The British nuclear bomb test program held in Australia in the 1950s and early 1960s is a tale of nuclear colonialism that had long-lasting fallout in Australia, both physical and political. A large portion of the test program was held in the South Australian desert, mostly at a remote location called Maralinga. The Maralinga tests, especially the plutonium tests known as Vixen B, were conducted under the cover of extreme secrecy. The secrecy put in place at the Maralinga test range, shored up by the imposition of information controls such as D-notices that deliberately fostered media self-censorship, enabled experiments of unprecedented risk to be conducted without public consent and their toxic aftermath to be left unaddressed for many years. The nuclear tests are among the most significant events in Australia’s history not to have been subjected to media scrutiny until many years after they took place. Many of the requirements for secrecy were imposed by the British authorities who conducted the tests. The Australian government under Robert Menzies was found later in the Royal Commission into the tests to have been overly compliant and insufficiently vigilant. Australia was not itself a nuclear power but was hosting extensive atomic tests on its territory, with little effective say in their conduct. The Australian public was largely oblivious to the events at Maralinga while they were underway. A great era of uncovering, driven primarily by journalists, began in the late 1970s and continued until 1993. The entire British nuclear test program was spread over 11 years and took place at three locations: the Monte Bello Islands off the Western Australian coast, and Emu Field and Maralinga in the South Australian desert. A total of 12 major atomic bombs were exploded. The Vixen B radiological experiments were only held at Maralinga and involved exploding the longest-lived isotope of plutonium using conventional explosives. These tests took place in 1960, 1961 and 1963, arguably in defiance of an international moratorium on weapons testing. They received no media coverage at all until the late 1970s. The Maralinga site was extensively contaminated by Vixen B, a problem that was not addressed in any meaningful way until after the publication of a landmark piece of scientific investigative journalism published in 1993. This paper examines the tests, particularly Vixen B, and considers the long-lasting aftermath that is still being felt today.