The Bomb Squad

15 December: A PUB, a post office and a handful of houses - the small country town of Hawkesdale is a good three hours' drive south-west from Melbourne. An unlikely target for a nuclear attack, most people would reckon. But the kids in town know differently. ''The very first nuclear bomb affected people over 80 kilometres away,'' says Trevor, a grade 6 student at the local school, referring to the blast at Hiroshima in 1945. It doesn't matter how far away an atomic bomb goes off, says another student. ''One country having nuclear weapons can involve the whole world.''  Read more