Program: 05 Spies in the Outback | The secrets of Pine Gap

Protesters chanting: Long Live Palestine, Free Free Palestine 

Gem Walsh: We have chosen to block the road to Pine Gap U.S. military facility because of their direct involvement in supporting the Israeli genocide of Palestinian people. 

Protesters chanting: Shame 

Gem Walsh: Palestinian civilians.  

Protesters chanting: Shame 

Gem: Palestinian children. 

Protesters chanting: Shame 

 Gem Walsh: Hospitals.  

Protesters chanting: Shame 

Gem Walsh: Convoys. 

Protesters chanting: Shame 

Gem Walsh: Ambulances. 

Protesters chanting: Shame 

Alex Barwick (VO): Alice Springs nurse Gem Walsh is all in black, sitting cross legged on a green chequered blanket in the middle of the bitumen road that leads to the spy base in my backyard. But this is no picnic.  

One of Gem’s arms is trapped inside a large steel drum that's been splashed with red paint to symbolise blood. 

The drum is full of concrete, it’s immoveable. 

A small group of 20 or so protesters hold signs that read ‘free Palestine’ and ‘stop arming genocide’. 

The road to Pine Gap has been blocked for hours. 

Gem Walsh: These are war crimes and we refuse to be complicit in it and we call on the Australian government to take a stance.  

Alex Barwick (VO): These are serious accusations; that Pine Gap’s spying means Australia is involved in war between Israel and Gaza.  

It’s complicated and hasn’t been proven, but I’ll get to that.  

At this point there’s four police officers speaking with the group.  

It's all pretty calm. 

Gem Walsh: Today we offer the Mourner's Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. 

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di v’ra chir’utei; v’yamlich malchutei... 

Alex Barwick (VO): At around six that morning, my alarm went off.  

I'd planned to meet friends for a run before work, when an alert about the protest pops up on my phone. 

I call my producer Elsa and we head south of town. 

Alex Barwick: Hi. 

Elsa Silberstein: Morning, hello. 

Alex Barwick: Morning, sorry for waking you up.  

Elsa Silberstein: No, thanks for waking me up.  

It's all happening.  

Alex Barwick (VO): I read the message aloud as we drive through the MacDonnell Ranges. 

The coffee is only just kicking in. 

Alex Barwick: A group of activists is currently staging a dawn vigil blockade of Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility near Alice Springs. 

The main group has blocked the facility's main access road... 

Alex Barwick (VO): Staff from the base have pulled off the road, unable to drive through, most are sitting in their cars waiting.  

Alex Barwick: Are you guys trying to get to work? 

You all work at the base? 

Alex Barwick (VO): Most refuse to even look in our direction but one or two nod - yeah, they’ll be late for their shift today. 

News report: It appears a fresh wave of violence is underway in the Middle East as the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas launches its biggest attack on Israel in years. 

Alex Barwick (VO): It's six weeks since Hamas militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages.  

More bloodshed has followed. 

Israeli defence forces have retaliated with extreme force, killing thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

The war drags on, despite numerous calls for a ceasefire from the United Nations. 

On the other side of the world, on this road to an outback spy base, firies have started removing that concrete-filled drum from the nurse’s arm. 

Protester: We love you Gem. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Sparks fly from the angle grinder. 

Protester: We’re right here. 

We’re right here Gem. 

Alex Barwick (VO): The nurse is put in the back of caged police van and driven to the watch house. 

A few weeks later, it happens again, but it’s even bigger. 

Protesters chanting: One struggle one fight, one struggle one fight, long live Palestine, long live Palestine... 

Alex Barwick (VO): So, is Australia providing intelligence for targets, people and places, in the Israel/Gaza war through Pine Gap?   

Well, to answer that we need to go back to a world before two planes smashed into two very important buildings in New York.  

We need to know what happened next.      

Protesters had hoped the end of the Cold War, meant an end to this secret outback spy base 18ks from Alice Springs.  

But it didn’t. 

New capabilities had cemented Pine Gap’s place in Australia. 

Like a giant vacuum, more antennas and more satellites were sucking up intelligence to feed the U.S. military machine. 

Born from a lie in the Cold War, it put Australia in the nuclear cross hairs through the 70s and 80s, but is there something even more sinister going on at Pine Gap now?  

More than ever, I want to know what on earth is happening in my backyard. 

I’m Alex Barwick and this is the final episode of Expanse: Spies in the Outback, The secrets of Pine Gap.  

