History
Sir Garfield Barwick, Australian Minister for External Affairs, negotiated the lease on the US Base at North West Cape in 1963 with U.S. ambassador William Battle. The lease did not allow Australia any degree of control over the station or its use.
The station was commissioned as U.S. Naval Communication Station North West Cape on 16 September 1967 at a ceremony with the US Ambassador to Australia Ed Clark and the Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt, at which peppercorn rent for the base for the first year was paid.
On 20 September 1968, the station was officially renamed to U.S. Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt in memory of the late Harold Holt, former Prime Minister of Australia, who disappeared whilst swimming and was declared dead, presumed drowned, three months after the station was commissioned.
With the election of the Labor Government to power in 1972, Defence Minister Lance Barnard started negotiations on the condition of operation of the U.S. military bases in Australia. On 9 January 1974 a joint statement by Lance Barnard and James Schlesinger, the US Secretary of Defense: assigned the Deputy Commander of the base to a Royal Australian Navy officer and gave Australian personnel roles in base technical and maintenance functions. The cipher room was closed to Australian scrutiny. The joint statement stressed the importance of consultations in crises. There was no undertaking given by the USA to relay fire orders to their submarines bearing nuclear missiles.
In May 1974 several hundred people traveled to North West Cape from around Australia to protest and occupy the base and "symbolically reclaiming it for the Australian people". During the occupation the Eureka Flag was flown over the base with fifty five people arrested during the protest. Songs composed in the campaign against North West Cape and other US bases in Australia include We don't want no Yankee Bases and Omega Doodle which have become part of the Australian folkloric tradition.
From 1967 until October 1992 a Naval Security Group Detachment was stationed at the facility.
In Western Australian domestic politics, the presence of foreign military installations in the state has occasionally been questioned over the decades.
The "U.S." was dropped from the station's official title with the advent of joint U.S. and Royal Australian Navy operation in 1974.
The majority of U.S. Naval presence ended in 1993 with the withdrawal of all U.S. Naval personnel.
In July 2002, the Australian Navy handed over operation of the station to the Defence Material Organisation.
The base is currently operated under contract by Raytheon Australia.
On 15 July 2008, Australia and the US signed a bilateral treaty governing the future joint use of the facility for the next 25 years. .
Harold E. Holt is identified as a potential Air Force Space Surveillance System (or Space Fence) site.
Read more about this topic: Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt
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