Woomera Heritage Centre with Ron Kandelaars: In the Outback region of South Australia

In the last days of World War Two, the people of Britain were subjected to a new kind of warfare. With little or no warning un-manned V2 rockets dropped from the skies.

From September 1944 until March 1945, more than twelve hundred V2 Rockets, flying at five times the speed of sound crashed into English cities. Warfare would never be the same.

These cataclysmic events would reverberate around the world even on the gibber plains of northern South Australia. The Brits were determined to develop the sort of weaponry the Germans had just used on them. But with their large population, they needed a rocket range and that's where Australia came in.

If you want to launch rockets you need plenty of space and there's no shortage of that around Woomera. A short drive from the town reveals the most amazing landscapes of salt lakes and vast rocky plains.

Out here you'd be hard pressed to hit anything. In fact you could shoot over much of outback South Australia and to the west. And if you overshot the mark there was always the Indian Ocean.

So in 1947 a bloke called Len Beadell was sent out to have a look around.

"Len's a legend around here," explained local, Frank Woolfe. "Len Beadell was the great Australian explorer, road maker and surveyor. If it wasn't for Len, none of this would be here because he surveyed the site and decided on Woomera."

Len surveyed what used to be pastoral country and the home of the Kokotha aboriginal people. Woomera is their word for spear thrower and over many decades many countries would hurl their rocket-propelled spears into the outback sky.

Outside the Woomera Heritage Centre is a theme park with a difference. It displays rockets, weapons, and bombs - virtually everything that has been trialed on the range. Inside the Centre there's a collection of space junk that has fallen out of the sky over the past forty years.

Among the exhibits is a Jindivick Target Drone. "It was a pilotless aircraft a bit like a big radio controlled aeroplane," explained frank. "It was the ultimate boy's toy which would hone a fighter pilot's skills."

Boys and their toys in deed - they've they've used some pretty amazing stuff out on the rocket range.

For much of it's life Woomera was a closed town. In it's heyday the seven thousand people who worked here needed the highest security clearances. It was a time of cold war tensions in which the West sought to gain the upper hand in weaponry.

And it was also the beginning of satellite technology upon which we all rely so heavily today.

"What we've got here is the left over bits and pieces of a failed launch. This was a satellite or at least it was going to be a satellite," Frank said wryly. "It was from the Eldo launchings back in the 1960s."

They eventually got it right and put Australia on the map of satellite technology.

Woomera really came into its own as the iron curtain descended over Europe following World War Two. It was here that the British and Australians first began developing and testing rockets. And it was also here in 1967 that the Australians launched their first satellite, the fourth country to do so behind the USA, The former Soviet Union and France.

It's just one of the many achievements on show at the Woomera Heritage Centre, which is open daily. Woomera is between Port Augusta and Roxby Downs about 490 kilometres from Adelaide.

The Woomera Heritage Centre
Dewrang Ave
Woomera
Open Daily 9am - 5pm