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Maralinga
Maralinga, in the remote western areas of South Australia, was the site, measuring about in area, of British nuclear tests in the mid-1950s. In January 1985 native title was granted to the Maralinga Tjarutja, a southern Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal Australian people, over some land, but around the same time, the McClelland Royal Commission identified significant residual nuclear contamination at some sites. Under an agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia, efforts were made to clean up the site before the Maralinga people resettled on the land in 1995. The main community, which includes a school, is Oak Valley. There are still concerns that some of the ground is still contaminated, despite two attempts at cleanup. History Nuclear tests and cleanup Maralinga was the scene of UK nuclear testing and was contaminated with radioactive waste in the 1950s and early 1960s. Maralinga was surveyed by Len Beadell in the early 1950s. It followed the survey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Nuclear Tests At Maralinga
Between 1956 and 1963, the United Kingdom conducted seven nuclear tests at the Maralinga site in South Australia, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area about north west of Adelaide. Two major test series were conducted: Operation Buffalo in 1956 and Operation Antler the following year. Approximate weapon yields ranged from . The Maralinga site was also used for minor trials, tests of nuclear weapons components not involving nuclear explosions. Kittens were trials of neutron initiators; Rats and Tims measured how the fissile core of a nuclear weapon was compressed by the high explosive shock wave; and Vixens investigated the effects of fire or non-nuclear explosions on atomic weapons. The minor trials, numbering around 550, ultimately generated far more contamination than the major tests. Operation Buffalo consisted of four tests; One Tree () and Breakaway () were detonated on towers, Marcoo () at ground level, and the Kite () was released by a Royal Air Force (RAF) Vickers Valia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maralinga Tjarutja
The Maralinga Tjarutja, or Maralinga Tjarutja Council, is the corporation representing the traditional Anangu owners of the remote western areas of South Australia known as the Maralinga Tjarutja lands. The council was established by the ''Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984''. The area is one of the four regions of South Australia classified as an Aboriginal Council (AC) and not incorporated within a local government area. The Aboriginal Australian people whose historic rights over the area have been officially recognised belong to the southern branch of the Pitjantjatjara people. The land includes a large area of land contaminated by British nuclear testing in the 1950s, for which the inhabitants were eventually compensated in 1991. There is a community centre at Oak Valley, NW of Ceduna, and close historical and kinship links with the Yalata south, and the Pila Nguru centre of Tjuntjuntjara to their west. Languages and peoples The Maralinga Tjarutja people belon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984
The Maralinga Tjarutja, or Maralinga Tjarutja Council, is the corporation representing the traditional Anangu owners of the remote western areas of South Australia known as the Maralinga Tjarutja lands. The council was established by the ''Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984''. The area is one of the four regions of South Australia classified as an Aboriginal Council (AC) and not incorporated within a local government area. The Aboriginal Australian people whose historic rights over the area have been officially recognised belong to the southern branch of the Pitjantjatjara people. The land includes a large area of land contaminated by British nuclear testing in the 1950s, for which the inhabitants were eventually compensated in 1991. There is a community centre at Oak Valley, NW of Ceduna, and close historical and kinship links with the Yalata south, and the Pila Nguru centre of Tjuntjuntjara to their west. Languages and peoples The Maralinga Tjarutja people belong ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McClelland Royal Commission
The McClelland Royal Commission or Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia was an inquiry by the Australian government in 1984–1985 to investigate the conduct of the British in its use, with the then Australian government's permission, of Australian territory and soldiers for testing nuclear weapons. It was chaired by Jim McClelland. Background In September 1950, the then UK Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, requested via a secure telegraph, to Australia's Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, to conduct a series of atomic tests at the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia. Over the next thirteen years, twelve major British nuclear tests would occur on Australian territory, along with thirty "minor" atomic trials testing sub-systems. The last Vixen B trial occurred in 1963 whereupon the United Kingdom moved its testing operations to the United States. The Royal Commission into nuclear tests arose out of a public outcry, led by media reports, ov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Native Title In Australia
Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights and interests to their land that derive from their traditional laws and customs. The concept recognises that in certain cases there was and is a continued beneficial legal interest in land held by Indigenous peoples which survived the acquisition of radical title to the land by the Crown at the time of sovereignty. Native title can co-exist with non-Aboriginal proprietary rights and in some cases different Aboriginal groups can exercise their native title over the same land. The foundational case for native title in Australia was ''Mabo v Queensland (No 2)'' (1992). One year after the recognition of the legal concept of native title in ''Mabo'', the Keating Government formalised the recognition by legislation with the enactment by the Au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oak Valley, South Australia
