While he was in the Northern part of Australia, Wongar worked on his "Totem and Ore" photographic collection, also known under the title "Boomerang and Atom". The collection contained several thousand black-and-white photographs portraying the impact of uranium mining and the British nuclear testing on tribal Aborigines. In 1974, Wongar was asked to send some of the "Totem and Ore" photographs for an exhibition in the Parliament House Library in Canberra. The exhibition was banned by order of the Australian parliament only a few hours after the official opening.