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craters, in that we could see them, but never went right up to one.’
    There was little restriction on the men’s movement. Every Sunday or rest day, bored with the lack of entertainment or recreation at the camp, Wilson and a couple of friends used to take a Land Rover out of the official pool and go for a spin. They often went dingo shooting, using a rifle which an Australian soldier had given them.
    On one occasion, Wilson and his friends came across three aborigines about three miles away from the Roadside camp. ‘One of them could speak in a way that was more or less comprehensible to us,’ Wilson recalled. ‘He told us they were moving around the area. He talked to us about the blinding lights of the explosions, by which we assumed he meant the flash. It was very difficult to understand all he was saying. On this occasion, I gave one of the three a shirt which I had in the back of the Land Rover. We saw them a number of times after that. They would come looking for the Land Rover and we would sometimes give them presents. The one who could speak English best showed ushow to set dingo traps.’ When Gordon Wilson told his story to the Australian Royal Commission in 1985, he was asked why he hadn’t reported it at the time: the aborigines were, after all, in a prohibited area. ‘Let’s face it,’ he replied, ‘it was their country.’
    Wilson himself was only once turned back on his outings into the prohibited area; an English security man told Wilson that he had come too far and that he must turn back. The rest of the time, however, he roamed the range unhindered. ‘We used to climb the observation towers by ourselves. There were a lot of tracks going off away from the main track, which ended up in the bush, and we used to go down these. On the occasion on which we were stopped, we had gone too far towards the forward area. We broke through the bush and saw that everything was levelled off. It was very quiet and eerie, and there was no vegetation. I feel sure that if we had wanted to we could have found our way to the craters, which were in a straight line from the observation towers.’
    The Monte Bello Islands, scene of the detonation of Britain’s very first atom bomb in 1952, were the setting for two more atomic tests in 1956. Nearly thirty years later, in 1984, the British government admitted that the second of these tests had been a 60-kiloton blast,
three times
bigger than previously stated. Secret documents released to the Public Records Office in 1985 suggested it was even bigger than the 1984 description - 98 kilotons.
    Bernard Perkins, who now lives in Dagenham, joined the Royal Navy in 1950. He trained as a radio operator, had a commission in the Hong Kong shore station and then went to Whitehall as a teleprinter operator before joining HMS
Narvik
and setting sail for the Monte Bello Islands.
    â€˜I did not know exactly what was happening,’ he recalled, ‘except that we were going to the atomic tests at Monte Bello Islands. We were told that we would be paid one shilling per day danger money, but we thought that was for the danger associated with the explosion rather than the radioactivity.’
    The
Narvik
called at Perth before heading for Monte Bello. It was only after they had left Perth that the men were told thatthere were atom bombs on board, although, according to Perkins, ‘it was in fact obvious by that stage’. The bomb section was on a bulkhead directly beneath the bridge, and it had an entrance fitted with warning lights and bells. The rest of the equipment for the test was in the hold or on deck.
    When the ship reached the islands, it moored near the lagoon where HMS
Plym
had been exploded four years earlier. The men were told not to go anywhere near the shore or the site where the
Plym
had been blown up, but one of the
Narvik’s
boats ran aground near the site. In addition, a detachment of Royal Marines had to go