Atomic Cloud Forms Head Of Aborigine - Maralinga 1953

Media reports regarding in the Maralinga Nuclear testing were heavily censored by the government in the 1950's and current researchers have needed to use the 'freedom of information act' to gain access to official government reports. However, there was the occasional 'leak' and this interesting story is one of them, but we could find only two reports on this incident from 'Trove'.
 
It is highly likely there are images of this phenomenon because there were over 300 cameras taking pictures from a specifically allocated site at the time, but we have not been able to find a single one .... so far.

TRANSCRIPT

Atomic Cloud Forms Head of Aborigine
The way the smoke column of yesterday's atomic explosion twice formed the gigantic head profile of an aborigine impressed even the most sophisticated scientific observers.

One who saw the explosion from 13 miles away, said: — 'After the huge head, unmistakeably that of a Myall black, had temporarily faded from the 15,000 ft. high smoke column, it reappeared just as clearly once again be fore the smoke column flattened and drifted slowly away.

"It made me wonder just how an old native witch doctor would explain the weird significance of the greatest smoke signal and the most destructive happening man has ever caused on the Australian mainland."

- The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA Fri 16 Oct 1953 Page 8 - Ref: Trove

TRANSCRIPT

Mushroom Cloud Took On Profile Of Aborigine

Experts Pleased With Experiment

(By A.U.P. Special Correspondent)

ADELAIDE, Thursday. - Britain delivered her second atomic weapon to-day with the explosion of a small general utility atom bomb on the atomic proving grounds at Emu Field, 550 miles from
Adelaide, in Central Australia.

The weapon was detonated from a steel tower 300 feet high on the stroke of the scheduled time — 7 a.m. Adelaide time.

Another major atomic test will be made shortly.

Fifty-seven seconds after the firing to-day, two sharp loud detonations reached the ears of a Press party watching from a ridge 15 miles away, but no large pressure wave followed.

The tower was vaporised and the red desert country for a radius of five miles was swept with the blast.

In five minutes the cloud had reached the maximum peak of 15,000 feet, and immediately a Canberra jet bomber dived through the cloud to sample radio activity.

- Daily Examiner (Grafton, NSW) Fri 16 Oct 1953 Page 1 Ref: Trove