In 1953, when Yami Lester was 10 years old, the United Kingdom began conducting nuclear tests at Emu Field near his home in the Australian outback.

He remembered radioactive debris, or “black mist”, filling the sky. It caused his eyes to sting and, within four years, he had lost all sight.

“I was just playing with the other kids. That’s when the bomb went off,” he recalled. “I remember the noise, it was a strange noise, not loud, not like anything I’d ever heard before. The earth shook at the same time; we could feel the whole place move.”

Within hours, everyone in his community fell sick. “We were all vomiting; we had diarrhoea, skin rashes and sore eyes,” he said. “Some of the older people, they died.”

Yami went on to become a leading advocate on behalf of Aboriginal communities in Australia who had suffered harm as a result of the tests. Since his death in 2017, his children have carried on the struggle for justice.