After a shift at the base David Rosenberg, the Pine Gap guy who dreamt of being a spy ever since he saw Mission Impossible as a kid, caught the bus home, ate dinner and later that night headed back into the lounge room and flicked on the news. 

Archival news report: Horror beyond description on a New York morning. 

Alex Barwick (VO): It’s that day in September 2001. 

Archival news report: First one plane crashes into a tower of the World Trade Centre, then another. 

David Rosenberg: I turn on the TV and I see the towers on fire and it looks surreal.  

I actually didn't know if this was some kind of a movie I was watching, a fictional movie. 

The first tower had not fallen yet.  

It was actually still burning.  

So really the first thing I did was get on the phone and called a friend of mine back in the States and talked about it with him. 

Alex Barwick (VO): This day is burnt into the global consciousness in a way few others are. 

Terrorists hijacked four planes smashed two of them into two of the world’s tallest buildings at the time, the Twin Towers. 

The others went into the Pentagon and crashed into a field. Thousands died. 

And America had been completely caught off guard. 

David Rosenberg: We were 100 percent surprised at Pine Gap. 

Nobody knew this was coming, we had no clue.  

It was assessed to be an intelligence failure.  

And everybody's relatives were asking them, you know, “Oh you work at Pine Gap, what can you tell us?”. 

And the truth is we said, “Just keep watching CNN”. 

I could not get to sleep, so I had stayed up the entire night and the next morning I caught the bus into work. 

The driver had the sound up turned up rather loudly so that everybody could hear the news of what was happening with 9/11. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Immediately, it was clear things were changing.  

David Rosenberg: All of the facilities everywhere had been placed on heightened alert.  

They were searching everybody. 

Every car had to be searched as well.  

So, security was so heightened at that time that it took a long time to get into the facility. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Finally inside Pine Gap, David was briefed. The War on Terror had begun, the hunt for those responsible was on.  

David Rosenberg: Because we believe it's Al-Qaeda and we're looking at them as a possible target for some kind of retaliation. 

So we're, we're surveilling the country, finding out where the weapons are, where the communications are, who's saying what to who.  

Alex Barwick (VO): Less than a month after the twin towers fell in New York, an American-led invasion of Afghanistan began. 

But that was just the beginning.  

In no time, American President George W. Bush was claiming that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. 

They had a new target country. 

David Rosenberg: At some point, the Bush administration decided to plan for offensive operations. 

I was frustrated with all of this warmongering.  

When I heard the rhetoric by the Bush administration and all the claims they are making, I'm saying, where are they getting their information from? 

Alex Barwick (VO): David was on the inside and he knew the evidence was dodgy, even back then. 

David Rosenberg: There's nothing in the intelligence reporting that says that they've got weapons of mass destruction.  

President Bush authorised the use of military force against Iraq based on fabricated evidence.  

Alex Barwick (VO): But that ship had sailed, as bombs rained down on Afghanistan and then Iraq. 

Alex Barwick: How important would you describe Pine Gap's role, while not offensive, but in carefully trying to locate terrorists and military targets?  

David Rosenberg: Oh, that's always done with the utmost accuracy. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Often when I ask David specific questions about Pine Gap’s role in any war, the answers are vague - even when I push back.  

He’s always being careful not to reveal classified information.  

Basically, he wants it known Pine Gap’s not ‘technically’ responsible for attacking other countries. 

But, from what he says the intel it provides does inform the U.S. exactly where to drop the bombs. 

Airstrike upon airstrike.  

Estimates vary wildy, but some calculations say more than 150,000 people were killed in Iraq, and the majority were civilians. 

But David Rosenberg wants it to be clear, he was never personally responsible for firing off a missile. 

David Rosenberg: We simply gather intelligence and pass that over to military planners to do what they need to do and will always do what they can to minimise any kind of loss of life. 

From my own perspective of being on the inside, I do know that Pine Gap's mission is certainly a peaceful one.  

Alex Barwick (VO): It might have felt peaceful in an air-conditioned room on the outskirts of Alice Springs, but as the war on terror dragged on, it felt anything but peaceful in a noisy and crowded hospital in Afghanistan. 

Andrew Quilty: The room in the ward where Bilal was recovering had a big window that faced out into a quadrangle of some sort. 

He was sitting on a hospital bed with a couple of his uncles and cousins who were consoling him. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Photojournalist Andrew Quilty had travelled to Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. 

