Home on the Range
This fast-paced, well made documentary investigates the function of U.S. bases in Australia as a meeting place for the CIA and the Pentagon. In the center of Australia is the town of Alice Springs. Fifteen miles away is “Pine Gap,” the most important base to the CIA outside its Langley, Virginia, headquarters. Four hundred miles to the south is Nurrungar, the base for detection of Soviet-launched ICBMs. A U.S. Navy relay station at North West Cape allows U.S. submarines in the Indian and Western Pacific to receive their orders. “These three installations,” director-producer Gil Scrine states, “are the bargaining chips Australia has to offer in return for American allegiance in the defense alliance known as the ANZUS Treaty.” But support for these bases is not, and never was, unanimous in Australia. Home on the Range directly links the 1972 downfall of Australia's first labor government in 23 years to the work of the CIA.
Home on the Range won the 1982 Sydney Film Festival award for Best Australian Documentary.