Operation Buffalo, the first series, consisted of four tests in September and October 1956. One Tree and Breakaway were detonated on towers, yielding 12.9 and 10.8 kilotons respectively. Marcoo was a ground-level blast of 1.4 kilotons. Kite -- a 2.9-kiloton device dropped from a Royal Air Force Vickers Valiant bomber at 35,000 feet -- became the first British nuclear weapon ever delivered from an aircraft. Operation Antler followed in September 1957 with three more tests: Tadje at 0.93 kilotons, Biak at 5.67, and Taranaki at 26.6 kilotons, the largest detonation at Maralinga. Tadje used cobalt pellets as a yield tracer, sparking rumors -- unfounded, but persistent -- that Britain was developing a cobalt bomb. The last test was suspended from balloons, its fireball rolling across a landscape that had been home to people for tens of thousands of years.

British and Australian servicemen were deliberately positioned to witness the blasts, some ordered to advance toward ground zero shortly after detonation to study the effects of radiation exposure on troops. They were given no meaningful protective equipment. Participants were bound by secrecy provisions and prohibited from disclosing what they had experienced. It was nuclear veteran Avon Hudson who broke that silence in the 1970s, risking imprisonment to speak publicly about what he and others had endured. His disclosures helped trigger the McClelland Royal Commission of 1984-1985, which confirmed what the veterans already knew: significant contamination remained at the test sites, and the government had failed to protect the people it exposed. The Aboriginal communities of the area had been forcibly relocated, but inadequately -- some Maralinga Tjarutja people passed through contaminated zones during and after the tests, their presence either unnoticed or disregarded.

The seven nuclear detonations were only part of the story. Between 1953 and 1963, hundreds of so-called "minor trials" were conducted at Maralinga, testing weapons components, detonation mechanisms, and dispersal patterns without full nuclear explosions. These trials -- bearing codenames like Kittens, Tims, Rats, and Vixen -- scattered plutonium, beryllium, and uranium across the test range. The Vixen B trials were the worst. They used conventional explosives to blow apart plutonium-bearing assemblies, distributing fine radioactive particles across wide areas. The contamination from these minor trials ultimately proved more difficult to remediate than the bomb craters themselves, because the plutonium was dispersed through the topsoil rather than concentrated at specific blast points.

Two decontamination efforts have been attempted. The first, called Operation Brumby, was carried out by the British in the 1960s and widely criticized as inadequate. The second, completed in 2000 under an agreement between the UK and Australian governments, involved burying tonnes of contaminated soil and debris in two trenches roughly 16 meters deep. The Australian government declared the site clean. Not everyone agreed. In 2021, an international team of scientists at Monash University used a focused ion beam to slice open tiny radioactive particles recovered from Maralinga soil. Their analysis suggested that natural processes in the desert environment -- weathering, water infiltration, biological activity -- were slowly releasing plutonium from these particles. The contamination, decades after being declared resolved, was still migrating through the landscape.

In January 1985, under the Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984, freehold title over the land was returned to its traditional owners, the Anangu people. They resettled at Oak Valley, a new community about 128 kilometers north-northwest of the original Maralinga township. In 1994, the Australian government paid $13.5 million to the Maralinga Tjarutja in settlement of all claims related to the nuclear testing. Whether that sum represents just compensation for the contamination of ancestral country with plutonium is a question the settlement itself cannot answer. The Maralinga Tjarutja continue to advocate for the land and its care. A 2020 documentary, directed by Larissa Behrendt, gave voice to their elders, who spoke of deep time, sacred connection, and a resilience that outlasted the bombs.