We were picking our way through spinifex and mulga trees up a steep ridgeline. My green felt hat threw inadequate shade across my face, but I was glad I’d worn sneakers. It was hot, there was no clear path, just hard red rock underfoot and a clear blue sky overhead. Gun shots punctured the silence from the rifle range nearby as my colleague, Elsa Silberstein, and I passed two disused concrete water tanks.
The MacDonnell Ranges ripple through the landscape, stretching out to the east and west of Alice Springs/Mparntwe. This was country I’d never climbed before but our guide, long-term local Russell Goldflam, assured us there was a good view from the top.
We finally reached the ridge and there it was – spectacular and unsettling all at once – a bizarre cluster of white, gleaming, oversized golf-ball shaped domes on the desert floor, some reaching 10 storeys high.
This was Pine Gap – the spy base hidden 18 kilometres south of Alice Springs in a secluded valley.
I remember Russell remarking that whoever had thought to put it here was a genius – it was out of sight and out of mind.
Set up by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in the mid-1960s, “the base” – as it’s known locally – is officially the Australian United States Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap. The impenetrable cloak of secrecy surrounding the most mysterious intelligence facility in the country had caused me to start digging, and climbing. So the podcast Expanse: Spies in the Outback was born.
No one talks about Pine Gap
My husband and I rolled into Alice Springs in a boxy 1983 Volkswagen Transporter on a particularly chilly day in June, 2007. We were on an extended honeymoon and only knew the outback in stereotypes. It quickly became home. The glow of the ranges in the afternoon light, the strong sense of community and the rich cultural landscape captured us.
In those early years rumours about a spy base on the edge of town were cause for curiosity more than concern. Like everyone around me I adopted the small-town social norm. No one talks about Pine Gap.
But as the years passed the intrigue grew. What was really going on in my backyard? Why couldn’t anybody who worked there discuss their job? And why wouldn’t the Australian Government ever comment on this place that employed around 800 residents in Alice Springs?
In 2020 I read journalist Kieran Finnane’s book Peace Crimes. The book followed a group of activists known as the “peace pilgrims” who trespassed on Pine Gap in the middle of the night. They scaled the back fence and walked through the scrub, playing a lament and praying for those killed during war.
The group saw Pine Gap as a killing machine and believed it was responsible for civilian deaths via drone warfare in countries with which Australia was not at war. Kieran’s book raised questions about what we, as a nation, were happy to be part of.
I wanted to know more.
Going over the razor wire
Talking to anyone who has worked at Pine Gap is close to impossible. Everyone signs a legal document promising to never reveal classified information. And there was little chance of going inside – not without copping the full force of some heavy federal laws.
Pine Gap sits on a 20-hectare lot and the perimeter fence stretches for kilometres, so you can’t get close. Signs along the only road in remind you you’re not welcome. “Turn around now”, “No photography from this point on” they read, as you approach the imposing guard house.
I reached out to a few Alice Springs families who remembered the Americans first arriving. Retired botanist and former CSIRO officer Des Nelson described the dust storms that rolled through the town as it struggled through an eight year long drought. He’d been called in to assess the value of the land and the pitch from the Americans sounded exciting.
It was the height of the space race and the US Government was promising to build a “space research facility”. With the paperwork signed in December 1966, construction and dollars began to flow.
Des recalls new businesses opening, like the Piggly Wiggly supermarket. There were a few raised eyebrows but largely the community welcomed the economic lifeline.
Sold on a lie, “the space base” had landed. Of course it was never a “space base”. This was all about the Cold War. America wanted an edge over the Soviets – they wanted eyes and ears on their missiles – and Alice Springs provided the answer.
Politics and pressure
I reached out to journalist Brian Toohey, who has spent a lifetime asking questions about Pine Gap. He explained it was years before the Australian Government had the full picture of what had been built in their own backyard.
He’d previously work for the Labor Party as Gough Whitlam campaigned to become Prime Minister. Whitlam had promised to reveal the secrets of Pine Gap to the Australian public, but it got messy and complicated once he was in power. Brian is sure Pine Gap played a significant role in bringing Whitlam to his knees.
“It’s an immensely complicated thing,” he says. “I think that the CIA was certainly taking steps to undermine Whitlam. There’s plenty of evidence about that.”
Rumours still swirl that the CIA was responsible for Whitlam’s dismissal in 1975. Conclusive evidence is yet to be produced, but everyone’s got a strong opinion.
As the Cold War dragged on, the peace movement grew in Australia, and its focus turned to Pine Gap. Many believed it made Australia a nuclear target, so the ’80s brought a wave of protesters to the desert.
My neighbour, Jenny, and her partner, Sue, had been at those protests. Now we drove out together to Pine Gap’s imposing gates. It was almost 40 years to the day since the biggest women’s-only protest at “the base” had taken place.
Jenny and Sue are now in their 60s. They didn’t know each other back in 1983 when Jenny boarded a bus from Central Station in Sydney, bound for the outback. Around 800 women came from across Australia. There was street theatre, papier-mâché missiles, huge banners and balloons. Jenny remembers the day she broke in.
She’d woken up in her little orange A-frame tent, grabbed a hat and headed towards the entrance.
In a sea of women, she reached out her hands and together they started rocking the gate. Eventually the women ripped it off its hinges and Jenny began running towards those huge, white golf-balled shaped domes.
The women’s protest brought Pine Gap into the national spotlight, and the local peace group in Alice Springs, led by people such as our guide Russell Goldflam, encouraged more and more people to come to the desert and call for Pine Gap’s closure.
