To the Ends of the Earth 111.
The next morning the veranda was packing up tight with the usual bustle of ataxic victims, care workers or simply aboriginal kiddies homing in to the centre for a focal place to gather at that time of day. A monster of a pick up truck pulled up in front of the Mission, and out stepped Dennis, a goliath-like, "Apocalypse-now" type of character who introduced himself as head of the local mineworker's Union. He was the sort of guy you'd expect to see bouncing at an LA night club rather than cruising around in this sort of outback terrain. But Dennis, had come to take me on a tour of the mines and surrounding area so I could get a broader range of soil and vegetation samples, etc, in areas other than just Angurugu. His interests lay with the fact that some of his white mining colleagues had also died of similar wasting type neurodegenerative diseases , or were just beginning to show the first symptoms of what they had considered to be manganese intoxication. Dennis himself was off work due to problems with gout and cardiac arrythmias. Gout is caused by a build up of urates in the system which commonly results from a breakdown in the enzymic regulation of the urea cycle and nitrogen metabolism. Interestingly, chronic manganese intoxication interfers with the enzyme arginase which plays a crucial role in this cycle, but since arginase is an enzyme that is normally activated by the manganese 2+ form, problems can still occur when a manganese intoxication involves a transformation of manganese 2+ into its 3+ form - a valency of manganese which fails to activate arginase into its fully fledged operational state. This can occur when those who have been intoxicated by manganese are concurrently exposed to devices that emit low frequencies of radiation - such a frequency being absorbed by the manganese which consequently oxidizes the metal into its 3+ reactive form. Dennis not only lived adjoining a low frequency radio emitting facility, but he also sat nextdoor to a low frequency radio phone system hooked up in his work cab. Intriguingly, Rudolf Steiner had proposed that the ox is driven mad when its brain is overloaded with urates ! The visionary had obviously focused into one of the metabolic derangements that was later to become part of the causal pathway in the pathogenesis of mad cow disease. I would totally agree with Steiner's insight that the build up of urates - one of several side effects resulting from manganese and oxidant intoxication - can induce a major facet of the pathogenesis of spongiform and other degenerative diseases. Dennis was no time waster, and I quickly found myself whisked away in his pick up truck into the remote outbacks of the rainforest. After a detour inspecting some aboriginal handprint rock art cast across the face of sandstone outcrops in the middle of the forest , we came to the sight of the former Emerald river mission . The old RAF runway was barely visible - a mere straight track of crumbling concrete that was becoming increasingly encroached by the stringy back teetree boughs. I pondered on some of the tense wartime dramas that must have occupied this space at one time, but it was too long gone now - the last ghosts of the dogfights fought with the Japs over the New Quinea jungle were long suffocated beneath the dense barricades of cycad and prickly pandanus leaves retrieving their native terrain. I stuck my sampling trowel into the former gardens of the Emerald mission - now a patch of rejuvinated forest. I was relieved that this ground was not such tough ground as that which I had sampled back at the Angurugu Mission gardens - where I had experienced great difficulty getting the trowel to penetrate the sharp topsoil that was intensively concentrated in manganese pesolites ( pebbles ). I also noticed that these samples were much lighter than the soil which I had drawn at Angurugu, again indicating the lower concentration of manganese metal in the soil. The analyses of these samples would no doubt confirm my suspicion that the neurological problems first began once these Aboriginal clans had moved from the Emerald River Mission into permanent residence at the most intensive manganese hotspot region of Groote - Angurugu. As we drove on to get to Mud Cod Bay - an area of seacoast that lay on the manganese bedrock platform - Dennis really started opening up about his interests in my whole investigation. He started talking about the strange psychiatric and neurological demise of some of his co workers in the mine. A guy called "Monkey" had started to experience completely unprovoked rage and aggression , as well as insomnia, tremors, depression, fatigue, cramps and unmotivated crying fits - the text book symptoms of mangnaese intoxication. Monkey had been invited to meet me at a party in the mining town of Alyangula that night. He had some interesting analytical data collected from some sampling of his blood, where manganese was over the excessive limit and magnesium was in the low range. I later found a lot more white mine workers who had discovered the exact same mineral profile in their blood . A huge lorry "train" of manganese passed us on the dirt road. Dennis broke off