He sat with 12-year-old Bilal as an uncle gently placed a hand on the boy’s head. 

Andrew Quilty: He had the pants of his traditional Parinthamban on, but his top was removed so the medical staff could dress his wounds. 

And he was clearly in a state somewhere between shock and mourning.  

He was visibly upset, crying and in the early stages of grieving for his father.  

Alex Barwick (VO): Bilal had just seen his father killed in a drone strike.  

He survived with shrapnel wounds. Bandages covered his torso, shoulder and foot.  

Andrew Quilty: He had been there at the time of the attack, asleep, and his father had been among those who had been killed. 

Alex Barwick: And what did they tell you about what had unfolded that night? 

Andrew Quilty: They had been there to celebrate the return of a local elder coming back from the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which is a very common reason for celebration in Afghanistan. 

Alex Barwick (VO): The target was in Shadal Bazar - a poor rural village set beneath mountains that soar so high they're often covered in snow.  

The roads are lined with irrigated fields.  

The bazaar is a hub for basic groceries, meat and petrol. 

Andrew Quilty: The men had long since bunked down for the night.  

They had celebrated with the slaughtering of a sheep or a goat and cooked that as is a customary way of celebrating in Afghanistan. 

Alex Barwick (VO): They went to bed and at around three, three-thirty am the silence was shattered. 

They were all either awakened or instantly killed by this explosion from a drone. 

The War on Terror and retaliation for the deadliest attack on American soil was unrelenting. 

It became a global campaign, Australia in lock step with the U.S. 

And it was still going on September of 2016 when Andrew Quilty met Bilal and other drone strike survivors who’d travelled from the small village to Jalalabad for medical treatment.  

Andrew Quilty: The U.S. military had claimed that it had been an ISIS target.  

But the United Nations in Afghanistan had come out pretty quickly refuting that claim and saying that it had been civilians that had been killed.  

Alex Barwick (VO): By now Andrew had spent a fair bit of time in hospitals across Afghanistan capturing the stories of civilians caught up in this nebulous war on terror. 

Andrew Quilty: One sure way of identifying someone as purely a civilian is by their age. 

And Bilal was, from memory 12 years old at the time and there was simply no way that he could have been anything other than a civilian.  

Alex Barwick (VO): The US increasingly used targeted drone strikes, particularly in remote areas. 

Why? 

To minimise loss of life. 

Andrew Quilty: The drones have a very distinctive sort of high-pitched buzzing sound, which makes it sound almost like a toy. 

Afghans in Eastern Afghanistan, who were very used to hearing them, used to call them in Pashto, in their language, mosquitoes for that very distinctive buzzing sound that they made. 

Alex Barwick (VO): But these drones were very different to the ones I’ve seen my kids’ friends play with at the park.  

These drones are the size of a small plane, with long range and high-altitude capacity. 

Andrew Quilty: They look really sinister. They look like, you know, something out of a sci-fi movie.  

They have these sort of very skinny, short legs that are splayed and they have this very bulbous I suppose, you know, it's almost the equivalent of a cockpit. 

The drones predominantly used by the U.S. in Afghanistan were either a predator or a reaper drone. 

One is used primarily for the collection of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.  

And the other is more of an attack drone.  

So it will be armed with various types of munitions, predominantly small but powerful Hellfire missiles.  

Alex Barwick (VO): This military language can be clinical. But on the other end of those ‘munitions’ were people like Bilal and his family. 

There is no way of confirming whether Pine Gap's intel led to Bilal’s village being targeted by a drone missile, not without someone getting in a whole lot of trouble... like locked up as a traitor trouble. But it's clear from the spy on the inside, David Rosenberg, that this secret place in the Australian outback had its eyes and ears on the middle east, finding terrorists and intelligence for targets. 

That very same night that shrapnel tore at Bilal’s skin a 51-year-old woman, with shoulder length hair and walking boots, was picking her way through scrub towards the perimeter fence of a certain spy base in the outback. 

Margaret Pestorius: It's very cold in the desert even in September it’s maybe 5, 6, 7 degrees at night. And the night was very, very clear, crystal clear. 

We even wore these sort of space blankets because we thought that that would somehow shield us from the surveillance, the heat surveillance that we imagined that we might have been under. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Margaret Pestorious’ small group became known as the Peace Pilgrims. 

And they were there because they believed Pine Gap was telling those drone operators where to drop their bombs. 

