Australia So Much to See

Christine told me she lived at South Alligator in 1957 and 1958 as a five and six year old child. She remembers well the journey from Pine Creek with her father, mother and baby brother, following her father having constructed a dwelling for his family and settled into his new employment.

That trip, undertaken in the Wet Season, or the tail end of it, took three days as the roads were not sealed and we had to ford the swollen South Alligator River. I can still remember camping on the side of the South Alligator River and waiting for it to go down so our trucks could get across.

I asked Christine about South Alligator settlement, and as best she can recall, there were probably about 100 people living there, with twenty to thirty working in the mines and the rest being their families.

Dad had built a house for Mum prior to our arrival, which was a marvellous concoction of bamboo and cement. He had put in cement floors, and corrugated iron roofing, but the walls were made from bamboo saplings. There was running water but I don’t remember there being electricity.

There was no school, so Christine started her education by correspondence.

It was an idyllic existence for children but it must have been hell for my mother. After living in a brick house in Melbourne she was transported to a bamboo house in the middle of nowhere. She hated it. There were no shops as we know them but rather a company mine store with groceries and hardware. We children ran about all day in the bush, swimming in the nearby river and playing with each other. No one seemed to worry about where we were, and none of us ever got into any danger.

The larger settlements of El Sherana and Moline had larger stores with more variety of goods. During the two years living at South Alligator, Christine does not recall ever leaving the settlement for holidays, medical reasons or to visit better shops. Moline was forty kilometres away, and the mine headquarters.

We would only have gone over to El Sherana or Moline. It really was a long trip on those roads and transport was difficult. It had to be undertaken in a truck or 4WD, which our family didn’t have. I guess we would have had to be taken into Pine Creek if we needed a doctor. No, wait a minute, Moline had a health clinic. El Sherana was roughly fifteen kilometres away.

Christine talks about Moline, which is just outside of the present Kakadu National Park.

There was a larger mine site called Moline some forty or so kilometres away and the administrative hub was there. The mine manager was a bloke called Joe Fisher # who is a well known Territory identity – deceased now. I remember well the day a scorpion crawled up his leg under his trousers! He wasn’t bitten and it would not have done much damage anyway.

They had an outdoor cinema at Moline and we would drive over there to see the pictures at regular intervals; a great treat.

You mentioned swimming in the river and at UDP Falls (now Gunlom Falls). What about crocodile dangers when swimming in the River and the remote swimming holes?

They weren’t as prevalent back then due to crocodile culling. They have exploded in numbers since. Swimming remains OK at Gunlom as the Rangers do spotlighting and remove crocs at the end of the Wet Season.

What about the dangers of living and working in an area which is even now is giving radio-active readings above the level safe for human habitation?

Undoubtedly there were some risks (and hence the current cleanup). However I am not aware of studies having been done. None of the children I grew up with have had cancer and are still alive. The township has been erased as though it had never existed and a few years ago there was a sign on the side of the road saying there is a risk from radiation.

Thank you Christine for telling us about your Kakadu childhood.

# Joe Fisher later became a Member of the Legislative Council of the Northern Territory and held his seat for thirteen years, where he played an important role in the creation of some of the Northern Territory’s important parks and reserves. He died in 2009 at the age of 90. Read more about Joe Fisher’s illustrious life in the public arena here

With little left from the Uranium mining days in the South Alligator region and what still remains being out of bounds to tourists, I was curious about what life was like for families living in this remote region in the 1960s. I was fortunate to meet Christine; whose father was an underground miner at the South Alligator Mine near what is now Gunlom Falls. This was of course prior toKakadu National Park being declared. There were thirteen small mines in the South Alligator region of Arnhem Land.

Continue reading >

< Previous

Use your browser back button to return to the page you were reading