Alex Barwick: All right, we're gonna try and climb a little bit higher.
This is such beautiful country.
Alex Barwick (VO): When I first rolled into Alice Springs/Mparntwe, I was surprised by the hills.
My outback Australian town is nestled in ranges that fold and stretch out to the east and west.
Alex Barwick: There are so many natives, Sennas and Mulga trees.
Alex Barwick (VO): The air is dry, there’s a light breeze and the sky is endlessly blue.
I love walking the trails, but this is one ridge line I’ve never climbed before.
Because I’m worried that even being here might get me arrested.
There’s a secret place you can only see from the top. It’s hidden in a valley.
Alex Barwick: Now we're just sort of on this classic Central Australian sideways rock ridge line, but I think this is going to be our path, so we'll head up here.
Alex Barwick (VO): Gunshots puncture the silence from the rifle range nearby.
I finally reach the ridge.
And there it is.
Alex Barwick: They are absolutely enormous.
It is weird the way they're sort of just perched, as if they're suspended in the landscape.
Alex Barwick (VO): These gleaming white, giant domes, that look more like oversized golf balls erupting from the desert floor are what’s known locally as Pine Gap, or The Base.
This secret place, in a secluded valley 18ks south of Alice Springs, has welcomed global powerbrokers, seen thousands call for its closure, is rumoured to have brought a Prime Minister to his knees.
And that’s only the beginning.
War crimes, espionage, nuclear obliteration.
There are some crazy rumours about Pine Gap here in central Australia.
I’m Alex Barwick, and my job as a journalist is to ask questions but having worked here in Alice Springs for 16 years while raising a family, I learnt quickly you don’t ask about Pine Gap.
And in a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business, that's odd, in fact it’s unsettling.
Nobody talks about Pine Gap, the Base.
But now I’m going to, which makes me feel nervous, people can get locked up for spilling the beans on this place.
And as I start asking questions, I’m realising Pine Gap has a whole new significance now, as each new international conflict explodes.
What on earth is happening in my backyard?
Well, it all started in the shadow of nuclear destruction. It began with the Cold War, and a lie.
This is season three of the ABC’s Expanse podcast: Spies in the Outback.
Episode One: Selling a Space Base.
Des Nelson: The drought began about 1958.
By 1959 the dust was blowing in town.
When one of these dust storms was about to start, everything would go quiet.
Not a bird, not a dog, not a sound, it was just dead calm.
And that was the signal to go inside and shut everything.
Alex Barwick (VO): These dust storms are eerie, I’ve experienced a few over the years.
Standing on Anzac Hill, a lookout in the centre of town, you can see the ranges as they ripple through the landscape.
I imagine a slow-moving cloud bearing down on the town as the young botanist Des Nelson watches on.
It’s unnervingly quiet.
Des Nelson: You'd look over towards the range and up it’d come like a great wave.
Huge wave of dust coming like a great big breaker. A sort of orangey, reddish-orange colour.
And the winds, oh boy the winds.
Trees were stripped.
Alex Barwick (VO): In the early 60s Alice Springs was in the middle of an eight-year long drought, the dust a constant reminder.
Des Nelson: Lots of people were leaving.
Alex Barwick (VO): And Des was watching people pack up, heartbroken.
This isn’t the Alice I know, and it wasn’t the Alice Des fell in love with back in 1953.
Alex Barwick: Okay, so we're looking for lot 1946. 1945...
Oh here we go, yep, this is it here.
(Car door opening)
Hi, Des.
Des Nelson: Oh, g’day.
Alex Barwick: How are you?
Thank you so much for having, having me out here I really appreciate it...
Alex Barwick (VO): Des and his wife Pat live in the rural area of Alice Springs, a ten-minute drive south through the stunning MacDonnell Ranges.
The pair still occasionally hold hands and often when Des was telling a story Pat would chime in.
The exterior of the house is painted off-white, there’s roller shutters with lace curtains peeking out.
