We are now on the southern coast of Australia, albeit well up the Spencer Gulf, and still 305 kilometres from Adelaide. The journey today was a mere 173 kilometres from Pimba, short by the standards of so many of the days over the last six weeks since we left Cairns.
Pimba Rest Area turned out to be a very convenient stopover place, and apart from the movement of vehicles early this morning, a peaceful one. Rain started before we bedded down for the evening and continued much of the night, clearing this morning and leaving little evidence of having fallen.
We returned to Woomera and wandered around Missile Park where one finds artefacts of the towns not so distant past. Rockets, drones, planes, and surveillance vehicles are among the relics on display in this immaculate well-ordered clinically planned township, devoid of character and the bustle of people. Here there are wreckages exhumed from the desert displayed behind wire fences but arranged as they would have been after landing in their sandy grave but before the sand and dust storms that finally covered them. One of these was a rocket known as the Redstone which was used to carry Australia’s first satellite, the WRESAT into orbit in November 1967. Locals recovered it from the Simpson Desert in 1990.
Down the street at the Information Centre we bought tickets for the Heritage Centre, again making good use of Chris’s Seniors’ Card, so often proving to be a real boon, and wandered around the Rocket Range Museum. I hadn’t been busting myself to visit this place and so was delighted and surprised to find it absolutely fascinating. After an hour or so in this small but informative museum, we visited the Social History centre, all under the same umbrella and we were again fascinated by the displays and information offered here.
Woomera’s name is derived from the aboriginal word for a hunting weapon which propels a spear. This is a good example of the diversity of the aboriginal languages here in Australia. This word is a Dharuk word, these people of the western Sydney region. The same weapon in the local Kokatha language is “miru”, however this “foreign” word was duly accepted.
During World War II, the Germans launched V2 long range missiles from the Netherlands very successfully, causing great destruction and death in England. Britain wanted to develop similar weapons, however it was not until after the war, in late 1946, they settled with the Australian government to undertake the work here, in such a large uninhabited area.
The Kokatha people were moved off to the edges of the area and those that insisted on wandering back in to the excluded zone were warned whenever there was to be a test made. Specially appointed Native Patrol Officers equipped with 4WD vehicles, repair kits and transceivers covered thousands of kilometres, doing their best to alert individuals and communities about planned launches, but alas, were not always successful, but the benefits to the country were great. Employment, development, international diplomacy ….
In 1955 Britain began developing the Blue Streak Missile, launch sites constructed on the edge of Lake Hart. When the Blue Streak was eventually closed down, Harold Wilson, later Prime Minister of Great Britain, claimed that the project had been kept going far longer than necessary simply to save face for the Defence Minister. He apparently remarked “we are looking at the most expensive face in history. Helen of Troy’s face may only have launched a thousand ships, but at least they were all operational!”
The sudden cancellation of the Blue Streak was a great shock to Australia, which had invested heavily in facilities at Woomera to support the project. But Blue Streak soon found a new and exciting role; it could carry a satellite just as easily as a bomb. Within a year Britain had negotiated a joint European program to launch a satellite. Blue Streak was to be the first stage of the launcher using the Lake Hart facility.
And so Britain had withdrawn from the “Arms Race” and entered the “Space Race”, the range was the test and development centre for the joint European launcher Developmental Organisation (ELDO). This organisation, a partnership between the UK, Australia, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland and Italy, designed and built the Europa series of rockets launched between 1964 and 1970.
From 1968 to the latter part of 1999, the US Air Force in conjunction with the Australian Department of Defence, installed a deep space tracking station facility in a valley to the south of Woomera.
This facility was called Nurrungar and was designed as a ballistic missile early warning station. From 1971 to 1987 Nurrungar recorded data on 6,000 missile launches from the Soviet Union and attracted a variety of protestors for world peace; those that came after the Flower Children of the sixties. For the next twenty five years, 300 American personnel worked at Nurrungar and lived in Woomera with their families.
After the Cold War ended, a new generation of satellites rendered Nurrungar obsolete, so the lease agreement was not renewed when it came up for renewal in 1998. The base was closed the next year bringing an end to the American presence in Woomera.
More than 4,000 missiles were tested at Woomera between 1947 and 1980.
In 1990 a joint Japanese and Australian project was begun, to study high energy gamma rays.
More recently, in 2005, another similar joint outfit conducted tests to study aerodynamic design of aircraft.
Woomera diversified its role when increasing waves of refugees started coming illegally by boat to its shores. A secure detention centre was established on the outskirts of the town, built to house 400 people. For most of its three year operation it actually held 1,400 sharing three washing machines and five toilets. The centre was short staffed for most of the time. Claims took too long to process, just as happens today in other centres. A group of detainees pushed down the fence and marched on the town. There were hunger strikes and others stitched their lips together, riots and great unrest. This all sounds terribly familiar as these same problems continue to plague refugee detention centres in Sydney and elsewhere even today. It finally closed in 2002 to the relief of most in the community.
It is hoped that the Woomera Range will hold the key to the future, offering the location and education for projects in astronomy, space exploration and weapons testing. Tourism is also a hoped for spinoff and I have to say that I was certainly very taken with the place.
And so we did eventually tear ourselves away and head back south past our camp at Pimba, and back on to the Stuart Highway. The road continued over the undulating gibber plains, green with saltbush, bluebush and Western Mayall trees, all of which are apparently good fodder for the cattle and sheep we never saw. It was interesting to learn that some of these Western Mayall trees (of the acacia family) were thought to be 1,000 years old.
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| Sheep fodder |
From this same rest area, we looked south west across to the Flinders Ranges. We look forward to exploring these in the weeks ahead.
From there it as almost a straight run downhill to Port Augusta. We followed the signs to the Information Centre, acquired a street map and a list of caravan parks, then headed off to the campervan park listed in the CMCA bible on the south side of town. We found it alright, but more than a dozen others had got there before us and this excellent but very small park administered by the Sports Club had no room for us.
Instead we headed back across the Spencer Gulf, river size, and found our way to this camp, where we booked for a couple of days.
Port Augusta stands on the junction of roads and rail, and was an important port in the early years of white settlement of this country. Today it has a population of about 15,000 and lots of traffic; all of this is culture shock to us who have been outback for some weeks!
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