Margaret Pestorius: Well, we're here because this institution is killing people. 

Alex Barwick (VO): They’d brought their instruments, a viola and a guitar. 

Their plan was to play a lament and pray in the desert. 

They weren’t going over the front fence like protesters of the 80s. 

They were heading over the back fence.  

Margaret Pestorius: We're on the north side and Pine Gap is surrounded by two layers of hills and hillocks.  

Alex Barwick (VO): It takes them hours through the darkness and then suddenly, Margaret hears the rumble of diesel. 

Margaret Pestorius:  And we start to move quicker. And I think, well we're going to play this lament. We're going to pray.   

I get my viola out of the case and I can start to play.  

And eventually a police officer's in front of me and asking for the viola, asking me to stop. There's police appearing everywhere. First of all there’s three and then there’s five and then there’s eight. 

Alex Barwick (VO): The trespass is over. 

Back at the watch house they eventually see a lawyer. Yep, it's the once long curly-haired Pine Gap activist Russell Goldflam and he already knows Margaret.  

Russell Goldflam: She's a remarkably determined person with this unshakable, unquenchable spirit of good humour.  

Alex Barwick (VO): And she’d need it. Because protesting Pine Gap in 2016 was a far more serious affair than when wild women ripped the front gate off its hinges in the 80s. 

Russell Goldflam: Ever since September the 11th it's become clear that anybody who challenges the, you know, security apparatus in Australia is going to have all barrels aimed at them.  

And that's why those people, in my view, were charged under the Defence Special Undertakings Act and not the Trespass Act. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Keeping the secrets this place hides has become serious business. These federal laws Margaret was charged under threaten up to seven years jail time. 

The peace pilgrims represented themselves inside the new oversized glass Supreme Court in the Alice Springs CBD. With some help from Russell. 

Margaret Pestorius: We all took the stand to talk about why we did it. To speak to our sincere belief that we thought that this was a violent and destructive place.  

Alex Barwick (VO): But the peace pilgrims are all found guilty of entering a prohibited area. The prosecution pushes for jail time, but it's unprecedented.  

They get hefty fines instead. Margaret's was three thousand, five hundred dollars.

Alex Barwick (VO): While tougher laws were now being used to crack down on peaceful viola playing protesters, there’d been a young American on the inside working for the NSA – the National Security Agency - the ones responsible for all the listening, the spying, and he was a far greater threat to the secrets hidden in the ranges surrounding my desert town. 

His name was Edward Snowden. And a few years earlier he’d shocked the world by leaking a bunch of classified NSA documents. 

Peter Cronau: I'd read a little bit about Pine Gap in some of the releases of the Edward Snowden archive that were published in papers around the world. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Australian journalist Peter Cronau found himself looking through these incredibly technical but revealing documents. 

Peter Cronau: Uh, I thought, you know, maybe there's more.  

Alex Barwick (VO): So he asked.  

Peter Cronau: The Edward Snowden Archive people said nobody had previously asked for documents on Pine Gap.  

Lo and behold, there were a number of documents that were to do with Pine Gap and they were very interesting. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Whistleblower Edward Snowden was responsible for the biggest intelligence leak of NSA documents in American history.  

He’s now living in exile in Russia to escape the consequences that await him in the US. 

Anyway, back then there was mention of Pine Gap in the reporting but four years later in 2017 Peter Cronau was digging deeper.  

Peter Cronau: And in one part of it, it refers to the defence facility at Pine Gap playing a significant role in supporting military operations.  

It was a documented reference to actual involvement in battlefield operations. An that is the involvement of Pine Gap in battlefield communication and battlefield detection of targets. 

The problem with the drone program has been shown by numerous researchers is that up to 80 percent of victims of drone strikes were civilians. 

Alex Barwick (VO): It confirmed what a lot of people already suspected. But it was confirmation from the inside. That Pine Gap is identifying targets, people, and places, to be killed and destroyed by bombs from drones. 

Which makes me wonder again whether the spy base in my backyard was involved in the attack on Bilal’s family in Shadal Bazar, Afghanistan. 

Some people laud Edward Snowden for finally revealing Pine Gap’s secrets, but our spy David Rosenberg is not a fan. 

David Rosenberg: People have asked me, is he a whistleblower or is he a traitor?  

I would call Edward Snowden a traitor. Simply because like me, he is obliged to protect everything that he knew that was classified for the rest of his life. 

I think he did the wrong thing. 

