Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Elizabeth Tynan on Australia as Britain’s atomic oval

Nuclear colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s
The ABR Podcast 23 June 2022

Elizabeth Tynan on Australia as Britain’s atomic oval

Nuclear colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s
The ABR Podcast 23 June 2022

Tynan atomic oval Pod   Main


Of the many pernicious legacies of colonialism, Australia’s servility in the face of Britain’s nuclear arms aspirations is one of the most under-reported and most consequential. In this week’s episode of The ABR Podcast, Elizabeth Tynan reads her essay tracing the clandestine history of, and fallout from, the agreements that allowed the British to test atomic weapons at various sites in South and Western Australia after World War II. By highlighting the Menzies government’s eager consent and the Australian media’s compliance, Tynan shows that far from being a passive victim, Australia was largely complicit in tests that wrought havoc on large tracts of land and on the Indigenous communities who lived there.

Elizabeth Tynan is an associate professor in the Graduate Research School at James Cook University, and the author of Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga story (2016) and The Secret of Emu Field: Britain’s forgotten atomic tests in Australia (2022).

This commentary is generously supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

Subscribe via iTunesGoogle, or Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.