During the 1950s and 1960s, the British government tested nuclear weapons at the Woomera Test Range in central South Australia. The first two bombs were exploded at Emu Field, located to the north of Maralinga, in 1953. Major tests were done at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957, and multiple smaller tests were made up until 1963. Barton was still a young man at the time. Maralinga was Barton's mother's country, and remains the homeland of the Maralinga Tjarutja people. Most of the indigenous families living in these lands were forced to move out of the area before the major tests began. They were placed in Aboriginal missions and settlements built by the government.