Cold War heritage and the planned community: Woomera Village in outback Australia
The heritage of the Cold War is attracting increasing international interest. Much of that revolves around technological legacies; less attention has been paid to the community infrastructure which supported defence research, weapons testing and military installations. Security and
operational logistics meant that research and development was conducted not only in restricted settings but also in often geographically remote situations. An archetypal example is the Woomera Rocket Range in outback South Australia, where long-range weapons were trialled from 1947 under a
joint project between the British and Australian governments. Woomera Village, established as a planned residential facility to support personnel employed on the Range, survives today in a similar role, but with a population greatly diminished from its late-1960s heyday. This paper introduces
the Village against the backdrop of Cold War heritage and spatial planning ideology, surveys its raison d’être and growth as a Cold War town, and considers its modern-day status as a heritage place and sustainable community.
Keywords: Australia; Cold War heritage; Woomera Village; planned community; post-war planning
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: School of Art, Architecture and Design,University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia 2: Faculty of the Built Environment,University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Publication date: 01 November 2012
- Editorial Board
- Information for Authors
- Subscribe to this Title
- Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content