What I'm talking about there is particularly the information that he released on Pine Gap.  

I will never reveal anything that's classified.  

Everything I've told you today is not classified.  

Alex Barwick: And you'll take the rest of your grave? 

David Rosenberg: Oh, yes, I will.  

I will take the rest to my grave.  

Alex Barwick (VO): I ask if he shares Edward Snowden's concerns that sometimes innocent civilians are killed or injured - like Bilal. 

David Rosenberg: I don't think about that because the intention of all of the signals that we go after are to mitigate this.  

We want to make sure that we got the right information. What we want to do at Pine Gap is to mitigate the loss of life unnecessarily.  

Alex Barwick (VO): And maybe Pine Gap’s intelligence does reduce civilian deaths. But, from what Andrew Quilty saw in the hospitals of Afghanistan a lot of innocent people are dying, but they’re out of sight, often unreported. 

Alex Barwick: do you ever feel  any kind of conflict personally about the work that Pine Gap's involved in? 

David Rosenberg: Absolutely none. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Journalist Peter Cronau, like most people I've spoken to, used to live in Alice Springs. 

He worked for the Aboriginal land council in the 1990s. And it was actually an exchange with an American that turned his attention to Pine Gap in the first place.  

He noticed the guy’s accent and so asked... 

Peter Cronau: Do you work at the Pine Gap?  

And he said, “Uh, well, yes I do”. 

And I said, “Oh, that's fascinating, what do you do out there?”. 

He said, “Well, I can't tell you”, and I said, “Oh, okay, well, just generally, what sort of things, you know”. 

“I'm not prepared to tell you”. 

He got very serious. 

And I pressed him because I thought, well, this is what? 15ks away from where I was standing. 

And he ended up saying to me, “Listen, there's some things that you don't need to know”. 

Alex Barwick (VO): That was the line that did it. 

Peter Cronau: I often think back to it because why are there secrets that we shouldn't know? What are they? And why can't the public have some say over what it is we can and can't know?  

Alex Barwick (VO): These are the same questions I keep coming back to.  

I’ve heard some pretty strong arguments on both sides of the Pine Gap debate. 

But the extreme secrecy means it’s almost impossible to consider what’s right or wrong with having this spy base in the outback.  

And maybe that’s the point.  

I still have former Defence Minister Kim Beazley’s laughter ringing in my ears from when I asked him what he found out about Pine Gap. 

Kim Beazley: As though I'm going to tell you.  

(Kim Beazley laughs) 

Alex Barwick (VO): Despite this, unlike so many others I’ve spoken to, Peter Cronau doesn't want Pine Gap shut down. 

Peter Cronau: There's definitely extremely valid roles for the facilities at Pine Gap to be able to do. 

Early warning, for example, of terrorism. 

It has a role in supporting Australian defence operations. For example, peacekeeping in East Timor or Bougainville. 

It has a role in protecting us from criminal hacking or commercial espionage. 

Alex Barwick (VO): But even so, because Pine Gap’s part of a huge network and any one piece of intelligence can pass through so many hands before it's used he says its current way of operating is problematic. 

Peter Cronau: This raises one of the huge conundrums for Pine Gap, and that is; just who is responsible for a child's death in some battlefield if a weapon using intelligence from Pine Gap, if it goes wrong, who's responsible? 

Alex Barwick (VO): Intelligence from Pine Gap isn’t used in isolation. The U.S. has bases around the world, most aren’t eavesdropping and finding targets like Pine Gap but together they’re formidable. Each person is just doing their job. Like cogs in a wheel. 

But just who is responsible in the kill chain when it goes wrong?  

Peter is one of the few Australian journalists to write about Pine Gap and the Israel-Gaza war that began in late 2023. 

Peter Cronau: I saw the first vision of the Hamas attack just on the nightly news.  

Vision of people being killed by, by Hamas and, and the gut reaction is, is horror.  

I didn't know what was going to happen. I expected a retaliation. 

Boy, what we've seen I've never seen anything like this before, 

Archival news report: Could this be the end of peace for a generation? Those are the fears of many on both sides of the fence as the IDF prepares to deliver what it's described as mighty vengeance on Hamas. 

Peter Cronau: Well it's obvious to me that Pine Gap's involved. The satellite's Pine Gap uses, the Orions that sit over Europe and Africa and the Middle East, they're pouring information in, there's no doubt about it.  