Family photos and pictures of the desert country hang on the light mint walls. Pat pours us all cups of tea, it's cosy.
Alex Barwick: How would you describe yourself when you first got here?
Des Nelson: Oh well, I was a teenager, a pretty lively sort of fella.
VO: Des was a bit of a rascal in his day.
Des Nelson: Oh boy, you ain't heard nothing yet.
(Des Nelson laughs)
Oh God, before I was interested in guns, I was interested in explosives and I blew myself into hospital.
I was mad on chemistry.
(Des Nelson laughs)
Alex Barwick (VO): When he wasn't blowing himself up, Des was flat out doing station work, and eventually he moved into the town of Alice Springs.
That’s when he started noticing Americans about the place.
See, it was the kinda town, still is, where you know all your neighbours.
And the born and bred locals say that made it a great place to grow up.
Helen Kilgariff: Alice was just a little country town, not very well off, everyone knew each other.
Hello, I'm Helen Kilgariff.
I was a child in Alice Springs when Pine Gap first started.
Alex Barwick (VO): The Kilgariff's had helped build the town, they were the movers and shakers.
Helen Kilgariff: We were a mob of kids, and we were not the biggest family in town even though eventually there ended up being 11 of us.
Alex Barwick (VO): And life was pretty free range.
Helen Kilgariff: We were kids who made our own fun, we didn't have TV.
I was a bit of a tomboy and we read huge numbers of books.
So ‘The Great Escape’, well we had a poultry farm so we were forever trying to catch the people who might be stealing the chickens.
Alex Barwick (VO): Alice Springs is still full of characters, people like Des and Helen, whose families have poured their heart and soul into the town.
They’ve seen it through all seasons and the 60s had been a hard one.
But those Americans that Des had seen around Alice Springs were about to strike a deal that would turn the town's fortunes.
There's a story I've heard about this. Four official men standing on a patch of red dirt, surrounded by hardy native plants near an empty riverbed, the ranges rising around them and the dust coating their leather shoes.
Richard Tanter: And they cracked open a case of red Australian wine to celebrate.
Alex Barwick (VO): One of the men uncorks a bottle and the dry earth soaks up the blood red liquid that splashes out.
Richard Tanter: I don't know whether they shared it with their drivers which would have been a nice thing to do.
The United States and Australia were planting the flag, so to speak, and claiming this land to build a space base.
Richard Tanter has heard this story too. Back then he was just a young boy flying toy planes around his living room.
But he’s gone on to dedicate much of his working life to trying to understand Pine Gap.
He’s Australia’s number one expert.
Richard Tanter: This was the start of something very big between Australia and the United States.
Alex Barwick (VO): So, the US government had come knocking with plans to build a base, a space base, called Pine Gap in the heart of Australia.
Space was sexy back then.
Richard Tanter: The moon program was ramping up at its height.
Everything was going well.
Alex Barwick (VO): The space race was on.
Man was about to walk on the moon for the very first time, and Australia wanted in on the action.
That red wine was cracked in the desert and a few months later the paperwork was signed in December of 1966.
The American space base would be built in the middle of a huge 50-acre lot and the lease would run for a decade.
Richard Tanter: It's actually a very beautiful location.
Alex Barwick (VO): Richard’s right, it was great land.
Des Nelson, the rascal, had grown up to become a well-respected botanist who was brought in to assess how valuable the Space Base acreage was.
Alex Barwick: Was there any conversation at the time about the fact that it was actually Arrernte land?
Des Nelson: No not a bit, not a bit.
Something like that was just never, ever considered or talked about.
Alex Barwick (VO): The Arrernte people were and are the traditional owners of Alice Springs/Mparntwe and surrounds, but back then land rights were a long way off.
As the Space Base began to take shape in this pocket of the desert, American families started landing in this town that had struggled through drought, and it transformed.
Helen Kilgariff: You could see the infrastructure increasing in town, of course. I mean, we had this velodrome, we had the baseball, we had the hockey pitches, the basketball.
