'They should have to see what they've done': the scars of Wreck Bay

The calm, turquoise waters of Wreck Bay once breathed life into the quiet Aboriginal village. Its creeks, lagoons and beaches have been intricately woven into the community's identity and culture for millennia.

Those in the township have always cared for and nurtured their country, and lived off its bounty. But more than three decades ago, this was ripped from their control.

Poison now runs through the 408-hectare village, 200km south of Sydney which is flanked by breathtaking bays and dense scribbly gum forests, leaving residents forever grappling with the consequences.

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) - a "forever chemical" used by firefighters - has leached its way through the land and water.

"Our land is our mother," Wreck Bay man Joe McLeod-Brown said. "When she is sick, we are sick."

Devastating illness and death plague the village of 200 in the Jervis Bay Territory. Heart attacks, strokes, and cancers have become all too familiar.

The survivors bare the scars to show it.

Wreck Bay woman Melinda Wellington was just 31 when she was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer in 2021. The single mother suddenly faced the heart-wrenching prospect of leaving her three beautiful children behind.

"I remember I just cried so much to the point I was howling," Melinda, now 32 and living in Bomaderry, said.

"The first thing I thought about was we haven't made enough memories together.

"I was so scared. I wasn't scared of dying; I was scared of leaving them."

An aggressive suite of treatments immediately ensued: six months of chemotherapy, 25 rounds of radiation, and both breasts removed.

"I remember looking at my breasts and crying because I knew they were going to get cut off," Melinda said.

"But I had to push through because I wasn't going out like that. I was gonna fight with everything I had."

Her strength and spirit were tested. What it meant to be beautiful as a young woman had completely spun into question. But throughout the gruelling treatments, Melinda found solace in the water back on her sacred country.

She would ask it to cleanse her spirit, to wash away her doubts and worries. "Water has memory," Melinda said.

Doctors removed the cancer. But the anxiety of it returning remains a dark cloud hanging over her.

The waves of Mary Cove gently lapped against Melinda's shins in January as she visited the water she grew up in.

She confronted her scars from the double mastectomy, tears welling in her eyes as the summer sun beat down on her chest. It was a moment of healing.

"I used to care so much about what people think," Melinda said.

"But you can only find beauty within. If you look outside, you'll never find it. It's skin deep."

Melinda is a formidable force, her show of strength and healing a theme in the community that knows grief like no other. It's been long talked about how the village has grappled with disproportionate levels of sickness and death.

Many Wreck Bay residents believe the cause is linked to the notorious "forever chemical": perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS).

"It's just too much of a coincidence," Melinda said. "How can that many people in one small area have cancer?"

Editorial: How sometimes only photographs can tell a community's story.

Atop the headland which overlooks the pristine Summercloud Bay sits the cemetery - white crosses and floral arrangements marking the graves of "way too many young people".

While outside his fibro home, Wreck Bay Elder Uncle Fino, 69, lists the staggering amount of neighbours and family members who have recently succumbed to illnesses.

"One family here lost five people last year," Uncle Fino said, himself baring a zipper scar from heart surgery in 2017, just a year on from his partner Aunty Faye's double mastectomy after she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.

He tells of the harrowing moment his nephew, in his early 40s, died from a massive heart attack last year.

"At 6am he dropped dead ... I worked on him for an hour. The ambos couldn't bring him back," Uncle Fino said.

"It's terrible. People don't realise. We're all just thinking, who's going to die next?"

His 10 siblings have had either suffered heart problems or cancer and are on a cocktail of prescription drugs for the rest of their lives. Sister Penny Williams, 48, suffered a stroke in 2012.

"My daughter came and woke me up because I slept right in," Penny said, adding her son - now a doctor - happened to be studying strokes in university at the time.

"I got up and couldn't talk or anything. I was in hospital for six weeks and I don't know what happened but I'd come good.

"I think I had someone up there, looking down upon me."

Penny had heart surgery six months later to replace a valve. Daniel Williams, 46, has suffered two heart attacks - the first in 2017, just four days before his 40th birthday.

"I worry for my kids, I do ... because they're next in line," Daniel said.

PFAS was a key ingredient in the legacy firefighting foams used by naval recruits on the nearby HMAS Creswell and Jervis Bay Range Facility bases from the 1970s.

The federal government has admitted PFAS exposure has been associated with some biological effects, including mildly elevated cholesterol and effects on kidney function, the immune system and hormone levels.

Manufactured by American company 3M, the foam was used across the country due to its ability to extinguish blazes swiftly.

PFAS has no colour or smell, but many residents believe they saw signs that trouble was brewing in their traditional lands since the 70s.

Some witnessed a "river of oil slicks" running off from the airstrip and penetrating the waterways.

Mothers wondered why Mary Creek would occasionally froth, as their kids frolicked in the warm pool, safe from sharks.

Fishermen grew suspicious as the yabbies they caught were increasingly deformed, the oysters eventually disappearing.

But the truth was finally revealed in 2017 when the Department of Defence confirmed what no one wanted to believe: Wreck Bay was contaminated.

