Pine Gap in Australia, a small chunk in the big scheme?, page 1

Pine Gap is a major link in the Echelon chain.

The "pod's" you see in the picture above are supposed to be housings for satellite dishes that are used for eavsedropping on foreign satellites. The housings hide the direction of the dish, which prevents people from detecting their angle and triangulating the signal etc. (I think).

Clyde Cameron: We were never told that Pine Gap was a CIA installation and it wasn't until Gough Whitlam publicly declared that Richard Stallings was a CIA operative and that he had been in charge of the Pine Gap installation that we knew that Pine Gap was a CIA installation and I believe that at the very beginning Gough Withlam and the Minister for Defence were led to believe that it was a pretty harmless sort of operation. But you've got to remember that just about the time the dismissal took place, the Australian government had to make a decision as to whether it would renew the leases of these American installations on Australian soil and there is every reason to believe that the Americans were fearful that the leases wouldn't be renewed. That would be a good enough reason, in their view, for moving in to destabilise the government and to bring about its overthrow to say nothing of any threat that our policies may have for their Australian investments in the multinational area.
The CIA in Australia
(emphasis added)

There seems to be a lot of compelling evidence that the dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975 had some CIA involvement.

. . .Christopher Boyce, at that time, was a young telex operator working for an American company known as TRW. It was a private company that had close connections with the US Government, particularly the CIA, because TRW helped run America's super-secret spy satellite system. And being where he was, Boyce occasionally came across telex messages -- in this story you will hear them referred as twickses -- and other material pertaining to CIA activity in Australia. And what he heard and saw made him so angry, that his own country could cheat such a good ally as Australia, that he started selling information to the Russians. He was caught and convicted in 1977, one of the most important spies since World War II. He staged a daring escape and was re-captured only last year. Since then, the big American media groups have been trying to get his story but, instead, he agreed to speak only to us in a remarkable meeting that took place at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. So why choose us?

CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Because you are Australian journalists and because what kicked this all off was deception by my government against yours.

CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: When the Rylite project was first put in place, the Executive Agreement meant that all information was to be shared between the American government and the Australian government. And along came Mr Whitlam. When I went to work for the project, the initial security briefing that I had, I was told that, in fact, we weren't going to live up to that Agreement, and that we hadn't been. And that there was information that was being withheld. And also that the Argus project, which was the advanced Rylite project, was to be hidden from the Australians.
. . .

RAY MARTIN: Did they talk about how, or why, he(Whitlam) was forced out?

CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: No, but there was references to your Governor-General by the Central Intelligence [Agency] residents there at TRW in the Rylite project. They called Mr Kerr "our man Kerr".
. . .
RAY MARTIN: Just two days before a Federal Parliamentary debate was due on the American satellite bases, a CIA telex arrived in Canberra. It warned that Prime Minister Whitlam was in danger of blowing the lid off Pine Gap. The next day, the Whitlam Labor Government was dismissed.

Transcript of 60 Minutes (Australia) interview

I dunno about the underground secret weapons, secret nukes pointing at N. Korea, underground housing for hundred's etc. But, hey, I'm Australian. as if they're gonna tell me! If they don't mind taking out a govenment or two to protect the secrecy of this base's activities, then I doubt I'll get a free tour if I knock on the front door.

On a side note, I just listened to a really good radio play on BBC7, that was set around Pine Gap/Maralinga. It's called "The Voice of God". Check it out, it's online.