Backs to the Blast: An Australian Nuclear Story

This landmark documentary was broadcast on Channel 7 in 1981 and had immediate political impact, mirrored when it was broadcast in Britain on Channel 4. The film helped to trigger both a House of Lords enquiry in Britain and a Royal Commission in Australia chaired by Justice James McClelland.

Collated from archival footage and still photographs, radio broadcasts, maps and graphics, plus over 20 interviews, this disturbing documentary has lost none of its power today. With scenes and characters that sometimes seem to have strayed from Dr Strangelove, the film begins by looking at the history of uranium mining in Australia, especially post-war developments at Radium Hill in South Australia. A ghost town when this film was made, Radium Hill flourished in the 1950s, recruiting some 600 mine workers (many "New Australians") to provide uranium ore to the US and the UK.