When a hotspot starts up, like Ukraine or Gaza, of course the base focuses on that and gets tasked by the NSA and others to pursue certain locations and people. 

Alex Barwick (VO): This is what prompted that nurse to trap an arm inside a steel drum and block the road to Pine Gap.  

The fear that through Pine Gap, we’re seriously involved in the war.  

I check with David Rosenberg, the guy who actually worked there. 

Alex Barwick: David, is Pine Gap monitoring the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas?  

David Rosenberg: You would have to think so. It is an area where there is, uh, uh, some military conflict going on at the moment and Pine Gap does have a role in monitoring those kind of situations. 

And the conflict would be of interest to the United States.  

Alex Barwick: Do you mean potentially locating targets for retaliation?  

David Rosenberg: Well, not necessarily for retaliation, but, but monitoring targets and just gathering intelligence.  

Alex Barwick: But it could be potentially for locating targets?  

David Rosenberg: Well, that's one of the things that the satellites do. 

Alex Barwick (VO): But is the U.S. sharing its intelligence with Israel? We don’t know.  

And even if we could show they are, we don’t know what intelligence or how it’s being used in the war.  

But, Peter Cronau says there is a long history of sharing intelligence with Israel. Basically? There are precedents.  

Peter Cronau: The NSA signed an agreement about 10 years ago with ISNU – ISNU is the Israeli Signet National Unit.  

It agreed to hand over all sorts of signals intelligence.  

So anything in the networked world that we provide to the NSA is available for the NSA to provide to Israel.  

Alex Barwick (VO): But it’s really hard to pin down specifically.  

Is Pine Gap 100% providing targets in Gaza to Israel? 

Peter Cronau: I haven't got evidence that shows that they're locating exact targets where Hamas is in Gaza. 

I've seen the information that the capability exists. Until we get more transparency, that evidence isn't going to be put on the table. 

The actual evidence that Hamas is targeted by Pine Gap, these are the most closely guarded secrets in Australia. 

Alex Barwick (VO): It’s clear Pine Gap, where so many people in my town work in silence, has only become more important over time. 

A lot of the stuff I’ve read about signals and electronic intelligence is pretty dense reading. But, I've wanted to understand the ever-increasing eyes and ears of Pine Gap. 

Professor Richard Tanter, who’s spent a huge part of his life researching Pine Gap and is considered to be the number one expert in Australia on the subject, is the guy to break it down. 

Richard Tanter: Pine Gap is the most important spy base outside the United States. 

Alex Barwick (VO): He’s watched Pine Gap grow.  

When Pine Gap started operations in 1970 there were just a small handful of oversized golf balls on the desert floor.  

But boy has that changed.  

Richard Tanter: The satellites become more powerful. The receivers become more sensitive.  

Ten years ago there were about 33, today there are about 45. 

The computers become faster at processing, the geolocation becomes more sensitive. So, the processing and analytical side of Pine Gap expands. 

Pine Gap became extremely important in the age of drone warfare in helping to find the targets. Helping to find cell phone users, satellite phone users, where were they in real time? And where were they very precisely. 

Pine Gap became critical in feeding that potential target information into what was called the White House's kill chain decision making, and is still critical for that today. 

Alex Barwick (VO): And he says this outback town is still in the cross hairs. 

Richard Tanter: There is nothing like Pine Gap.  

That means Pine Gap is almost certainly a prime nuclear target in the event of major war between the United States and Russia, and probably in the case of the United States and China.  

Alex Barwick: How much of the world are we eavesdropping on? 

Richard Tanter: All of Europe, all of Africa, all of the Indian subcontinent, all of Russia, all of China and East Asia and South east Asia, the Atlantic ocean and most of the Pacific. That's a lot of the world.  

Alex Barwick (VO): On any ordinary day in Alice Springs, taking the kids to school or heading to the shops, I’ve been thinking about this curtain of silence that shrouds Pine Gap. About the people I play sport with or parents of my kid’s friends who’ll never speak about their work, and I don’t ask. 

But the thing is, this place is - quite literally – built on secrets.  

The large white radomes don’t just hide what direction the antennas inside are pointed in. The whole complex behind razor wire hides the secrets of the stolen land beneath.  

I eventually had a coffee with Ken Napier, the head of Pine Gap security. He’d reached out after our exchange at Pine Gap's gates with protesters Sue and Jenny from the 1983 peace camp.  

I can't share much of what he said but there were a couple of things. 

