THE former High Court judge Mary Gaudron was forced to move her children from their Hunters Hill home in 1980 after a cancer cluster was discovered in the street that once housed a uranium smelter, an inquiry was told yesterday.

Almost 30 years after the family left Nelson Parade, her eldest daughter, Danielle, 42, has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, the parliamentary inquiry into the former smelter site has heard.

Yesterday Ms Gaudron's former husband, Ben Nurse, told the inquiry the family lived at 11 Nelson Parade for six years and Danielle slept in the bedroom which has since been identified as having the highest levels of radiation.

Mr Nurse, an engineer, said he paid $30 for a certificate from the Department of Health in 1973 that declared his land "clear", but 30 years later the house he built on the block was now deemed unfit for human habitation.

Peter and Michelle Vassiliou, who now own the house, are suing the State Government for failing to warn of the dangers.

Giving evidence to the inquiry with his other daughter, Julienne, Mr Nurse said that when a neighbour living at 9 Nelson Parade was diagnosed with leukaemia, panic set in. Ms Gaudron and her two daughters fled.

The family sold the house to the Health Department in 1980, for a third of its value, Mr Nurse told the inquiry.

He had no recollection of the department doing any testing and the first he knew of possible contamination was when a retired professor began investigating cancer clusters in Nelson Parade.

Earlier, Gavin Mudd, a civil engineer, told the inquiry that cleaning tonnes of soil on the site of the former uranium smelter would be difficult, even risky.

"It's a high-profile area. It's something with residents around, so I don't think it would be easily done in that sense," he said.