Alex Barwick (VO): Helen Kilgariff and I caught up in her sister's house on Cavanagh Crescent, it’s around the corner from my place - small town.
There are quite a few big houses up here, in fact the official residence of the ‘Space Base’ Chief was on this street for decades.
Alex Barwick: What did you think of all these new things in Alice Springs?
Helen Kilgariff: I don't think it occurred to me for years that there was a link between them coming.
You know, it was just, oh my goodness we've got a new swimming pool.
Alex Barwick (VO): Helen's dad Bernie Kilgariff, who died in 2010, was a successful businessman turned local politician back then.
He had been determined this Space Base would benefit Alice Springs.
Bernie Kilgariff: They were going to have all the Americans live in Adelaide.
Everyone had to live in Adelaide.
And the fellows and girls would have to fly to Alice Springs to do their, uh, stint, then go back home.
Alex Barwick (VO): Bernie was like, hang on a sec.
Bernie Kilgariff: What's wrong with Alice Springs?
Alex Barwick (VO): Bernie quashed the fly in fly out idea, he made sure those workers would live in Alice.
Construction and dollars began to flow.
And I mean big dollars.
Thirteen Million, and Australia was stumping up 3 million of that, all up, in today’s money that’s around 200 million.
And those folk in Alice were like, let it flow.
Bernie Kilgariff: As the Americans started to come in the Australians would meet them and help settle them down in their houses, these little committees of women.
Pick various things up from the shop and take them to the house and give them a welcome.
Alex Barwick (VO): Once the Space Base was up and running, details about what actually happened out there... well they were vague, but hey, there were new shops, ka-ching!
Des Nelson: One thing that certainly came into being because of the Americans was a supermarket called the Piggly Wiggly.
Alex Barwick: Still there today.
Des Nelson: I remember thinking, what a weird name, then I was told the reason was because there was a chain called Piggly Wiggly in America.
Alex Barwick (VO): Pigglys is down the road from the ABC where I work, a short stroll for a snack.
I can imagine Des and Pat dropping by for the milk and bread.
Alex Barwick: Welcome to Piggly Wiggly’s!
Elsa Silberstein (producer): Alright let's go get some hot chippies!
Is that a pig as well? Cartoon little pink pig.
Alex Barwick (VO): Actually Piggly’s is also just down the road from where Helen and her family had their chook farm.
Off the back of a crippling drought, the town’s fortunes had changed, all thanks to this Space Base and those Americans.
Helen Kilgariff: This sounds very parochial maybe, they had more money.
‘Cause it was still a developing little town, the people of the town certainly weren’t overly wealthy.
Alex Barwick: But the Americans had money?
Helen Kilgariff: Well they did. Well they had all new houses.
As kid you can see how they dress or, they probably had hairdresser haircuts and everyone else, their mother cut their hair.
Alex Barwick (VO): So, the fancy haircuts raised an eyebrow but there were bigger issues.
As I flick through the old news stories from back then, it’s clear that not everyone in town was sold.
Charles Orr: The citizens of Alice Springs have been a bit bewildered because they don't know the true picture.
In fact, I don't think anyone does.
Alex Barwick (VO): That's Charles Orr, he was the member for Alice Springs, and he had questions.
Right up front he’d been bugging the Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt with his concerns via telegram.
"He told Mr Holt that local residents should have been informed and consulted prior to the signing of the agreement.
While beneficial financially, won't this defence space research station place Alice Springs in danger in case of war?
Alice Springs should have been told the facts of what is about to happen in their town”.
Alex Barwick (VO): The PM assured Charles Orr there was nothing to worry about, but Charles wasn’t going to just sit down and shut up.
Charles Orr: Well, there’s a considerable amount of distrust of this statement, but people being what they are and the government being what it is in the Territory we’ve learnt that it's very hard to buck the government so everyone says well what can we do, accept it, have another beer and go on.
