The decision to hold the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne – the first outside the northern hemisphere – was taken in April 1949. Melbourne won over Buenos Aires even though the equestrian events would have to be held in Stockholm because of Australia’s strict horse quarantine regimes. The horses and their riders were well out of it, because large areas of grazing land – the food supplies of major cities such as Melbourne – were ‘top-dressed’ by radiation fallout from the six atomic bombs detonated by Britain in Australia during the six months prior to the November 1956 opening of the Games. This article looks at the sixty years of cover-up that followed in both the scientific and political discourses that included a Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia in 1985.
The Rabbitt Review (accessed) 18th July 2018 read more »
