes – whether they be marked, hero, villain or nerd – the result is the same, they are not us. They are something other to our experience, to our lives.

I myself have been inclined to fall into this trap. I remember indeed, that at the time of my first Cabinet presentation, I was interviewed on a wireless program. ‘Who do you think was Australia’s greatest scientist?’ the presenter asked me. I answered not with one of our Nobel prizewinners, like Howard Florey or Macfarlane Burnet, but with David Rivett. ‘What did he discover?’ came the question in response, leaving me momentarily at a loss. I babbled something about his significance not relating to any particular discovery, but to his work in establishing CSIR as a world-class scientific organisation, to his great idealism and passion for science which he would not resign even in the face of brutal political attacks. But my answer was clearly unsatisfactory, the presenter wanted labels not issues, trophies, not people.

More recently I heard a discussion on the wireless relating to ‘unsung heroes’ of Australian history. Apparently it is a regular item, and it just so happened that the two heroes being sung on this occassion were scientists – Ferdinand von Mueller, and John Tebbutt. However, my initial pleasure at having scientists included in such a forum, quickly turned to frustration.

I have already spoken of Mueller’s significance, but what were the two key achievements proclaimed by this commentator to justify Mueller’s inclusion in the pantheon of “unsung heroes”. First, that he sent eucalyptus seeds around the world, so that we can now see gum trees in California; and second, that he planted marrum grass on Australian beaches to prevent erosion. That was it. There was no indication of Mueller’s broader scientific achievements, no understanding of the development of science in Australia – indeed, I doubt whether the words science or scientist were used at all. It seemed rather that Mueller and Tebbutt were being included almost apologetically – ‘well, you know they were scientists, but they did some interesting things as well’. Instead of being introduced as active contributors to our knowledge of the natural world and to Australian culture, they were presented as oddities – mere trinkets on the sideboard of Australian history.

It is not merely the people, but the processes of science that have to be revealed. Naming names, recalling feats, is only a beginning, a chink of light appearing around the corner of a door, slightly ajar. We must throw open this door. We must find the science that is in the fabric of who we are and what we do. As Duckbill says:

Just as Australia has looked overseas for advice and expertise, so ordinary Australians have tended to see science as an external source of authority rather than as a constituent part of their own culture. They are expected to adapt to technological change, but are given little encouragement to participate in the processes by which such change is implemented. But Australia’s scientific heritage provides a ready antidote to the mystification of science and technology. Scientists become people with the same sorts of ambitions, loves, hopes and fears that we all harbour. Technology is robbed of its omnipotence, and is recast as the fruit of human ingenuity and endeavour.

Dangerous words indeed. It is little wonder then that Duckbill was silenced, reduced to speaking through a mysterious wooden box.

Of Duckbill’s fate we are uncertain, the organisation he established here in Canberra was disbanded in unusual circumstances, and he disappeared from view. There are some who believe he is still alive, working underground, taking advantage of new technology to disseminate his ‘heresies’.

For the moment though we are left with this – the Cabinet of Curiosities. It stands before us as a starting point, a rallying cry, a call to arms – are we brave enough to meet its challenges?

On Sunday I was listening to the local ABC station, 2CN, when a bloke came on talking about “unsung heroes” of Australian history. Apparently it’s a regular spot, and it so happened that the two heroes being sung on Sunday were scientists – Ferdinand von Mueller the botanist, and John Tebbutt, the astronomer. However, my initial pleasure at having scientists included in such a forum, quickly turned to frustration.

Many, perhaps most, of you would have heard of Mueller. He was probably Australia’s greatest nineteenth century scientist: Victorian Government botanist for 40 years, an explorer who collected and classified thousands of specimens, a prolific correspondent who maintained a vast network of collectors throughout Australia, an international figure whose unequalled knowledge of Australian flora was widely recognised in the scientific centres of Europe.

But what were the two key achievements proclaimed by this radio commentator to justify Mueller’s inclusion in the pantheon of “unsung heroes”. First, that he sent eucalyptus seeds around the world, so that we can now see gum trees in California; and second, that he planted marrum grass on Australian beaches to prevent erosion. That was it. There was no indication of Mueller’s broader scientific achievements, no understanding of the development of science in Australia – indeed, I doubt whether the words science or scientist were used at all. It seemed rather that Mueller and Tebbutt were being included almost apologetically – ‘well, you know they were scientists, but they did some interesting stuff as well’. Instead of being introduced as active contributors to our knowledge of the natural world and to Australian culture, they were presented as oddities – mere trinkets on the sideboard of Australian history.

Perhaps this is not surprising, despite Australia’s strong record of scientific achievement, the scientist does not really fit our myths of national identity. The closest we come is probably the ingenious ‘make-do’ bushman, able to cobble together all manner of useful gadgets from a roll of barbed wire and a jam tin. But this is ultimately a conservative image, it is simply pragmatism, not a passion for knowledge, that is assumed to be the driving force. What is celebrated by such myths is not creativity, inspiration or genius, but simply a capacity to respond to circumstances. Consequently, we have had several generations of schoolkids believing that the heights of Australian scientific and technological achievement can be summed up in three words – STUMP JUMP PLOUGH.

