Shoal Bay Receiving Station

In late 2020 two of four 16-18 m antennas in the northern-most row were replaced.

Between 2020 and 2022 three 11 m. diameter uncovered parabolic antennas were installed in the eastern corner of the satcom compound, making a total of fourteen large parabolic antennas at Shoal Bay suitable for monitoring of foreign satellites.

John Holloway,  Defense Information Systems Agency, ‘DISA briefing to the US-AUS-NZ, Strategic Defense Communications Management Group General Meeting on DoD HF Modernization efforts’, AFCEA [Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International], 15 November 2022, [n.d. in doc], at As Australia’s principal source for interception of Indonesian military and civilian communications, Shoal Bay has had a particularly role in Australian government understanding of Indonesian military activities in East Timor from 1975 to 1999, an understanding usually withheld from the Australian public. In February 2014 documents provided by Edward Snowden to the New York Times and Fairfax Media revealed that through Shoal Bay the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD, formerly DSD) had comprehensively penetrated the Indonesian civilian telephone system. By at least 2012 ASD accessed bulk call data from Indosat, and by 2013 had obtained almost 1.8 mn. encrypted master keys allowing it to decrypt mobile calls through the Telkomsel Mobile telephone network. Between 2010 and 2012, ASD offered the NSA surveillance monitoring records of communications between the Indonesian government and the US legal firm advising Indonesia in trade negotiations with the United States. The NSA accepted the ASD offer, and, according to the NSA documents, ASD “able to continue to cover the talks, providing highly useful intelligence for interested US customers”.

Shoal Bay Receiving Station, Allan Laurence, 1 January 2013.
Source: Allan Laurence/Grey Albatross, flickr, 1 January 2013, at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/grey_albatross/8331461207/in/photostream/

Shoal Bay Receiving Station, Darwin Google Earth, 8 November 2020

Shoal Bay, wide shot showing high frequency antennas

Government sources

HMAS Coonawarra, Royal Australian Navy

Shoal Bay, prior to December  2000

Defence Department photograph of Shoal bay receiving Station published in 2000: The quiet achiever, Navy News, December 11, 2000. http://www.defence.gov.au/news/navynews/editions/2000/12_11_00/story13.htm

Source: The quiet achiever, Navy News, December 11, 2000.

Parlimentary sources

Analysis and commentary

Shoal Bay Receiving Station, Wikipedia.

Desmond Ball, “Silent Witness: Australian intelligence and East Timor”, Masters of Terror: Indonesia’s Military and Violence in East Timor in 1999, [co-edited with Desmond Ball and Gerry Van Klinken], (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, second edition, 2006).

“DSD’s largest intercept station is located at Shoal Bay, near Darwin, where some 120-150 people worked through 1999, listening with earphones to Indonesian radio traffic, recording encrypted signals, and monitoring satellite telephone conversations.

“The Shoal Bay station has two different signals interception systems. One is a large circular antenna array, code-named Pusher, which is used for interception, monitoring, direction-finding (DF) and analysis of radio signals in the high frequency (HF) band. This system intercepted radio communications among ABRI and militia units in East Timor, between ABRI officers in the field and the East Timor Command in Dili, between Dili and the HQ of the Udayana Regional Military Command or KODAM (Komando-Daerah Militer) IX in Denpasar in Bali, and between Dili and ABRI HQ in Jakarta.

“The second system, code-named Larkswood, is concerned with the interception of Indonesian satellite communications, and especially those involving Indonesia’s own Palapa communications satellite system. It became operational in 1979, and during its first decade had only two dish antennas, for monitoring the two Palapa satellites then in service. In the late 1980s, according to the then Minister for Defence, ‘the station [was] modified in response to changing requirements and this included the installation of several dish antennas’. These must have been temporary, because at the time of the massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili in November 1991, there were still only two dish antennas. But many more were installed in the late 1990s, making eleven as at September 1999 (including two small dishes on the roof of the main operations building). Most of the new antennas were designed to intercept various sorts of satellite communications involving Indonesia, including mobile satellite telephone (satphone) conversations using INMARSAT and other services. By 1998, it seemed that ABRI officers throughout the archipelago were using satphones more than their Army radios to communicate with Jakarta. Some of the new dishes were installed to provide direct relay of the intercepted material, as well as ‘first echelon’ translations and analyses, to the DSD HQ and the DSD liaison offices in the ONA and DIO buildings at Russell Hill.

“In addition, small teams of Navy SIGINT personnel from Shoal Bay served aboard some of the Navy’s frigates and patrol boats, which were able to operate close to East Timor. These teams intercepted VHF/UHF transmissions as well as low-power HF signals, such as walkie-talkie and field radio communications. DSD was also able to use two P-3C Orion aircraft which had been specially configured for SIGINT operations in 1995-98 (under Project Peacemate).”

 

Desmond Ball, ‘The Defence Presence in the Northern Territory’, in Desmond Ball and J.O. Langtry (eds), The Northern Territory in the Defence of Australia:  Geography, History, Economy, Infrastructure and Defence Presence, (Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No.63, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 1990), pp.250-258.

Australia’s Secret Space Programs, Desmond Ball, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No 43, 1988, chapter 3.

Naval Communication Station (NCS), Darwin (Northern Territory), Systems Support and Operations, Boeing Australia.

“Boeing Australia is the prime contractor for the operation and maintenance of the Transmit and Receive sites associated with the Naval Communications Station located in Darwin. The Transmit site located at Humpty Doo, 65 kms south of Darwin, operates approximately 30 high powered, High Frequency (HF) radio transmitters and over 40 HF aerials. The receive site is located at Shoal Bay, approximately 25 kms north-east of Darwin. Together these two sites provide the HF communications capability for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) from northern Australia.”

Shoal Bay and East Timor

Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra, Desmond Ball and Hamish McDonald, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2000.

Brian Peters Findings, Coronial Findings and Recommendations, Coroner’s Court New South Wales, especially Chapter 9 “SIGINT”, pp 74-93.

Spying game keeps its peace, Hamish McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 March 2007

See also

• ADF bases and locations abroad
• Australian intelligence organisations, Australian Forces Abroad, Nautilus Institute
• Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station, Geraldton, Australian Defence Facilities, Nautilus Institute