Under an agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia, efforts were made to clean up the site before the Maralinga people resettled on the land in 1995.

Two were set atop towers, one at ground level, and one released by a Royal Air Force Vickers Valiant bomber from a height of 9,100 m (30,000 ft).

They completed a move back into Oak Valley in March 1985,[4] a new community approximately 128 kilometres (80 mi) NNW of the original township of Maralinga.

[8] Despite the governments of Australia and the UK paying for two decontamination programmes, concerns have been expressed that some areas of the Maralinga test sites are still contaminated 10 years after being declared "clean", as late as 2011.

[9][10][11][12][13] It was found in 2021 that radioactive ("hot") particles persist in the soil, after international multidisciplinary team of scientists studied the results produced by a machine at Monash University that is capable of slicing open tiny samples using a beam of high-energy ions only a nanometre wide.

The analysis of the results suggested that natural processes in the desert environment could bring about the slow release of plutonium over a long period.

It was deliberately broadcast around the same time that the drama series Operation Buffalo was on, to give voice to the Indigenous people of the area and show how it disrupted their lives.

[19] The film shows the resilience of the Maralinga Tjarutja people, in which the elders "reveal a perspective of deep time and an understanding of place that generates respect for the sacredness of both", their ancestors having lived in the area for millennia.