Adelaide That Was 1950s: WRE Salisbury & Guided Weapons Testing in Woomera

The RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC) is a major Australian military and civil aerospace facility and operation located in South Australia, approximately 450 km north-west of Adelaide. The WRC is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a division of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The complex has a land area of 122,188 km2 or roughly the size of North Korea or Pennsylvania. The airspace above the area is restricted and controlled by the RAAF for safety and security. The WRC is a highly specialised ADF test and evaluation capability operated by the RAAF for the purposes of testing defence materiel. The complex has been variously known as the Anglo-Australian Long Range Weapons Establishment and then the Woomera Rocket Range; the RAAF Woomera Test Range and in 2013, the facility was reorganised and renamed to the RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC). The ground area of the WRC is defined by the Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA) and includes the Nurrungar Test Area (NTA); with a land area of 122,188 km2, the WPA is described by the RAAF as the largest land-based test range in the western world. The Woomera Prohibited Area Coordination Office (WPACO) coordinates daily operation of the complex which comprises a mix of South Australian crown land and is covered by pastoral leases and mining tenements granted by the Government of South Australia. The Woomera Prohibited Area Advisory Board monitors the operations of the WPA and the WPACO. The airspace above the WPA is called the Woomera Restricted Airspace (WRX) and is controlled by the RAAF for safety and security reasons during the conduct of some activities on the complex together with the support of Air Services Australia. The complex also contains the RAAF Base Woomera, or the RAAF Woomera Airfield, the dual-runway military airfield located 3 NM north of the settlement of the Woomera Village. The airfield has been in military operation since an RAF Dakota landed at Woomera on 19 June 1947.

Woomera, unofficially known as Woomera village, is located on the traditional lands of the Kokatha people in the Far North region. The dunes and trees are considered sacred to the Kokatha people, being linked to their Tjukurpa (Dreaming) stories, in particular that of the Seven Sisters creation story. In 2021, an anti-aircraft missile was found at Lake Hart West, a registered Aboriginal heritage site and this was not removed for around a year. Within the prohibited area, there is also a "red zone" which is used for the most intensive weapons testing and for which access permits are not generally issued, and this area is supposed to be cleaned by the Department of Defence and the trees protected when testing is under way. However, a 2022 inspection by SBS News reporters and Kokatha representatives found that there were shell fragments of carbon fibre on the dunes around the site. There are also a number of significant and rare archaeological sites which are remnants of previous Kokatha habitation within the weapons testing range. There are at least 14 separate stone foundations at Lake Hart North (not used by the department), which the archaeologists surmised were either "habitation structures" or "low-walled hunting hides". At another location, Wild Dog Creek, there are a number of rock engravings in the Panaramitee Style (generally dated to 10,000 years ago), created by chipping away the rock with sharp tools. Other Aboriginal Australian rock art exists throughout the area, including at Lake Hart, portraying, among other things, footprints which match the Genyornis, a giant bird that went extinct thousands of years ago. The report states that the location was likely "inhabited and used for many thousands of years", informally dated to up to 50,000 years ago, and the sites could provide hitherto unknown cultural information about the Australian desert area. Following its construction over 1947–53, Woomera Village essentially operated under a specialised Commonwealth/Defence township management model rather than a local government (council) model. At the height of its operations (1947–99), over 7,000 people lived in Woomera Village. To service the needs of the town during this period, the Woomera Board, staffed by members of the Defence community, essentially acted in the role normally provided by a local government council. However, the creation of a Defence Estate management organisation in the 1990s shifted the focus of the Board's activities away from estate and infrastructure management toward principally that of a base welfare organisation supporting the small permanent community and the large number of transit Defence personnel who deploy to Woomera each year. Woomera Village, when originally established, was administered by the Long Range Weapons Establishment (LRWE) under the terms of the 'Anglo-Australian Joint Project'. LRWE was based at Salisbury to the north of Adelaide city, the site now occupied by Defence Science & Technology Group (DSTG).