Maralinga: The chilling expose of our secret nuclear shame and betrayal of our troops and country

About the book

The facts are shocking. The treachery is chilling. The fallout ongoing. During the 1950s-60s, with the blessing of Prime Minister Robert Menzies, the British government used Australia as its nuclear laboratory. They exploded twelve atomic bombs on Australian soil - at the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga. Sixteen thousand Australian servicemen were guinea pigs. RAAF pilots were ordered to fly into nuclear mushroom clouds, soldiers told to walk into radioactive ground zero, sailors retrieved highly contaminated debris - none of them aware of the dangers they faced. But the betrayal didn't end with our soldiers. Secret monitoring stations were set up around the continent to measure radiation levels and a clandestine decades-long project stole bones from dead babies to see how much fallout had contaminated their small bodies - their grieving parents were never told. Investigative journalist Frank Walker's Maralinga is a must-read true story of scientists treating an entire population as lab rats and politicians sacrificing their own people in the pursuit of power.