I’m Lieutenant Commander Tony Keany. I’m the officer in charge of Beecroft weapons range which is situated over behind us there on Beecroft Peninsula, about eleven hundred hectares on the northern shore of Jervis Bay. The ranges main function is to provide a naval gunfire support assessment range for the ANZAC class and the Adelaide class frigates. Our main function is, we provide targetry, they shoot from about 6 – 8 miles off the coast onto the land, we record where the fall of shot is, we adjust the fall of shot, we provide all of that information into a computer program which lets us know how the accuracy of the ship’s system is going.
We do use high explosive rounds for all of our shoots. Our first one is just a smoke round for safety but all other salvos following that are high explosive rounds. They do create a crater in the ground of approximately 4-5 feet in diameter, 2-3 feet deep but we basically minimise it to a specific area within the range so that our damaged area is limited to a very small area of the range and we keep it in that area to minimise any effect it has also on the wildlife.
There are a number of endangered species, both of flora and fauna on the range and as we’ve heard previously we have actually introduced the bristle bird over there and it seems to be thriving fairly well. There are a number of other very rare species of sea eagles, brown eagles, black cockatoos, full variety particularly of sea birds and they seem to adapt very well to it. On the completion of every shoot that we do I go out and inspect the actual holes that the shells have made and I’ve never come across a dead bird or dead animal in my 4 years that I have been out there so far. And we do have probably a group of about 30 grey kangaroos out there and numerous swamp wallabies, so I have never seen one that has been killed or injured through a shoot. Because we’ve been doing it so long out there they seem to know that when that first safety salvo comes in its time not to be there and they depart. Yet, after a shoot you’re likely to see them, you know, they move through the area quite easily.
I certainly believe we are responsible citizens in the fact that the majority of the area is obviously endangered in some way or another and to that end the defence support group provide environmental rangers and there’s a team of environmental rangers out there who we work closely with to ensure that we minimise any impact that our activities have on the environment and also that we rectify any minor problems that we do have. Obviously on the initial impact area itself it’s very hard to do that you always have the problem of old unexplodeds out there but we do keep all the tracks and trails clear. We maintain a good fire management program out there so that we don’t destroy the place with wild fire either from our activities or from natural fire phenomena. And working well within the environmental ranges it provides as a good background in to how to properly manage the place so that the public have access to it and they can see what they expect to see which is basically pristine and a … they expect to see a very pristine, natural setting