As an Aussie old enough to remember these nuclear tests off the coast of Australia, I can assure you that live film footage of the event was not—and could not have been in the early fifties—doctored so as to escape detection with modern imaging forensics.
An image from the HWT book "Moments in Time" showing observation
of a nuclear bomb blast test on Monte Bello Island in October 1952.
The Western Australian archipelago of Monte Bello Islands—west of Karratha—as well as Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia, were the sites of British nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s.
This is Monte Bello Island today:
In my opinion, it's ludicrous for people (other than conspiracy theorists of course) to accept/claim/believe that nuclear weapons testing has never taken place.
Only last year, a veteran's wife won a ten-year battle for the war widow's pension after she successfully argued her husband committed suicide because of his involvement in earlier atomic bomb testing in Australia. His 2001 suicide at age 67 was deemed to have been brought on by the chronic pain of his dermatitis.
The persistent skin condition, his widow argued, had been brought on when her husband flew his RAAF Neptune aircraft through a nuclear mushroom cloud off the Western Australian coast on May 16, 1956.
From the report: "Relying on 57-year-old log books of Operation Mosaic—the code name given to the atomic weapons testing at the Monte Bello islands—as well as a witness account of the explosion and design points of the aircraft, the tribunal found the pilot would have suffered contamination.
It heard navigation in the 1950s was not precise, meaning avoidance of the atomic cloud could be difficult, and the the Neptune aircraft was not sealed, nor fitted with filters and the crew did not wear protective clothing.
A retired captain, who had experienced the explosion from a ship anchored off the islands and later worked with the pilot, also recounted a conversation with his old colleague in which he told him he had flown through the mushroom cloud. The tribunal heard the pilot suffered from a very rare skin condition that could have been caused by ionising radiation."
And a report from "The Canberra Times" 12 June 1956 says:
All Ready For Next A-Bomb But Weather
ONSLOW, (WA), Monday—It is only a matter of weather now. That is the feeling at Onslow.
When the surface winds and upper winds are offshore in the Onslow area and conditions are right in Perth, someone will press a button and Britain's second Monte Bello atom bomb of the current series will be fired.
The final parts of the bomb have arrived. The safety committee has arrived. The Neptune security patrols have begun.
Everyone and every thing is in place, waiting.