ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the remembering of British-Australian nuclear weapons testing in remote parts of Australia during the 1950s and 1960s. It finds, through examination of art, song, film and textual works, a strong repertoire of constructed memories that have been available to the anti-nuclear protest movement in Australia. At the height of its mobilization during the 1980s the anti-nuclear movement in Australia derived from many competing strands but found historical continuity and urgency in drawing on memories of the earlier testing programme. It drew on both the wave of popular nationalism in the Australia of the 1980s and remembered legacies of ‘nuclear colonialism’. In particular, the suffering of Indigenous Australians, who continue to suffer injustices today, served to provide convenient bookends for anti-nuclear protests. Australian activists have also moved easily between anti-colonialist and internationalist frames, such is the mnemonic repertoire of past nuclear experiences, and have welcomed the shape it has brought to otherwise more inchoate histories of their movement.
