In fifty-six, September’s end,
Young Nyarri walked with childlike friends.
Through Maralinga’s desert heat,
They stalked the roos in dry retreat.
Three brothers from the Martu clan,
With spear and boomerang in hand.
They hunted not for sport or fame,
But for the kin from which they came.
The kangaroos would dash and dart,
Just as they’d nearly play their part.
Again they fled, again they missed—
A chase that danced like desert mist.
At last they found a watering hole,
A chance to meet their hunting goal.
With silent signs and sharpened eyes,
They crouched beneath the desert skies.
But just as Nyarri crept in low,
A distant rumble started slow.
The heavens flashed an eerie white—
Too bright to bear, too wrong for light.
A burning wind then tore the land,
It knocked the boys from where they’d stand.
And from the ground, with squinting gaze,
He watched the world become a haze.
The roos they stalked began to rise,
Like spirits pulled into the skies.
Then dropped like stones before their feet,
So still, so strange, so quick, so neat.
The wind died down, the light grew dim,
But silence screamed with something grim.
And yet the brothers, awed and awed,
Declared the scene a gift from God.
They hauled the roos back home that night,
Their hearts alive with strange delight.
The tribe rejoiced with meat and flame,
And praised the gods who knew their name.
But come the dawn, that joy had fled—
The sick were groaning in their bed.
With rashes red and writhing pain,
Their grateful feast had turned to bane.
The elders wept, some children died,
And no one knew the reason why.
Was it a curse? A poisoned beast?
Or judgment for their savage feast?
The years went by with grief and fear,
Till sixty-seven brought it near.
When men from lands across the sea
Unveiled the truth so bitterly.
In secret, Britain’s bombs were tossed—
And Maralinga paid the cost.
Explosions tested underground
Had scorched the soul of sacred ground.
That blinding light, that burning breath,
Was not divine, but manmade death.
The roos had stood too near the blast,
Their fragile forms not meant to last.
And Nyarri, though not far away,
Had lived to see another day.
The meat, they learned, was laced with dread—
A meal of atoms, cold and dead.
Radiation kissed their skin,
It burned their blood from deep within.
No godly gift, no sacred grace—
Just fallout raining on their place.
The years would pass, and wounds remained,
While guilty nations made campaigns.
A sum was paid—too small, too late—
To tribes who’d suffered from their fate.
But Nyarri lived. He tells it still—
The flash, the feast, the deadly chill.
A tale of men who played with fire,
And scorched the world with mad desire.
So listen well, both old and young,
The bombs that spoke had no real tongue.
What seemed like grace from skies above
Was only fallout, not God’s love.