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MARALINGA: The Anangu Story
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MARALINGA: The Anangu Story
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MARALINGA: The Anangu Story - various artists
Artwork from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands produced for the book by Christobel Mattingley Maralinga: The Anangu Story. Artwork produced by the Oak Valley and Yalata Communities
The exhibition visually tells the story of the impact of the Maralinga atomic tests on the aboriginal communities that called these lands their home.
Through the consultation the community became storytellers, translators and artists telling the story of what they experienced in the lands surrounding Maralinga, before the bombs and after.
Mr Rob Johnston, Manager Visual Arts, Country Arts SA says the exhibition provides a moving account of this time.
“The exhibition and book are a ground-breaking work that explores from a uniquely Indigenous perspective the many changes the Maralinga lands have seen” he said.
Ooldea Soak, Malu kapi, in the south of the Maralinga Tjarutja Lands, was for thousands of years a place for people to gather, as traditional Anangu life revolved around water sources. In only a few short years after white settlement, this previously permanent waterhole was forever dried up. Mission life and welfare dependency followed, until the following statement and others like it justified the Maralinga bomb tests in the 1950s:
‘Maralinga and Emu are well isolated from any population centre and are of no known significance either for agricultural or mineral development. It is unlikely that the area will become populated in the foreseeable future.’
The atomic testing went on from 1953 to 1963 - about 700 trials and almost 100kg of radioactive fallout of one sort or another. Years of cruel consequences for the Anangu people ensued - illnesses, premature deaths and birth defects. In 1984 the Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Bill was passed and the people regained their land. Ooldea was handed back in 1991.
Through the workshops, paintings were created to illustrate the stories, which began with the long history of these desert people who travelled in family groups and why the Ooldea Soak near the testing site, with its permanent water, was an important gathering place.
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