Raggatt Don and Margaret
| Type of person | Individual |
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As reported by Ellouise Goodwin, Bunyip, 2012
Some 50 years ago after Don Raggatt was stationed at Maralinga, he has been formally recognized for his service to Australia. Mr Raggatt, of Gawler, spent six months in the remote west of South Australia in the 1950’s.
He was a “missile gunner” and assigned the task of helping to prepare for the British Nuclear Tests – of which a total of seven were performed. Maralinga was also the site for hundreds of minor trials, many of which were intended to investigate the effects of fire or non-nuclear explosions on atomic weapons.
“They sent me up to Woomera to train me on how to work on rockets, and while I was there they sent me to Maralinga to get ready for the Atomic Bomb”, Mr Raggatt said. “We set up for the tests, then they moved us out and then they did the tests. I didn’t go back, thank goodness.“
Mr Raggatt said a lot of work was carried out under secrecy and he was not allowed to speak about Maralinga for 10 years afterwards. At the time he had little understanding of the effects of nuclear radiation, and much of his work was carried out under dangerous conditions. On one occasion, Mr Raggatt recalls a rocket firing incorrectly. “They had magnets that held these plugs in the rocket and one day it got to the stage where we had one minute to go and the plug didn’t come out.” Mr Raggatt said. “The major ran up and I jumped into a National utility and we flew up to the rocket – he jumped out and pulled the plug out with about 40 seconds to go. There was no way of stopping the rocket then…we sprinted to a house with steel doors on it, got in and just got the doors shut and whoosh, rock and flame all over it.”
Last week, Mr Raggatt received a medallion from the Commonwealth in commemoration of the ‘50th anniversary of the end of the major British Nuclear Test trials on Australian soil’. While the 50th anniversary was officially in 2007, Mr Raggatt was unaware he was eligible for the medallion until he recently put in a claim for skin cancer treatment and the government contacted him.
Following his service in Maralinga and two years in Woomera, Mr Raggatt went on to serve in the Malayan Conflict. Late this month Mr Raggatt, along with his wife Margaret, will head to Darwin to donate photos of his time at Woomera and Maralinga to a museum.
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