Rocket testings started around about 7th September 1958. I was about 6 years old at the time, and I saw and felt the ground shake as the rockets screamed into the dark night skies time after time. The one I remembered the most has stuck with me throughout my life. It happened one night as we were travelling from Andamooka Opal Fields via Woomera to Port Augusta. The sun was just setting as we came into Woomera. My parents and grandparents wanted to fill up our two cars; we owned an old black model T ford and an old Buckboard truck. We also had 6 camels and a Jinker (Cart) just in case.

When we got to the large wire gates of Woomera, my family were told to 'keep on going' that there was no fuel available, and that we were not allowed to go through Woomera to get to Pimba which was the main road to Port Augusta. The old people decided to travel through to Port Augusta via the old powerline road which was always used by the old people for as long as I could remember, a long time before the Americans came to Woomera. It was during this time that our old truck ran out of fuel and we had to change over to the camel Jinker and the black ford, we were not far from Woomera and it was already very dark.

It was during the changeover that my grandmothers began to wail - it was a very terrifying sound to hear, they sounded very frightened, and then I felt the ground moving. The rest of my family started screaming and running and crawling towards the old truck. I was still between the truck and the camel Jinker when I was thrown off my feet and landed on my back screaming 'mummoo, mumoo', which is another word for 'devl or evil spirit'. When I started screaming I heard my grandmothers wailing, screaming, running and crawling towards me. I was on my back and the ground felt like a million hands were trying to drag me into it. I heard a loud boom and it felt like my head was exploding from the inside out and the feeling was like pins and needles sticking into all my blood veins; it felt like they were ripped to shreds. My grandmother wrapped her arms around me to protect me and I wrapped my arms around her throat and neck as I watched the streak of light shoot up into the black sky and the fire and the smell of hydrogen gas filled my nose and eyes, and I went deaf. I couldn't hear myself or anyone else anymore, all I saw was everyone's open mouths and terrified faces and the sound of the end of the world. Whatever that sound is I don't know, but this sounded like nothing I have ever heard before and will never wish on anyone else.

The whole air around us was crackling like electricity and my dad ripped my arms from my grandmother's neck and dragged us both underneath the truck where everybody else was. I was covered over with a blanket and held until I went to sleep I think we all slept under the truck that night. That night just seemed to have disappeared from my mind, and being just a child of 6 years, I guess that is a good thing in a way, because children are designed to forget because they are so busy filling their minds and days with other things.

My days were filled with travelling, camping under the stars, riding on the camel Jinker and just enjoying my early childhood with my grandparents, parents and siblings as we moved from country to country. However, my teenage years were plagued with nightmares, screaming, people running and grabbing with each other, and I was always woken abruptly with bright flashing lights and loud screaming whistling sounds. All my life I could never sleep in a room without a light on because the nightmares were too frightening, I could never understand why I was having these nightmares, until last year in November 2007 when I had to write up an affidavit of myself and my family - it was then that I remembered everything. It just all came back like a flash, then I remembered other things like a story that mum told me how when she was pregnant with me in Roxby Downs Station, and a few bombs were tested close by in Woomera and Maralinga, she got a high fever and some ashes got on top of her head. Because of this I was born prematurely and my grandparents died soon after.

I have never known them only of them, they were full blood Kokatha people, my father's great-great-great-grandparents. I was born with an unusual spinal formation, and doctors have often asked me if it hurts, they seem to wonder why I don't feel any pain. I am beginning to wonder myself too now, probably when I get really really old I will feel it then. After my grandparent, great-grandparents and dad died, I seem to have fallen into an abyss of guilt. I have since been diagnosed with severe depression, heart disease, bone problems and chronic ashtma, amongst other illnessess. Through research I have found some information on the history of Maralinga and the Woomera Rocket Range on Kokatha country. I will add these along with a photo of the Black Knight which was a product of Britain the United States, and it had something to do with their decision to get back into the race, that is, the 'Long - Range Rocket Field'. By adding these pictures, my aim is to show the sizes of the rockets, compared to the people which is my grandmother, myself and the men who worked on the range.

Morton, Peter Fire across the desert: Woomera and the Anglo-Australian Joint Project 1946-1980 Canberra: AGPS Press, 1989

Parkinson, Alan Maralinga: Australia's nuclear waste cover-up Sydney: ABC Books, 2007

ARPANSA Maralinga site clean-up

BBC Radio 4: Factual: Fallout at Maralinga

Irati wanti: 50 years of the bomb

Kokatha Mula Nation

Woomera

Woomera on the web