Take a virtual tour of Australian Bases Abroad

You can now take a virtual tour of Australian bases abroad starting from key bases and facilities in Australia itself, going through facilities used by the ADF in the Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Diego Garcia, the Gulf region, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

To take the tour using Google Earth:

1. If you already have Google Earth (version 4 or higher) installed on your computer, start the tour by downloading the Australian Bases Abroad Tour file by clicking here.
2. You should click on open in the dialog box that follows then Google Earth should open automatically.
3. If you haven’t got Google Earth version 4 (or higher) installed on your computer click here to download and install it before trying step 1. 
4. The tour file should now appear under Temporary Places on the left hand side of the Google Earth screen.
5. Click once on “Australian Bases Abroad Tour” if it is not already highlighted, then on the play button below that.
6. Send any feedback or questions you have to austral@rmit.edu.au.

If you don’t have Google Earth installed on your computer you can still view the elements of the tour using Google Maps. Click here to take view the tour using Google Maps (but you’ll have to navigate around the points yourself).

You can click on the yellow placemark buttons to get more information about each location, and web links to Nautilus Institute pages on each

Nautilus Institute will be enhancing and updating this tour as new information comes to hand.

Your suggestions would be welcome. Send suggestions to austral@rmit.edu.au.

Settings

The speed of the tour, and how long the tour stops at each point can be adjusted from Google Earth’s Tools menu (choose options, then select the touring tab).

You can also get Google Earth to display more information about each point by ticking the “show balloon when tour is paused” tickbox. If you find that the balloon displays for too short a time to display the photo in the balloon and read the contents of the balloon, change the tour pause time to 5 seconds or more.

Warning

Whilst the tour files on the Nautilus website are quite small, the amount of data downloaded by Google Earth to display the underlying terrain is often large. Google Earth tours are not suitable for people with dial-up connections, or if you only have a small download limit. As the tour is played more than once, your computer’s cache retains data, and renders detail faster and in more depth.

Acknowledgements

Nautilus Institute is grateful to a number of people from Australia and elsewhere for information and corrections, most of whom  would probably prefer not to be thanked in public. They know who they are. We would also like to thank Nathaniel Tanter for designing and building the Google Earth tour, and Tony Faithfull for help with this page.