'This black smoke rolling through the mulga': almost 70 years on, it's time to remember the atomic tests at Emu Field

A concrete plinth marking ground zero of the first Totem atomic test in South Australia in 1953. Photo: Andrew Burden

The name Emu Field does not have the same resonance as Maralinga in Australian history. It is usually a footnote to the much larger atomic test site in South Australia. However, the weapons testing that took place in October 1953 at Emu Field, part of SA’s Woomera Prohibited Area, was at least as damaging as what came three years later at Maralinga.

The Emu Field tests, known as Operation Totem, were an uncontrolled experiment on human populations unleashing a particularly mysterious and dangerous phenomenon – known as “black mist” – which is still being debated.