Maralinga nuclear bomb

When my mother was a young girl, about 15 years, the people were living in the bush. My mother told me this story, how the people were all sitting down and they saw a big light and then lots of smoke. The smoke just went up and up and up. The people were frightened, they thought it was a waḻpa puḻka (big storm) or the Waṉampi (Rainbow Serpent). My uncle had gone to hunt bush tucker in Maralinga Country. He never came back – he died from that bomb. That’s a true story.

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 800 kilometres north-west of Adelaide. The elders who saw what happened used to tell this story to the younger generations so as not to forget the Aboriginal people who lost their lives that day.

Noreen Parker was born in the bush at Possum Well, a rock hole near Kaltjiti (Fregon) on the APY Lands of South Australia. Her family lived a traditional life and while travelling through country they were directly affected by the first nuclear atomic rocket testing in the 1950s at Emu Fields and the second bomb at Maralinga. Noreen’s paintings focus on the stories passed down to her by her mother.