keep them away from the test site. For this he employed three strategies. The first was to remove the incentive to go there. An important lure was the availability of rations at Ooldea and surrounding missions, so he had them closed. The Ooldea mission was closed in June 1952, and the reserve was revoked in February 1954. The inhabitants were moved to a new settlement at Yalata, but many ritual objects had been concealed and left behind. They preferred the landscape of the desert, and many left Yalata to return to their traditional lands. A more successful tactic was to frighten them. The desert was said to be inhabited by wanampi, dangerous rainbow serpent spirits that lived in blowholes in the area. The noise of the nuclear tests was attributed to wanampi, as were the dangers of radiation. The decision to establish the Giles Weather Station in the Rawlinson Ranges was a complicating factor because it was outside MacDougall's jurisdiction, being just across the border in Western Australia, where the legal environment was different, and the Aboriginal people there had little contact with white people. Another patrol officer position was created, one with powers under the 1954 Western Australian Native Welfare Act, which was filled by a Sydney University graduate, Robert Macaulay. Operation Buffalo Planning and purpose Operation Buffalo was the first nuclear test series to be conducted at Maralinga, and the largest ever held in Australia. Planning for the series, initially codenamed Theta, began in mid-1954. It was initially scheduled for April and May 1956, but was pushed back to September and October, when meteorological conditions were most favourable. Ultimately all tests on the Australian mainland were conducted at this time of year. The 1954 plan for Operation Theta called for four tests, each with a different purpose. The UK's first nuclear weapon, Blue Danube, was large and cumbersome, being long and wide, and weighed , so only the Royal Air Force (RAF) V-bombers could carry it. In November 1953, the RAF and Royal Navy issued an Operational Requirement, OR.1127, for a smaller, lighter weapon with similar yield that could be carried by tactical aircraft. A second requirement for a light-weight bomb arose with the British Government's decision in July 1954 to proceed with a British hydrogen bomb programme. Hydrogen bombs required an atomic bomb as a primary, and one was incorporated in the British hydrogen bomb design, known