As my producer, Elsa, and I listened to the women reminisce, several hundred metres back from the Pine Gap gates we soon found we had company. A small group of armed federal police officers surrounded us. It was tense as they debated whether it was legal for us to record an interview on this public roadway.
Eventually the head of Pine Gap security, Australian Federal Police (AFP) officer Ken Napier, arrived and said it was fine but not before Elsa’s driver’s licence and registration details had been taken down.
Was I being bugged?
I caught up with Ken for coffee some weeks later. He was amiable but careful about what he could say. After almost an hour I gathered my bag and jacket to head back to the office. Suddenly he stopped me.
“Before you go, I want to give you something,” he said. He reached out as if he wanted to shake hands but as our palms connected, a large metal coin fell into my outstretched hand. It looks like a Pine Gap commemorative coin. He smiled and said, “Don’t worry, it’s not a listening device.”
After months of interviews and researching this outback spy base, friends and colleagues would often ask whether I thought I was being bugged. Maybe I was.
My chat with Ken also confirmed that there was important Aboriginal rock art inside the Pine Gap fence line he patrols.
I reached out to Arrernte Elder Felicity Hayes, whose family are the traditional owners of the beautiful country on which Pine Gap is built. When the deal was struck the land rights act was still years away.
I caught up with Felicity at a small-town camp called Irrkerlantye/White Gate. It’s a few minutes’ drive from my house, off a dirt road to the north-east of town.
Felicity has raised her kids and grandkids here in a settlement of tin sheds with no access to mains power or water. This is home.
For decades, Felicity and her family have called on the Northern Territory Government for basic services. The gaping chasm between the poverty of her family’s camp and the state-ofthe-art facility on the other side of the range has stayed at the fore throughout my investigation.
We met up a second time out at Kuyunba Conservation Reserve. It hugs the Pine Gap boundary line and is also home to sacred sites and rock art. Felicity takes her kids and grandkids there to teach them about language and culture but she says they’re always being watched. AFP officers regularly come and check on them when they visit. As we head back to town, I can see a camera high up on a hill inside the Pine Gap fence line focused on Kuyunba. It’s unnerving.
Trick or treat!
After countless emails and phone calls I was still keen to hear from someone on the inside. Then I remembered where I was sure to find a spy. Plastic sword in one hand, microphone in the other, I’d smudged dark circles around my eyes and was wearing a kid’s felt pirate hat. I looked ridiculous but I wasn’t alone. It felt like the entire population of Alice Springs had come out for a Halloween sugar-hit. Front yards were decorated with giant inflatable spiders, mechanical skeletons and flashing gravestones.
The town’s most decorated Halloween suburb, Desert Springs, is also the place a lot of Pine Gap workers call home. Standing beneath a balloon arch of pumpkins and skulls, a man dressed as Mr Monopoly excitedly explained to me how he had flown out suitcases crammed full of American candy.
And then I ruined it. I asked whether he worked at “the base”. Chances were high – he had an American accent. Immediately I felt our conversation cool. His jovial demeanour flattened as he gently confirmed that yes, he was a “gardener” at the base.
This is an in-joke in Alice Springs. If someone tells you they’re a gardener, it means they’re actually a spy. And with that our conversation died.
A spy on the inside
Eventually I spoke with David Rosenberg, a former National Security Agency (NSA) spy who had worked at Pine Gap for almost 20 years. How? David has had his story approved by the NSA. It means he only speaks about “the base” in positive terms.
He was vague about the satellites controlled by Pine Gap’s antennas that suck up enormous amounts of intelligence from across the globe. He said the mission is a peaceful one and Australians should feel comforted having “the base” in their backyard.
But he was generous with other information. He explained how Pine Gap’s intelligence and surveillance is used to find targets, often in war – people and places on which America will drop its bombs. Pine Gap’s reach is vast. It has eyes and ears on the Middle East, Russia, China, North Korea, Africa, Europe and beyond.
Rushed out to Australia to assist in the Gulf War in 1990-91, David was a weapons systems analyst. He told me there had been constant upgrades at Pine Gap, more antennas on the desert floor, more satellites sent up. He talked about September 11, 2001 and watching the Twin Towers fall on TV from his lounge room in Alice Springs. The most horrific attack on American soil had blindsided its intelligence agencies.
After that, David said, everything scaled up – security at Pine Gap was tighter and his team was given instructions to have eyes on Afghanistan and then Iraq. Pine Gap would draw Australia into one war after another.
Pine Gap’s secrets today
A couple of weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, I woke early for a run with friends. A message on my phone said the road to Pine Gap had been blocked by a protester whose arm was trapped in a concrete-filled barrel.
I called my producer, Elsa, and we headed south of town to find cars pulled off the road. Pine Gap staff were unable to get to work; around 20 protesters held signs across the road that read “Free Gaza”, “Close Pine Gap”.
Protesters claimed intelligence from Pine Gap was being shared with Israel and used in the war in Gaza. These were serious claims. While there was no direct evidence showing intelligence had been used in a specific airstrike in Gaza, David Rosenberg confirmed Pine Gap would be eavesdropping on the Middle East. And there was a precedent that showed the NSA had previously shared intelligence with the Israel Defense Forces.
I put these claims to the Australian Department of Defence and Defence Minister Richard Marles. The Department continued its longstanding practice of refusing to comment on Pine Gap.
I need to keep digging. The spotlight is back on this outback spy base and even after the podcast’s release, I’m not going to stop seeking answers.
Alex Barwick is host of Expanse: Spies in the Outback. To listen, head to abc.net.au/listen/programs/expanse