At this point I must make a confession. I recently prepared an article for the Oxford Companion to Australian History on the history of Australian science, or rather the historiography of Australian science. In it, I argued that one of the problems with the field is that too much of the history of Australian science has been written by scientists. This seems a rather unfriendly thing to say on an occasion such as this, but let me explain. The point of my argument was not to denigrate the many thorough and detailed historical studies of scientific institutions, personalities and disciplines conducted by scientists, but rather to highlight the failure of the broader historical community to incorporate science into their studies of Australian life and culture. The historians aren’t pulling their weight. Where is science in the various survey histories of Australia? – if you’re lucky you may find a reference to William Farrer, or perhaps myxomatosis, but not much else. This separation between Australian history and Australian science continues, I believe, to the detriment of both.

But instead of just complaining, as I seem to do quite often, let’s chart a plan of action, inspired by Murray Upton’s fine example. After all, if the historians aren’t yet ready to take up the challenge, then the burden lies even more heavily with you – it is up to the scientific community to ensure that its own achievements, activities, culture and development are adequately documented, that its stories are told. But where to start? I foresee a battle waged on three fronts:

1. the records
2. the people
3. the history

the records

In the preface to his book, Murray makes some insightful comments about changing recordkeeping practices in science, and the likely impact of this on the work of future historians. As Murray mentions, perhaps the most frightening prospect is that presented by electronic documents – email, databases, notes – all those things you create on your computer on a day to day basis. We can still read Joseph Banks’s journal of the Endeavour voyage more than 200 years after it was written. In 200 years time will it be possible for a historian to read your records? This is not simply a job for archivists. The way such records are created and disposed of means that archivists and scientists need to be working together to develop strategies and procedures. In the past, institutions could put off any action on archives until the retirement of a long-serving staff member. But scientists now are often on short-term contracts, each time they move, change jobs, change institutions, records are lost. Institutions can no longer rely on archivists being able to come in and clean-up after the science has been done, if they do so, they risk losing a substantial chunk of their corporate memory – our scientific memory.

Why does this matter? Well, I’ve already gestured towards the cultural and historical arguments for preserving our scientific heritage, but there are also some important practical considerations. As you all know science is practised within an ever-growing regulatory framework. There are a raft of legal obligations, issues of intellectual property, patent rights, concerns about scientific fraud, all of which can only be dealt with by instituting adequate recordkeeping processes.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, as organisations such as Australian Archives (now National Archives) are beginning to recognise the special requirements of scientific recordkeeping, and of course the Australian Science Archives Project, is always willing to provide advice and assistance.

the people

I’ve always believed that one of the most important ways of getting the general public interested in the history of Australian science is through stories about scientists themselves. By exploring their achievements, their hopes, their failures, their passions, you break down the barriers of fear and intimidation that tend to alienate the public from science, encouraging instead the realisation that scientists are people too. Having met on the common ground of our own humanity, it is then possible to carry the audience beyond, to open up areas of science that had previously seemed remote and forbidding.

And so with a work like Murray’s we find that it is the characters that emerge most clearly – the tragic, the foolish, the heroic and the inspired. We recognise in these figures elements of ourselves, our friends, our colleagues and we make a connection. From there we begin to perceive the context, to assemble the pieces in our own minds and grasp the broader significance – entomology, CSIRO, Australian science, Australian culture. Murray comments that he found few documents recording ‘social history’ and yet within the lives of his characters we find many clues to the changing nature of Australian society: restrictions on the employment of women, for example, highlighted by the tragic suicide of Mary Fuller; or the Cold War hysteria surrounding the employment of Sergei Paramonov.

I’m not advocating wholesale hagiography. The establishment of a gallery of scientific heroes doesn’t really interest me as either a consumer or creator of history. I’m talking about revealing scientists as people, not about turning them into icons. In pursuing this task there are many lives left to be documented, many stories to be told. Record your memories, write down your anecdotes, pass on your stories.

As an indication both of what can be done, and what remains to be done, you might like to go away and explore Bright Sparcs. Bright Sparcs is a resource on the WWW that contains information on over 3,000 Australian scientists from the 18^th century to the present – it includes biographical, archival and bibliographical details, with links to some memoirs, obituaries and historical articles. Contributions are always welcome.

the history

When faced with such a thorough piece of work as Murray Upton’s history of the ANIC, it is perhaps tempting to cross the topic off the list and think ‘Well, that bit of history’s been done’. But, of course, history doesn’t work like that – there is no end, there is no final product. There will always be new perspectives, new interpretations, people and events will be examined in different contexts. By this constant ravelling and unravelling our insights and understandings develop.

I’m sure that Murray would join with me in urging you not to see this book as the final word on the subject. Murray’s meticulous research has provided us with a new baseline in the history of entomology in Australia – a new starting point, not an endpoint. In coming together today to congratulate Murray and the Australian National Insect Collection, we must also be aware that this book confronts us with a challenge – a challenge to continue this work.

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.