Alex Barwick (VO): This is such a Northern Territory statement, a place still considered the wild west, well wild north, of Australia.
I could imagine a politician saying the same phrase today, have another beer and move on.
Charles Orr couldn’t get the answers he wanted about this Space Base.
And, you know what happens in a vacuum of information? People make stuff up.
There were even headlines that the Space Base would attract flying saucers. Yep, Aliens.
Other reports said Alice Springs was now a nuclear target, but never why.
The rumours swirled, no one had the full bottle on these new Americans and their Space Base.
Come to think of it, ever since the Americans first arrived in town there’d been some weird stuff happening.
Des Nelson: That was the year I bought my first car, which was a 1929 A-Model Ford.
Alex Barwick (VO): Our young rascal Des assures me this was a great car to have.
Des Nelson: I was just mad on cars and machinery and fiddling around with engines.
There was a nice little place that was quiet, I thought, and it was a little cul-de-sac that went off Hartley Street.
Alex Barwick (VO): Hartley Street is downtown Alice Springs.
Des Nelson: And I used to drive my car down there and fiddle around with it.
And on the other side, of the cul-de-sac, a door used to open, and there'd be an eye looking at me.
And I'd say, “Oh g’day mate,” and the door would shut.
And eventually somebody came out and this American voice introduced himself and we got to talking and, he said that, “Oh back in the States I got an A-Model too”.
One day I came to go back down the cul-de-sac and there was a chain across the cul-de-sac, I couldn't go down there.
Alex Barwick (VO): A bit weird.
But this is the thing, other than a few squeaky wheels like Charles Orr, no one was really trying to get to the bottom of the thing.
Because, well, those Americans had charm.
Des Nelson: In retrospect I had got the impression that they were like ambassadors. They really made a good impression.
Alex Barwick (VO): And I don’t think this was accidental.
It had been going on even before the space base, when the Americans only had a smaller, so-called weather station just north of town.
Helen Kilgariff: Never put out a weather forecast ever, so you knew it wasn't a weather station.
I remember one great little scandal in the town, was that an American, obviously, the family was sent back because he said something like, “For God's sake, you lot, why would you ever believe it's a weather station?” and that was enough.
He was gone in days.
Alex Barwick (VO): Doesn’t quite seem like a sackable offence, but I wasn’t there.
I keep hearing similar stories, loose lipped Americans disappearing.
Okay, they don’t actually disappear, but they’re sent packing.
I even heard a story the other day from someone married to a Pine Gap worker that there are moles in town even now to make sure no one spills the beans on this place.
But it’s one of those things that’s impossible to prove, although I have confirmed that there were definitely moles in the 80s in Alice Springs.
Anyway, when the space base came to town in the 60s, this charm offensive was in full swing.
Des Nelson: I was in the backyard and I heard it first, and looked up and I immediately said, “Let's go out and have a look at this plane”.
Alex Barwick (VO): Des was out tending his native plants when one of the world’s largest military cargo planes filled the sky.
And you know Des, he loves seeing how things work.
He thought...
Des Nelson: Can't miss this.
Sort of shoveled everybody into the car and took off.
Alex Barwick (VO): He, Pat and their two young boys drive south, pulling up not far from the tarmac in their 1963 khaki-green Holden station wagon.
Des Nelson: We got out there and we were pretty well the only people there.
Standing at the fence, staring at it and one of the crew looked over and saw us and just came over nice and quietly, “You people ever been on one of these before?”.
Oh, sure.
(Des Nelson laughs)
He invited us on board, so on we went and it was just mouth opening.
Alex Barwick (VO): It was a huge grey beast of a thing, dwarfing everything else on the Alice Springs tarmac and Des and his family were getting a sunset tour.
Des Nelson: The capacity inside was about the size of a three bedroom house.
I think the boys sat on the seats too, on the controls.
Told us how fast it could travel and how high it went and all those sorts of things.
