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Volume 4, Thursday August 28th, 2008
“Boom” times
at Woomera
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The roar of fighter jet engines has been echoing over the outback desert landscape for the last four weeks, signalling the start of a new round of Defence activities on Australia’s huge aerospace test and evaluation range at Woomera. In the last half of this year, around 100 test and evaluation trials of many descriptions are being conducted at the Woomera Test Facility, an ‘operational tempo’ that indicates just how busy this famous test range is once again becoming. Woomera is operationally managed by Headquarters, Woomera Test Facility, an operational unit of the Royal Australian Air Force’s Aerospace Operational Support Group (AOSG). Both AOSG and the Woomera Test Facility headquarters are located at RAAF Base Edinburgh, just north of Adelaide. Over the last four weeks, the airfield at Woomera has been fully activated by the RAAF to operate fast-jet aircraft, helicopters and other RAAF support aircraft. The current task has now finished but in a week’s time the airbase will again come alive for a second round of aircraft trials, this time involving the Army’s new Tiger Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter. Later in the year rocket launches are also expected to take place, harking back to the original purpose for the establishment of Woomera back in 1947. These days Woomera hosts a complex range of hi-tech trials and the number of these trials may increase. Woomera, because of its remoteness, dry air environment and sparse population is ideal for testing new aerospace technologies and it is increasingly a facility of choice for testing new generation unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Woomera Test Facility is a huge facility covering some 127,000 sqkm, an area roughly the size of England. The Woomera village, managed by Defence Support Group (DSG) provides garrison support to operations on the range and manages the village itself. However the operations and technical personnel, numbering about 25 in total, that operate the tracking, data and communications systems on the range are part of the RAAF’s Woomera Test Facility unit.
Andamooka School reborn through community spirit M
ore than 200 people assembled at the new Andamooka school facility last Thursday to see Member for Giles, Lyn Breuer officially open the new facilities on behalf of the Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith. The Minister was unable to attend due to a death in the family just days before her scheduled visit. The new $2 million school renamed Andamooka Children’s Centre and Primary School is the pride of the small community and as mentioned by Ms Breuer, “Andamooka School is really the heart of this community, the heart of the town and has played a very important part for many, many years.” The school was burnt down after a series of four fires in 2006 and Ms Breuer said that to see what it did to the town, the people, the community and parents, the staff and to mostly the young children was just devastating. “I felt very, very sad all the way through, so it is very much a
pleasure for me to be here today. “You all know my feelings about Andamooka and particularly about the Andamooka School – I do feel part of your community and I do like to spend time here and as I always say my second favourite place is Andamooka, my first is naturally Whyalla,” she told a very responsive audience. “I did come here all through the terrible, terrible trauma you suffered over the past few years. “Every time there was another fire I came up here, I was starting to run out of petrol money!” she quipped. Ms Breuer said last week’s opening marked the start of the new future for Andamooka and the Andamooka School and despite all the trauma of the past, there has been a lot of good out of it. “When you look around this school now and see what’s here and the work that’s gone into the spectacular grounds, the garden I think you’ve done very well out of it all despite all the trauma, so I am very pleased about that and I am sure you as a community would feel the same.
“I think as a community you raised $28,000 and that’s pretty phenomenal for a town the size of Andamooka, that you can raise that much money in your community for a school. I think you can all pat yourselves on the back for that effort. “It’s just a sign once again of the wonderful work this community does and how much it cares for its people and particularly for its school, so congratulations to everyone.” Ms Breuer predicted Andamooka is going to get bigger and better, with the expansion of Roxby Downs. “Andamooka will have more children at the school and have a bigger community and I know your community will still be a great community and a great place people will want to come to and live.” Ms Breuer complimented Angela Turner, the principal of the school saying she was just absolutely incredible. Continued on page 3