The Wire

Sixty years ago today, a mushroom cloud rose over the plains of Maralinga in outback South Australia. It would be the first of seven Nuclear Weapons that would be detonated in the area by Australia and Great Britain.

Succumbing to the pressure of the Cold War , the then Prime Minister Robert Menzies gave the go-ahead for the detonation of the weapons at Maralinga and other areas around Australia.

But no thought would be given to the preservation of the sacred Indigenous land that was then inhabited by the Maralinga Tjarutja people and only in the last two years has the site been given back.