One of the most significant impacts of the Second World War was the development and use of nuclear weapons against Japan. Although Australia was not a combat zone in or immediately after World War II, the country was certainly affected by the global conflict. Military personnel fought in the war as part of the Commonwealth, and due to the country’s close relationship with the UK, the Australian government maintained an interest in British military developments. When the UK sought to obtain their own nuclear weapons, the Australian government offered remote desert land to be used for nuclear testing. The UK government carried out nuclear tests between 1955 and 1963 and often used military personnel from the UK and Australia as test subjects to research the effects of a nuclear bomb on human beings, as well as giving them responsibility for cleanup after individual tests. Approximately 22,000 British military personnel (British Nuclear Veterans Association), 8000 Australian military personnel plus an unknown number of Aboriginal people and soldiers from Fiji and New Zealand were affected by fallout from nuclear tests. Although both the UK and Australian governments have acknowledged that the tests may have caused ill health effects for some soldiers, military personnel are still burdened with ‘proving’ they were at the test site; a problem made more difficult by the secrecy surrounding the test themselves. In fact, very few records exist that state who was sent to test sites. As a result, only a fraction of the approximately 40,000 soldiers affected by nuclear fallout have received compensation (British Nuclear Veterans Association).