Walking towards Woomera: touring the boundaries of ‘unAustralian geographies’

Abstract

Woomera, located in the desert almost 500km north of Adelaide, is constituted by a complex history as the world’s longest rocket range, a support base for British nuclear tests and the US surveillance base at Nurrungar, the location of a detention centre for asylum seekers, and indigenous homeland of the Kokatha people. By following a metaphorical journey, the article explores the affective qualities of Woomera in relation to national identities and geographies, and the contested meanings of ‘Australian’ and ‘unAustralian’. The reader is invited to walk across a shifting socio-political landscape of inclusion and exclusion and to weave together the fragmentary stories of Woomera. To guide the journey, the paper draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the refrain to trace the contours of past and emerging territories of detention, deterrence and shifting borders, in order to reveal an alter-tale of national identity and spatiality that is forgotten and repressed. This ‘open secret’ is shown to actively sustain the imaginary of ‘fortress Australia’ and the paradoxical space of ‘unAustralian geographies’.