Matthew Abraham: Is the boomerang another example of government space spin? Maybe, but if it is, it’s a good one

If sending an SA-made boomerang into space with NASA is a PR move, it’s a good one, writes Matthew Abraham.

The last time they checked the odometer, Voyager 1 was roughly 23bn kilometres from the sun and heading out of town fast.

The town in question is the solar system and Voyager 1 is now escaping it at a speed of 538,552,332km a year. Let’s just round it up to a gazillion kilometres a year, shall we?

It was launched 43 years ago, on September 5, 1977. So it’s got some serious miles on the clock.

Voyager 1 is now the most distant human-made object in space, with its sister spacecraft Voyager 2 hot on its heels.

Glued to the outside of each Voyager is what’s officially known as The Golden Record.

These are 30cm gold-plated copper discs with diagrams, images and sounds from Earth, including sketches of the naked male and female body, popular songs, encoded analog photos and a pulsar map showing our location in the solar system, with a dab of uranium-238 to help aliens calculate how long it’s been in space.

The best thing about the golden records is that each comes with a stylus to enable ET to play them. I’m not making any of this up. Aliens will need to bring their own gramophone.

NASA astronaut and Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Shannon Walker. Picture: NASA

Last week, Premier Steven Marshall revealed that a boomerang, made by local Kaurna and Narrunga man Jack Buckskin, had “made its way into space” on board a NASA-operated Tesla Falcon 9 rocket. It was safely delivered to the International Space Station by US astronaut and physicist Dr Shannon Walker, wife of Adelaide astronaut Andy Thomas.

Mr Buckskin said it was beyond words to have a boomerang he designed taken into space.

“It’s pretty crazy that something that has been handmade down here is up in the reality of the sky world with our Aboriginal ancestors from that part of our culture,” he said.

The boomerang’s journey isn’t as wildly ambitious as the Voyager golden records but it’s still a great little intergalactic moment for South Australia.

Woomera Rocket Range, built in 1947 in the infant days of the Cold War, played a top secret role in the development of space exploration – and warfare – for more than three decades.

Now Premier Marshall is touting South Australia as the home of a new Australian space program.

He’s often guilty of over-egging the space pudding so is the boomerang another example of government space spin? Maybe, but if it is, it’s a good one.

The boomerang gesture does show a side of the Premier that deserves more recognition.

In opposition and in government, he’s shown a strong personal and policy interest in Aboriginal culture and the complex issues affecting Indigenous South Australians.

One of the few genuinely unscripted and revealing moments of Steven Marshall’s time as Opposition Leader is a 2017 photograph of him stretched out on his back in the sun, relaxing with Indigenous elder Lee Brady, near rock pools in the APY Lands.

Steven Marshall and APY Cultural Liasion and Aboriginal elder Lee Brady relax in the sun near rock pools in the APY Lands. Picture: Dylan Coker

It was a captain’s call by the Premier to create a $200m Indigenous cultural centre as the “jewel in the crown” of the Liberals’ plans to redevelop the former Royal Adelaide Hospital site, or Lot Fourteen, on North Terrace.

It was and is a controversial, and it’s fair to say not universally popular, decision.

The APY Land Rights Act was initiated by the reformist Dunstan Labor Government but passed with modifications by the one-term Liberal Government in 1981, personally steered through by then premier, the late David Tonkin.

It’s a reminder that Labor doesn’t have a monopoly on Indigenous rights.

It’s also a reminder that despite the best intentions, both Labor and Liberal governments, and we as a community, continue to fail our First Australians on many fronts.

If we ever bolt a golden record on the side of a long-distance spacecraft, maybe that’s something we could confess to aliens, in the deep blackness, somewhere out beyond the Milky Way. And maybe also explain that we’re a decent bunch, well worth a visit, even if they’d have to quarantine for 14 days

To the Voyagers, planet Earth with all its grandiose plans and earthly woes is now just a pretty blue dot in the rear vision mirror. Think of that next time you stare at the night sky.