[Dr MAG]

Well, it seems the hexagonal array is an alive and well naval communication station! The following information draws no particular conclusions. Make your own minds up as we may be just beginning to consider a range of issues...

The station has been re-named after a former Prime Minister of Australia, Harold Holt. The thing about Prime Minister Holt is that he disappeared into the sea when swimming one morning off the coast of Victoria in the 1960s, so the installation was revived after Second World War... and renamed the "US Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt" three months after the supposed drowning (the PM's body was never recovered). Located on the northwest coast of Australia, 6 kilometres (4 mi) north of the town of Exmouth, Western Australia, the base station is the very same giant hexagram you see by satellite!

The station provides very low frequency (VLF) radio transmission to United States Navy and Royal Australian Navy ships and submarines in the western Pacific Ocean and eastern Indian Ocean and some of its many towers send out high frequency beams. It is the most powerful transmission station in the Southern hemisphere.

This information should give pause for thought. If you read below you will see there has already been a culture of protest surrounding this US base in Australia way back in the 1970s! It is just that we forget the battles previously fought, and then again, today we have even more vigilant glances as to what installations, arrays, ELF (extra-low frequency) VHF (very high frequency) etc stations mean for populations round the planet in very different terms from what we imagined back then.


Today the station is maintained and refurbished. It features thirteen radio towers, the tallest tower is 387 m (1,270 ft) tall, and was for many years the tallest man-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere. Six towers, each 304 metres tall, are evenly placed in a circle around Tower Zero. The other six towers, which are each 364 metres tall, are evenly placed in a larger circle around Tower Zero. (Somebody may like to investigate the harmonics here from the numbers and inform the thread.)

When the station was recommissioned as U.S. Naval Communication Station North West Cape on September 16, 1967, The lease did not allow Australia any degree of control over the station or its use which has been usual in Australia for US bases here.

In 1974 Australian personnel were given base technical and maintenance roles, while the "cipher room" was closed to Australian scrutiny.

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 and fifty five people arrested. "Songs composed included "We don't want no Yankee Bases". [Wikepedia says this; but I am Australian and beg ignorance, I have never heard of this song, have you?]

The base is currently operated under contract by Boeing. "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." Of course this does not mean the Australian Government has any idea of the many uses of super-antennaes; the hex arrays discovered will have importance.
It is a race against time to wake up...