He talked about the family of dingos that’s lived on the Base for generations. But the other thing he said, was that there were Aboriginal paintings on rock overhangs within the fence line. 

It sent shivers down my spine. Talk about the most secure rock art in Australia. 

On a warm December day, Arrernte elder Felicity Hayes stands on a patch of red sand, kangaroo grass grows at her feet, Pine Trees and Ironwoods surround us.  

Felicity Hayes: Werte, Ayenge apetyeke. 

Ampe arrekantherrenhe apetyeke apmere-werne aretyeke. 

Nhenhe mape the akngetyeke, ware anwerne apetyane lyete apmere aretyeke. 

Nhenhe mape, tyerrtye nhenhe mape, arntarnte- areye, tyerrtye nhenhe mwantyele.  

Ayenge arrekantherrele apetyehne... 

Alex Barwick (VO): We’re about 5 metres from a three-string barbed wire fence that separates us from Pine Gap. We’re in the Kuyunba Conservation Reserve. 

There's a light breeze and large rust rippled rocks jut out of the earth around us creating a shelter.  

It's beautiful. 

She's welcoming us to Kuyunba - her family's country...right next to, and inside Pine Gap. 

Alex Barwick: Felicity, can you tell me what you just said in English?  

Felicity Hayes: I welcome myself and you. I said to look after you. Look after my friends here. Come with me. I am a child. I come into my grandfather's country.  

I just told them that I'm their children, their child. I come visit. 

Alex Barwick (VO): Felicity was a teenager the first time she came to Kuyunba. 

Felicity Hayes: I was about 14 years old when I first come here with my grandad and my dad, and my auntie and my mum. 

For me as a young teenager, didn't even know about sacred sites and everything, you know? Since I come here, it just opened up to me.  

We are going towards the woman's area.  

A sacred site is a special place for us that you can't let anybody come in and destroy anything. Even the trees. Even the plants. You can't move a rock. 

Sacred site is a place that you can't touch anything.  

Alex Barwick: But Felicity, people have touched this place.  

Felicity Hayes: Yeah.  

Alex Barwick: There's a fence line running through it. 

There are cameras looking in.  

Felicity Hayes: Yeah.  

Alex Barwick: And security when you come here.  

Felicity Hayes: Yeah.  

Alex Barwick: And it, it's a spy base.  

Felicity Hayes: Yeah.  

Alex Barwick: A secret place built on your country. How does that feel? 

Felicity Hayes: Well, I felt like our space was invaded, you know? Invaded by people that never looked at the land closely. 

VO: I can see a camera high on the other side of the Pine Gap fence watching us. 

Alex Barwick: What sort of interactions have you had with security arriving over the years when you've come and spent time here?  

Felicity Hayes: Oh, they ask you a lot of questions. What are you doing here? Who are you, you know? How come you come here, you know?  

VO: I ask Felicity what she knows about the rock art Ken mentioned. There are actually paintings on both sides of the barbed wire fence protecting Pine Gap. 

Felicity Hayes: Big wall painting got chiselled out and that's why we was like, better come and check it out.  

Alex Barwick (VO): One of the paintings has actually been removed. 

Alex Barwick: So what had happened?  

Felicity Hayes: They took our story, you know. 

It belongs to our country. It belongs to us.  

I feel sort of, um, angry. And sad. That was our history, that was our story of when old people lived here a long time ago before the white men came, you know.  

The rock art is a story, it's a history story. 

Alex Barwick (VO): A museum in Darwin, 1500 kilometres away, has confirmed that they do have cultural objects from the Pine Gap site, removed during an archaeological dig. 

I can’t confirm whether this includes the rock art Felicity spoke about though.  

But her grandfather went to see the damage to the painting, he came home angry. 

Felicity Hayes: He wanted to kill somebody. He wanted to spear that person, whoever he was, you know?  

Alex Barwick (VO): There has been a rollercoaster of resistance to Pine Gap and the role it plays in America’s wars.  

But right here, in Alice Springs/Mparntwe the enduring loss over many generations for Felicity’s family must be heartbreaking. 

As I drive back into town, the Pine Gap “prohibited area” sign in my rear-view mirror, I realise this spy base makes me feel small.  

Its reach and power is enormous. 

It’s why a lot of people in my town of 25,000 just can’t talk about what they do, ever. And if they do they'll be evacuated overnight, or worse. 