Fury coursed through Elder Aunty Vida Brown's veins as she learnt that PFAS had lurched into the village's food supply, waterways and sacred land for at least three decades.

The meeting came just after she had both breasts removed due to breast cancer, drains still attached to her body for kidney disease.

"I went off my head. I was there with the still-raw scars on my chest," Aunty Vida, 65, said.

"They quoted that we'd be contaminated for another 15,000 years.

"I said, 'what are you saying to me, that all my grandchildren, and myself, and most of the people here are all gonna die from contamination?'"

She said she felt like ripping her top off to reveal the fresh scars, so they could "see the rawness of the wound".

"They should have had to see what they've done," Aunty Vida said.

PFAS - which remains in the environment permanently - has devastated many communities. But the blow has been particularly heart-wrenching for the Wreck Bay village.

The Mercury has heard dozens of residents share tales from their childhood - the contamination preventing them from passing deeply embedded cultural practices from their memories onto the younger generations.

Like clockwork, Aunty Vida raced to the beach at 7am daily before school in the late 1960s and 70s.

She dove into the salty water, got tangled among the thick seaweed, and swam freely among the stingrays. Kids would paint their bodies with ochre and eat the pure clay from the creeks.

"It was like growing up in paradise," Aunty Vida said, sitting inside her home with a view of Summercloud Bay - so close to that you can hear the whales singing as they migrate north.

"All the kids used to swim and play down there. Little did we know, we were swimming in poison."

An old fisherman used to make his own medicine out of clay, shaping it into "little ice cream bars".

"Pregnant women used to eat it because it strengthened the bones of the unborn baby," Aunty Vida said.

Her partner of 49 years, Elder Uncle Paul McLeod, known affectionately as Poppy Mac, said after a day spent in the water, he filled his belly with lilly pilly, bush tomatoes and Kakadu plums.

"The whole time, it was all contaminated," he said.

"Why would you want to kill the land that feeds you?"

Aunty Vida spends three days a week at Shoalhaven Hospital on dialysis for kidney disease. She says cancer has touched everyone in the community, and like Uncle Fino, she recites a long list of those she's lost to the sinister disease.

Poppy Mac does the same with men he knows who have died from heart attacks.

"It's sad because I notice when you walk around there's a change in the community," he said.

"It's sort of deteriorating but in a way, people try to keep their strength up."

After chemicals were detected in an investigation, Defence put signs up by the creeks and lagoons, advising that collecting and eating seafood should be avoided.

For the first time, the Australian government said sorry to the Wreck Bay community at a public forum in February.

"I'm here to apologise for the inconvenience PFAS contamination emanating from the defence base here in Jervis Bay has caused to the lives of locals," Assistant Minister for Defence Matt Thistlethwaite told the Mercury.

Mr Thistlethwaite acknowledged the impact of contamination on cultural practices, adding that Defence had established a remediation action plan to reduce the contamination.

He sympathised with those in the community who have developed medical conditions, however said "I'm not a medical expert, so I can't make a conclusion whether there is a link to PFAS".

"What I can say is that I want Defence to act as quickly as possible to remove that source and remove the risk in the future."

However Defence was warned the use of the chemical was "unacceptable" as early as 1981, with top bureaucrats notified of the discharge from the firefighting foam that had run off towards nearby homes.

"For environmental reasons, this situation is unacceptable and should be discontinued," a letter from the Department of Housing and Construction, obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald, said

Mr Thistlethwaite said the federal government was funding research at the Australian National University which will look into whether there is a proven link between PFAS exposure and health conditions.

Meanwhile international studies have linked it to increased risk of testicular and kidney cancers.

Defence ceased using firefighting foams containing PFAS from about 1997, and 3M announced last year it would stop making the chemical by 2025.

But its effects are everlasting.

Fisherman Robert Williams, 72, who knows every waterhole like the back of his hand, had a triple bypass surgery during the pandemic. Two years later, doctors found a blood clot under his lung, causing it to collapse.

He is still recovering from a second operation in which his ribs had to be broken to remove the clot.

Now living in Sanctuary Point, Robert recalls fishing with his daughter Ashlee Williams-Barnes at every chance they got, thriving on a diet rich in fresh crustaceans.

Ashlee, 35, watched in awe as her farther reversed his van and masterfully cast a line from the boot. But in 2016, shock waves were sent through the family as Ashlee was told she had six months to live.

She was diagnosed with with advanced cervical cancer at just age 25. Now 35 and in remission, it pains her that her kids will never get to intimately know their country like she does.

"I refuse to gamble with the health and well-being of my children," she told Sydney's Federal Court earlier this month.

"They are now missing a piece of their identity."

Commonwealth law v Aboriginal lore

The Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council launched a class action against Defence in 2021 for loss of culture and property value, alleging their land was negligently contaminated by PFAS.

Days before the matter was scheduled for trial, a historic settlement of $22 million was reached, with $5 million to be deduced in legal costs.

More than 950 have joined the claim.

The Commonwealth did not admit any liability.

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