Agent Orange town

This was published 11 years ago

Agent Orange town

This article says that deaths from cancer in Innisfail were 10 times the Queensland average. Queensland Health says that the rate of death from cancer in the Innisfail area is not significantly higher than the rest of Queensland.
May 25, 2008


Military scientists sprayed the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in the jungle that is part of the water catchment area for Innisfail in Queensland's far north at the start of the Vietnam War.



Forty years later the site - which abuts farmer Alan Wakeham's land - is still bare, covered only in tough Guinea grass, but surrounded by thick jungle.

"It's strange how the jungle comes right up to this site and then just stops. It won't grow any further," Mr Wakeham said.



"These tests carried out between 1964 and 1966 were the first tests of Agent Orange and they were carried out at Gregory Falls near Innisfail," said Ms Williams, who has been awarded the Order of Australia Medal for her work on the effects of chemicals on Vietnam veterans.


Ms Williams unearthed three boxes of damning files.


The file carried the remarks: "Considered sensitive because report recommends use of 2,4-D with other agents in aerial spraying trials in Innisfail."

Ms Williams said: "It was considered sensitive because they were mixing together all the bad chemicals, which just made them worse. They cause all the cancers."

Ms Williams claims a file which could indicate much wider testing in a project called Operation Desert had gone missing. The contents were marked "too disturbing to ever be released".

"Those chemicals stay in the soil for years and every time there is a storm they are stirred up and go into the water supply," Ms Williams said.

"The poor people of Innisfail have been kept in the dark about this. But these chemicals cause cancer and deformities that are passed on for generations. It is shocking. I am just an 83-year-old war-weary battler. I don't want any more medals, I just want justice for the people of Innisfail."









Mr Bosworth confirmed photos The Sun-Herald took were of the experiment site. "That is the area they sprayed. That is it. It was on top of the ridge next to grassland in the trees. It hasn't changed much in all these years."


"A lot of my unit have died of cancer. I've got cancer of the oesophagus and stomach. I have to sleep on a special bed that raises me 17 degrees or everything in my stomach rises up. I've had a subdural hemorrhage, a heart attack and a quadruple bypass.


Mr Hamann is angry at the lies and deceit about the effects of Agent Orange on veterans and their families. Now he's discovered that while he was fighting in Vietnam the Australian government was experimenting with Agent Orange upriver from his home town.

"We were sprayed regularly by Agent Orange as they cleared the river banks. We had no idea how dangerous the stuff was. They'd fly over us and give us a squirt just for fun and wiggle their wings. We took it as a joke. But the stuff turned out to be a curse."

"I saw in Vietnam what Agent Orange did to an area and I am shocked to learn they used it here. It was kept secret. The army didn't tell anyone. It was just some of the old army guys and local farmers who knew they were experimenting up there.


"The sad part is the number of kids who get cancer here. It's been that way at least since I came here in 1970. That means it can't be chemical spraying on the bananas as they only came here 15 years ago.

"They've always used Innisfail as guinea pigs. They did it in World War II and they did it during Vietnam. It's time to set it right."


"That's a lot for a small town like Innisfail. They would have been babies when they were spraying Agent Orange," she said.



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