to tell me that there was "a 150 tons of manganese shit in there" . He then moved into the realms of another strange story about a worker at the mine called Walter - a German character who went around in Bavarian leather shorts [ ledenhosen ? ] all the time. Walter had suddenly started to fall asleep whilst drilling the hole for the explosives or driving a 150 ton train. Other stories from Alyangula reported how he would fall asleep whilst peddling his three wheeled push bike, where there were constant sightings of him climbing a hill only to start descending again backwards after he had fallen asleep !! In fact it seems that Walter had developed other psychiatric traits of manganese intoxication, such as paranoid delusions, whilst he was working in the mine. He had apparently fortified his caravan dwelling house in Alyangula, putting up surveillance cameras too, etc, because he felt convinced that everyone was about to launch an attack on him. In the event of such an assault, Walter had rigged up an illegal high tech radio mast to quarantee a totally independent means of contacting his relatives back in Germany . The radio was so high tech that he got into serious trouble one day after accidentally intercepting and screwing up air traffic control at Darwin international airport 500 miles away. When the full force of neurological symptoms kicked in , Walter left the mines and was last heard of at his death bed in hospital down in Southern Australia somewhere. Dennis desperately tried to acquire his medical records from the local Groote health centre, but they had gone mysteriously missing. Interestingly, most of these miners who had become neurologically crippled were also involved with the drilling and detonation of explosives, as well as the handling of manganese. Perhaps the well known association between the physical force of explosive shock waves and its traumatic impact on the blood brain barrier had disrupted the body's best line of defence against excess manganese entering the brain ? Maybe this was a further facet of the causal jigsaw ? Furthermore, all of victims in the Aboriginal stronghold of Angurugu - whether they worked in the mine or not - had also been exposed to the full force of explosive blasting. For the mine had been operating as close as half a kilometre from the village boundary. One noted 'explosive' occasion entailed an accidental overblast by the mine's former explosive technician, George Baker. He had plugged too much nitroglycerine in to a bore shaft in order to deal with an extra hard vein of manganese. The resulting detonation blew Jesus Christ off the crucifix in the Angurugu Mission church ! The few upmarket householders in the village who had glass windows had got fed up with replacing them. We eventually reached Mud Cod Bay where I drew some samples from the manganese tainted mud. It was this stretch of coastline where the Angurugu Aboriginal folk had habitually visited to spear their crabs and turtles for food..The strong sunlight highlighted some attractive chunks of coral and shells that lay along the top end of the littoral line. As we drove off, Dennis introduced me to every detail of this unique ecology of rush grasses , orchids and rhodadendron which spanned the last stand of land that met the sea. We crossed a few crocodile tracks too, but unfortunately did not see any of the mean beasts hulking their way across the sand to reach the swamps along the forest edge. Although slightly confused at first, It was clear to me now that Dennis was channelling the 'Bouncer' like macho energies which he projected into the positive perspectives of life. His ego was more preoccupied with exerting a genuine desire to preserve the natural environment than many of the most ardent environmentalists that you meet. He knew every bird in the rainforest, every fish in the sea, the location of every geological vein on the island. His deep roooted concern for the health of his coworkers was also admirable. That evening I attended the miner's party where anyone and everyone had been rustled up who had had any connections to neurological disease and manganese on the island. I met Kandy who was the first to Email me in the UK after my BBC film had been broadcast on ABC Four Corners in Australia one year ago. She had alerted me to this problem on Groote, specifically informing me of the case of a girl called Maxine who had once worked in the lab at the mine where she was analysing the fine samples of black manganese oxide dust . She had died in her thirties of a neurological disease which everyone , except the research scientists, had sworn was the same as the Aboriginal Groote syndrome. That evening I had also got to hear about the abortive attempt of an ABC film news crew to arrive on the island . The Miner's Union had contacted them about what they considered to be an abuse of saftey issue at work , only to find that the Mining Corporation had prevented the aircraft transporting the film crew from landing at the airport. The Corporation, which owned virtually every facility and service on the entire island, had debarred them from landing on 'their' airport - the only airport on the island. The Union hit the roof.