Alex Barwick (VO): The kids wandered around the plane, gobsmacked.
Alex Barwick: Did it feel really special at the time?
Des Nelson: Yeah, too right, such a colossal plane.
Yeah, bigger than anything else around the place.
Alex Barwick (VO): There’s nothing like a private tour of an incredible piece of equipment to win over hearts and minds.
Twenty odd kilometres from the Base, off a dirt road to the east of town, is a small camp called White Gate/Irrkerlantye.
I’ve found a discarded esky to perch on, my map of Pine Gap rustles in the breeze.
Arrernte elder Felicity Hayes sits beside me on an upturned milk crate.
Alex Barwick: Felicity, can you show me what part of this country is yours?
Alex Barwick (VO): Felicity’s wearing a black skirt and a purple t-shirt with the logo of the local Aboriginal organisation she co-directs.
She slips on her glasses to take a closer look and her finger traces the spot where I imagine that case of red wine was cracked.
Felicity Hayes: All this here, this is part of my country.
That's all my country there.
Going back towards Alice Springs and that.
Alex Barwick: So, the whole area, the whole 50 acres?
Felicity Hayes: Yes, the whole area. Through the gap here coming this way, that's all my country.
My family's country, yeah.
Alex Barwick (VO): I'm loathe to sound critical of our surroundings because this community is where Felicity brought up her kids and her grandkids. It's home.
But to a stranger it looks like a collection of tin sheds and fallen down houses. It's less than five minutes drive from my house in Alice Springs/Mparntwe.
The camp has no connection to mains power or water, despite Felicity's family calling on the government for basic services for 40 years.
While on the other side of Alice Springs is Pine Gap, the lights have never turned off and the staff pool is always filled with clear water.
When the Australian government took 50 acres of country for the Americans to build their space base on, it wasn't really their land to give away.
Alex Barwick: In Arrernte, what would you call this land?
Felicity Hayes: This is Kuyunba.
This is a big secret place for men.
What I heard from my father and my grandfather, that it's a very special place.
This was where men used to go and have dancing and ceremonies.
Before white men came, you know.
Alex Barwick (VO): Felicity’s describing a place on the map called Kuyunba Conservation Reserve. The turn off’s just before you get to the gates of Pine Gap.
The reserve hugs the base’s boundary line, but Felicity’s country goes well inside.
Felicity Hayes: It's beautiful, when you walk in there's the red sand.
And you've got the rocks.
And you've got the pine trees there.
And it's so beautiful, you know.
And you can feel that cold wind coming through. Just like there's the spirits there, like watching, you know, families.
Because everywhere we go, like us Aboriginal people, we say that we still have our ancestors with us in a spirit form, you know.
Alex Barwick (VO): Felicity's family grew up on a station outside of Alice Springs, because between 1928 and 1965 Aboriginal people were prohibited from entering town without a permit.
And she’s never accessed all of her family’s land at Pine Gap.
Felicity Hayes: You can't come through the gap because it's all, you know got cameras and stuff like that.
It's very secretive.
Alex Barwick (VO): When the red wine was spilt on Arrernte land for a space base, Aboriginal Australians weren't even included in the census.
They certainly weren’t considered when it came to taking land for the Commonwealth for schmick new space bases.
Alex Barwick: If someone was to say to you, whose land is that at Pine Gap, what would you say?
Felicity Hayes: Oh, I'd say that's ours.
It's part of our Dreaming story.
Alex Barwick: Do you want that land back?
Felicity Hayes: Yes, I do.
Alex Barwick (VO): But the plans for this land? They were well in motion.
News reporter (archival): Like emerging mushrooms, the shrouded scanners of Pine Gap grow out of the dry red earth of Central Australia. Officially, it's an experimental space station.
Richard Tanter: It was sold to Australia as a scientific research station.
Alex Barwick (VO): Wait, was it not?
