North West Cape

This was a hell of a baptism for him in 1874.

That year, in March, Contest was near the Northwest Cape, sailing from Adelaide to Darwin, when it was caught on the edge of a cyclone.

The Northern Territory Times reported a couple of weeks later, "...probably some of the other vessels now expected here were not so lucky as Captain Allen had been.

Tom's dad had seen them through.

They'd just missed a big blow and he considered his luck had been in that time.

Even so, he wrote...

As soon as I got around the Northwest Cape, it blew very hard.

I will soon be on my holiday trip to Sydney, and I am looking forward to it.

think more attention should be given to fossil fuels here in Australia.

I think extracting resources from mines, digging holes in the ground, uranium mines and mines up in the Northwest Cape and also mining the DC beds and oil drilling in the waters around Australia and gas extraction.

I think they need to be regulating those kinds of things.

And the other thing they should be doing is doing what Paul Keating did, which was the super resources profits tax.

And it's really interesting because this is not a new topic in Australia's history, as you know as well.

This debate, this idea of the US having... bases or forces or installations or facilities in Australia dates back to the 60s when Pine Gap was negotiated and other areas like Northwest Cape and Narungga this is back in the 60s during the Cold War And there was so much debate that happened during the 1980s in particular when a certain Desmond Ball tried to find out what was going on.

What was Pine Gap actually doing? You know a

thing or two about Desmond Ball, right?

No, no.

The same, I would say, is also true.

But again, it's a question of, you know, as we discussed earlier about Northwest Cape and Pine Gap and all that, like we can be integrated, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're more of a target or less.

What about if China sees us as being integral to U.S. operations and draws us in? Does that entrap us?

Hmm.

Three or four of which were the giant Pine Gap, North West Cape, and Nurrunga, which has now been folded into Pine Gap, um, and the American military seismic nuclear detonation, uh, um, sensor facility in Alice Springs.

They're all still with us.

They've grown-

On our way out, we called at Madagascar, where we landed some of our passengers.

Then we ran eastward, meaning to call at Northwest Cape, but about a hundred degrees east,

we

encountered very dreadful weather, which carried away all our sails and sprung the gibbom and the foret glandmast.