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LAND in outback South Australia used for nuclear weapons testing in the aftermath of World War II will be handed back to the traditional Aboriginal owners. Environment and Conservation and Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Minister Jay Weatherill today told Parliament the final section of the Maralinga test site would be returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja people. "The Maralinga nuclear test occurred during a period in our history when little regard was given to Aboriginal people and their connection with the land," he said.

LAND in outback South Australia used for nuclear weapons testing in the aftermath of World War II will be handed back to the traditional Aboriginal owners. Environment and Conservation and Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Minister Jay Weatherill today told Parliament the final section of the Maralinga test site would be returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja people. "The Maralinga nuclear test occurred during a period in our history when little regard was given to Aboriginal people and their connection with the land," he said.

While the Maralinga Tjaratja people are excited and relieved about this week's land hand-back, the veterans who served at the British nuclear testing site are still fighting for compensation. Yesterday, the final parcel of land at Maralinga was returned to the Tjaratja people after years of remediation work by the Federal Government. However, the thousands of Australian servicemen involved in the series of atomic tests there in the 1950s are still battling for their compensation and are turning to the British courts for justice.

While the Maralinga Tjaratja people are excited and relieved about this week's land hand-back, the veterans who served at the British nuclear testing site are still fighting for compensation. Yesterday, the final parcel of land at Maralinga was returned to the Tjaratja people after years of remediation work by the Federal Government. However, the thousands of Australian servicemen involved in the series of atomic tests there in the 1950s are still battling for their compensation and are turning to the British courts for justice.

A ceremony in the South Australian outback has marked the formal handover of the former nuclear test site at Maralinga to Indigenous people. The British Government tested weapons at Maralinga in the state's far west in the 1950s and 1960s, including seven full-scale nuclear tests. The South Australian Government says the land has been decontaminated but some will be fenced off because it remains unsafe.

A ceremony in the South Australian outback has marked the formal handover of the former nuclear test site at Maralinga to Indigenous people. The British Government tested weapons at Maralinga in the state's far west in the 1950s and 1960s, including seven full-scale nuclear tests. The South Australian Government says the land has been decontaminated but some will be fenced off because it remains unsafe.

NUCLEAR waste from UK tests at Maralinga in the 1950s may have been dumped at sea despite the Federal Government ordering a proper clean-up. Just how much radioactive waste resulted from the British series of tests at Maralinga, in South Australia, and how the then British government disposed of it has always been a mystery. However, declassified British Government documents to be released publicly today under the 30-year rule reveal for the first time the plutonium's final resting place was probably the ocean floor.

The tragic legacy of Britain's nuclear testing at Maralinga in the South Australian outback is now a well-documented chapter in the nation's history. But for the Aboriginal people whose land was used for the tests, there is a feeling that their voice has not been heard. Now a group of women from remote communities in South Australia's far west coast have written and illustrated their story for the first time. Transcript KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: Thanks to the efforts of a Royal Commission, the tragic legacy of Britain's nuclear testing at Maralinga in the South Australian outback is now a well documented chapter in the nation's history.

A GROUP of nuclear veterans will launch a class action against the federal government this week seeking compensation for exposure to atomic tests at Maralinga in the 1950s and 1960s. Led by Australian Nuclear Veterans Association national president Ric Johnstone, the group has been buoyed by a ruling last month in Britain's High Court allowing British veterans suffering from ill health to pursue a class action against the Ministry of Defence. Mr Johnstone, a former RAAF mechanic who decontaminated vehicles used at Maralinga during the nuclear testing, told The Australian a team of lawyers was drafting a letter to send to Kevin Rudd and Veterans Affairs Minister Alan Griffin this week. The group will then lodge a statement of claim with the Federal Court seeking undisclosed damages -- likely to be "several million dollars" -- from the federal government.