Richard Tanter: The understanding that this was a spy base and a spy base which, when the Soviets worked out what it was, would then have become a high priority Soviet nuclear target.
Alex Barwick (VO): Despite Prime Minister Harold Holt’s reassurances to Charles Orr, maybe people should have been asking more questions about all the strange things happening, streets getting roped off, disappearances.
Because this secret facility was never a space base, and those American strangers Alice learned to love?They sure weren't budding astronauts.
It turns out this was a key bit of kit in the arsenal of America’s war machine.
This was the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear annihilation hung heavy between the superpowers for decades after World War II.
Pine Gap expert Richard Tanter remembers the visceral fear during those years.
Richard Tanter: There were moments of extreme anxiety. A general atmosphere of intense division.
Alex Barwick (VO): Both sides amassing nuclear weapons, each looking for the upper hand.
America wanted eyes and ears on what was happening in the Soviet Union.
Richard Tanter: And one of the things the Americans were very concerned to know was how good are the Soviet missiles? How far can they go?
Alex Barwick (VO): And the answer was here in the outskirts of my town, Alice Springs, hidden in the ranges.
The truth was, this American base 18ks out of town was receiving information from a satellite sent up over the Soviet Union to eavesdrop, and then sending that intel on to the United States.
So... kinda space-y?
To be honest, I can’t really imagine what it was like to grow up with that low grade ever-present fear that humanity might be about to wipe itself out with the press of a button.
So, I went to someone who was there, who could tell me.
Dad.
Alex Barwick: Are you happy to chat now or?
Dad Barwick: Oh yeah, let's sit in the living room and do it.
Alex Barwick: Yeah, sounds good.
Alex Barwick: What did the Cold War mean to you?
Dad Barwick: It was always just something there in the background and people were saying, well, we're on the brink of World War Three.
To know that it was possible for people to have their cities attacked in ways which were remote and, in many cases, undetected until it was too late to do anything.
So, with this threat breathing down our necks, America and Australia’s fates were now linked in an international stare down over nuclear weapons in the Cold War.
Pine Gap wasn’t a space base.
It was a spy base.
Run by the United States government.
And it was all very hush-hush.
Until somebody started asking difficult questions.
A long way from Alice Springs, in the halls of parliament in Canberra, the nation’s capital, a progressive politician with big ideas named Gough Whitlam had risen through the ranks to lead Australia’s labor party.
And he wanted to blow the lid on this secret outback base.
Gough Whitlam: There now need be no secrecy.
Alex Barwick (VO): This was no empty threat, there was an election in the wind, and that wind was blowing his way.
Whitlam’s promise to tell all of Australia what was really happening at Pine Gap? Well, it got some folks really fired up.
Archive (chanting): Close Pine Gap! US bases out!
Alex Barwick (VO): Suddenly the space base, sorry, spy base, in my outback Australian town was at the centre of a federal election.
There was talk of nuclear weapons across the country, and finally a small group of Alice Springs locals were about to make some noise.
What was really going on in the heart of the country?
This is Spies in the Outback.
Season three of the ABC’s Expanse podcast is hosted and produced by me, Alex Barwick. Supervising producer 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.
Acknowledging the traditional owners of the land this podcast is created on, the Arrernte land, Awabakal land and the land of the Stoney Creek Nations.
Don't forget to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.
In the grip of a crippling drought in the 1960s, Alice Springs sees an economic lifeline when America promises to build a space base on the edge of town.
But once Pine Gap’s bizarre, oversized golf ball-like structures are finally built, mysterious things start happening - the ‘space base’ isn’t quite what it seems.
Thanks to Megg Kelham for the use of audio recordings of Bernie Kilgariff.
To get in touch confidentially, please visit www.abc.net.au/news/confidential-tips.
Editor's note: The original episode stated that when the US base agreement was signed in 1966, Aboriginal Australians did not have the right to vote. They gained the right to vote in 1962, and it was made compulsory in 1984. The audio was updated with this line removed on 23/4/24.