Maybe it's no surprise no one speaks out, we know what happened to Edward Snowden (now stuck living in Russia) and other whistleblowers like Julian Assange forced to take refuge in the London Ecuadorian embassy for 7 years, then incarcerated and fighting extradition for years. 

Heading back to the office, Piggly’s supermarket is on my right. 

It’s a reminder of the serious dollars that flowed into the town when the Base was first built. Even now, a lot of people and local businesses would suffer if those antennas were ever powered down.  

But that’s not likely. 

Because Pine Gap’s bigger than Alice Springs, not that the Australian government is giving anything away. 

I reached out anyway, asking for an interview with the Defence Minister Richard Marles. 

I also asked to go inside the gates of Pine Gap. My requests were “politely declined”, in less than two hours.  

In the 16 years I've lived in Alice Springs it’s always been radio silence or a one liner, “the government can’t comment on matters of national security.” 

I wrote back to the Australian Defence department anyway, with about 30 questions. Asking everything from whether Pine Gap was supplying Israel with targets in Gaza to what plans were in place for further expansion?  

And for the first time I actually got a few paragraphs back, but not answering the questions I’d asked. 

They repeated that sentiment “Australia’s cooperation with the United States through joint and collaborative facilities is one of our most longstanding security arrangements. 

“By necessity and in accordance with longstanding practice by successive governments, we do not comment on the operation of our joint facilities, including Pine Gap”. 

Everything I’ve learnt about Pine Gap only leaves me wanting to know more (goes with the job).  

I think most of us accept that governments eavesdrop on one another to gather intelligence. But the scale and use of Pine Gap's intelligence by governments outside Australia without the public knowing, and for use in conflicts with countries we are not at war with, it doesn’t feel very democratic. 

Does the Australian public deserve to know more, to have a say or even be part of a public conversation? It's reasonable to ask questions and get answers - especially when the implications are so serious. Deadly. 

And while the sign on the road to this outback spy base says it’s ‘joint’ - is it really an equal partnership when one party is a hell of a lot more powerful than the other?  

And if our strategic interests don't align with the United States can we disentangle ourselves?  

Or is our ever-closer relationship with America the only thing that will save us if there’s conflict in our region? 

Revealing state secrets or putting national security at risk has never been my aim. But, we should know more about this secret place in the outback that's shaped my town. We should know more about what it’s got Australia into and that if nuclear war broke out Alice Springs/Mparntwe could well be blown off the map. 

So, what exactly is going on in my backyard?  

More than I could have ever imagined. Large-scale spying and surveillance around the world, intelligence used in America’s military kill chain and sacred sites on stolen land. 

And I still feel like I don’t know the half of it.  

Quite a few people I spoke to said they’d never live in Alice Springs because of Pine Gap and the nuclear threat it brings with it.  

Alex Barwick: When you say it out loud, it sort of sounds ridiculous.   

Because it's so quiet, so silent, you almost can forget that it’s there and get on with life.  

Alex Barwick (VO): But I can’t anymore.  

Alex Barwick: Hey guys.   

Alex's children: Hi how was work? 

Alex Barwick (VO): After 16 years I love this town dearly.  

Alex's children: Hi how was work? 

Alex Barwick: Yeah, it was good. How was your day?  

June Barwick: It was good.   

Bernie Barwick: Can we go down to the trampoline and play soccer now? 

Alex Barwick (VO): But hearing everything I have does make me question where I’m raising my kids. 

 Season three of the ABC’s Expanse podcast is hosted and produced by me - Alex Barwick. I’m continuing to investigate, if you have any information check out the show notes for details about how to get in touch. 

Our supervising producer is Piia Wirsu, Sound engineer and Producer, Grant Wolter; Executive Producer, Blythe Moore; with thanks to Elsa Silberstein for additional production and research, and to ABC Alice Springs. 

Thanks also to Tim Roxburgh, Rob Mailer, Eric George, Jane Connors, Mark Maley, Elizabeth Beal and Rohan Barwick, and to Toby Hemmings and Lisa Herbert for additional fact checking. A d to Alex Nelson for his meticulous records, and Kieran Finnane for encouraging me to look deeper in the first place.  

And to everyone who spoke to us; a huge thank you. 

Acknowledging the traditional owners of the land this podcast is created on - Arrernte land, Awabakal land and the land of the Stoney Creek Nations. 

If you haven’t already, go back and check out seasons one and two of Expanse: A wild diamond heist and an unforgettable survival story at sea.