"Australian aborigines and former servicemen are to sue the British Ministry of Defence over diseases and disabilities that they claim were caused by nuclear testing in the Outback more than 50 years ago. Maureen Williams 57 from Coober Pedy has joined the class action against the British government over the atomic testing at Maralinga Maureen Williams 57 from Coober Pedy has joined the class action against the British government over the atomic testing at Maralinga Photo: Mark Brake. A group of 250 people, including 150 former servicemen, say they have suffered cancer, skin disease and deformities because of the fallout from blasts. If they win, the British Government could be faced with a bill for compensation which will run to millions of pounds, according to lawyers for the group, which will be represented by Cherie Booth QC. "

"A blighted site is handed back to the people displaced by British bombs FROM the air, Maralinga looks much like the rest of Australia's outback: vast, red and empty. Up close, there are differences. Its long, quiet airstrip recalls a time when this was an unlikely epicentre of the cold war. Parrots and wedge-tailed eagles cruise above a desert still littered with radioactive plutonium and other fragments of atomic weapons that Britain exploded more than 50 years ago. Newspix Staking claim on a humble plot of Hiroshima Once teeming with nuclear scientists and British and Australian servicemen, Maralinga fell into eerie silence when the tests ended, in the early 1960s. Then just before Christmas 2009, it returned to life."

"As a 21-year-old, Ric Johnstone drove 150 miles daily across the scorching vastness of the Australian outback to work. A motor mechanic in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), he spent 1956 servicing military vehicles in the Great Victorian Desert. He lived with 300 other men in a tent town, eating dinners of bullied beef with the occasional vegetable. Johnstone described his first six months as similar to being a prisoner in a chain gang: "There was no church, no women, no entertainment, nothing.""

WHEN Jeff Liddiatt began suffering a range of health problems in his early 50s, his doctors were completely stumped. All of a sudden the seemingly fit and healthy former motor fitter began developing illnesses more common in much older men. It wasn't until Mr Liddiatt told his doctors that he had worked at Maralinga when the British Government was carrying out secret atomic tests in the 1950s that the penny dropped.

BRITISH nuclear tests in the 1960s left Maralinga holding a quantity of bomb-grade plutonium, and no ideas what to do with it. For the government of Malcolm Fraser, this represented a series of problems. It wasn't very well guarded, it wasn't especially secret and it wasn't clear the British government would want to take it back. Cabinet papers for 1978 - released by the National Archives of Australia under the 30-year rule - show the government did manage to persuade the British government to take back their leftovers, provided the entire operation was kept top secret.

Britain deliberately misled Australia about the effects of its nuclear tests at Maralinga and poisoned hundreds of servicemen with its atomic blasts, London's High Court has heard. The claims were made on the first day of a long-awaited legal battle by more than 800 veterans who are demanding millions of dollars in compensation from Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD).

"The Federal Government says compensation outlined in the budget for Maralinga veterans was not a move to placate veterans who have been critical of their treatment. More than $24 million has been allocated for service pensions, health care cards and disability pensions for veterans or their widows. Veterans' Affairs Minister Alan Griffin says it follows through on an election commitment."

A class action is being launched against the Federal Government by a group of Australian veterans of British atomic tests in the 1950s and 1960s. They are seeking compensation for ill health as a result of exposure to the tests at Maralinga in South Australia's far west. Their action follows a court ruling in Britain which has allowed veterans there to sue the British Government. Ric Johnstone from the Australian Nuclear Veterans Association says many veterans have already died, but they are determined to press on with the court case. "We could be long gone by the time it comes to a conclusion, but we're concerned mostly about our offspring and some of those will still be around in 40 or 50 years to come, we hope," he said. "And if they have any problems related to the exposure of their parents, then that should be covered by the Federal Government.

"THE Rudd Government has refused to help Australian veterans who are suing the British Government over radiation exposure during atomic bomb tests in the 1950s and 60s. A group of survivors and their families are joining a class action after 800 British nuclear veterans were granted permission to sue their own Ministry of Defence."

The chief scientist at Britain's controversial nuclear tests FLED the danger zone... while thousands of troops were left behind to be nuked. Dr William Penney's own RAF batman (personal assistant) says he and top military brass left the area before the biggest bomb exploded in the South Pacific because, scientists admitted, they "didn't have a clue what would happen". "Penney scarpered somewhere safe and only came back in the evening, hours after the bomb," said Ralph Gray, now 73. At the same time several thousand servicemen - not told of the dangers - were ordered to stand and watch the detonation from only a few miles away.