Oak Valley is the only community of Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal Council (AC) Local Government Area (LGA), South Australia. The population fluctuates, but a 2016 survey reported around 128 people, mostly Aboriginal. It is approximately NNW of the original Maralinga township, and lies at the southern edge of the Great Victoria Desert. It is named for the desert oaks that populate the vicinity of the community. It was established in 1984 with funds provided as compensation for the dispossession of the Maralinga people from their lands following the British nuclear tests which took place between 1956 and 1963. The risks associated with living in an area contaminated by plutonium, even after the cleanup have been a significant concern. In 2003 South Australian Premier Mike Rann and Education Minister Trish White opened a new school at Oak Valley, replacing what had been described as the "worst school in Australia". In May 2004, following the passage of special legislation, Prem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Owner
Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights and interests to their land that derive from their traditional laws and customs. The concept recognises that in certain cases there was and is a continued beneficial legal interest in land held by Indigenous peoples which survived the acquisition of radical title to the land by the Crown at the time of sovereignty. Native title can co-exist with non-Aboriginal proprietary rights and in some cases different Aboriginal groups can exercise their native title over the same land. The foundational case for native title in Australia was ''Mabo v Queensland (No 2)'' (1992). One year after the recognition of the legal concept of native title in ''Mabo'', the Keating Government formalised the recognition by legislation with the enactment by the Au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avon Hudson
Avon Hudson (born 1937) is a South Australian RAAF ex-serviceman, nuclear weapons testing whistle-blower and co-author of the 2005 book '' Beyond Belief'' which he wrote with academic and historian, Roger Cross. He has appeared in several documentary films about nuclear weapons testing in Australia. Career Hudson was educated at Whitwarta in South Australia. He joined the Australian Air Force in February 1956 and served until February 1962 as a mechanic, machinery operator and driver. After six years with the RAAF, Hudson left the armed services and worked on the Snowy Mountains Project as a mechanic before working on the civil space program in Australia. He worked at the Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury, South Australia as a driver and operator, then at the Woomera Rocket Range from April 1962 until March 1964 as a driver and operator. His next job was at the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station DSIF Deep Space Instrumentation Facility where he worked as a cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitjantjatjara People
The Pitjantjatjara (; or ) are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert near Uluru. They are closely related to the Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra and their languages are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (all are varieties of the Western Desert language). They refer to themselves as aṉangu (people). The Pitjantjatjara live mostly in the northwest of South Australia, extending across the border into the Northern Territory to just south of Lake Amadeus, and west a short distance into Western Australia. The land is an inseparable and important part of their identity, and every part of it is rich with stories and meaning to aṉangu. They have, for the most part, given up their nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle but have retained their language and much of their culture in synergy with increasing influences from the broader Australian community. Today there are still about 4,000 aṉangu living scattered in small communities and outstations acros ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitjantjatjara
The Pitjantjatjara (; or ) are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert near Uluru. They are closely related to the Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra and their languages are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (all are varieties of the Western Desert language). They refer to themselves as aṉangu (people). The Pitjantjatjara live mostly in the northwest of South Australia, extending across the border into the Northern Territory to just south of Lake Amadeus, and west a short distance into Western Australia. The land is an inseparable and important part of their identity, and every part of it is rich with stories and meaning to aṉangu. They have, for the most part, given up their nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle but have retained their language and much of their culture in synergy with increasing influences from the broader Australian community. Today there are still about 4,000 aṉangu living scattered in small communities and outstations acros ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Totem
Operation Totem was a pair of British atmospheric nuclear tests which took place at Emu Field in South Australia in October 1953. They followed the Operation Hurricane test of the first British atomic bomb, which had taken place at the Montebello Islands a year previously. The main purpose of the trial was to determine the acceptable limit on the amount of plutonium-240 which could be present in a bomb. In addition to the two main tests, there was a series of five subcritical testing, subcritical tests called "Kittens". These did not produce nuclear explosions, but used conventional explosives, polonium-210, beryllium and natural uranium to investigate the performance of neutron initiators. Background During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, code-named Tube Alloys, which the 1943 Quebec Agreement merged with the American Manhattan Project to create a combined American, British, and Canadian project. The British government expected t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aṉangu
Aṉangu is the name used by members of several Aboriginal Australian groups, roughly approximate to the Western Desert cultural bloc, to describe themselves. The term, which embraces several distinct "tribes" or peoples, in particular the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara groups, is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable: . The term The original meaning of the word is "human being, person", "human body" in a number of eastern varieties of the Western Desert Languages (which are in the Pama–Nyungan group of languages), in particular Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara. It is now used as an Aboriginal endonym by a wide range of Western Desert Language (WDL) peoples to describe themselves. It is rarely or never applied to non-Aboriginal people when used in English, although the word now has a dual meaning in Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara. It has come to be used also as an exonym by non-Aboriginal Australians to refer to WDL-speaking groups or ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
