An Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service officer at Port Hera disinfectants equipment before shipment to Darwin. Photo by Capt John McPherson, MPALO-ANCE

Cleaning up Timor
Stores and equipment readied for return to Australia

From Capt John McPherson in Dili
SINCE September last year, the Force Extraction Team (FET) has been preparing for the draw-down of the Australian Army from East Timor.

The FET has developed specialist programs for the auditing, crosschecking and removal of stores and equipment in use by Australian personnel in East Timor since Interfet in 1999.

CO FET Lt-Col Mike Romalis said "the operation isn't finished when the fighters go home."

In February, a reconnaissance team of specialists visited East Timor to validate the extraction concept for the drawdown and to confirm the FET structure.

The first large FET group arrived on April 2, with the size of the team fluctuating between 20 and 120 people from that time until the end of the extraction timetable on June 30.

The role of the team is to physically crosscheck every item that has ever come into East Timor during the period of Australia's involvement and what items are still "in country".

Once this has been completed the remaining items must then be assessed as to whether they will be valuable to the follow-on mission and, finally, separated into those items to remain and those to be expatriated back to Australia.

A huge amount of diverse material needs to be crosschecked against electronic records before being sanitised to the satisfaction of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, cleared by the Australian Customs Service, and shipped back to Australia.

This includes the operational requirements such as earthmovers and large machinery, APCs, Mack trucks, troop carriers, landrovers and other four-wheel drives, and a large communications network.

In fact, since January 2003 to April 14, equipment to the value of $A57.5 million has been repatriated through the Port Hera facility.

Sections of the FET working at Moleana handle all the identification work before either driving or sending by barge the larger equipment from the inland FOB to Port Hera, 15km east of Dili, for further processing. Smaller items are packed into shipping containers for the trip back to Australia.

At Port Hera, items due for loading onto the Darwin-based Perkins Shipping barge are thoroughly cleaned down, sprayed, "fogged" where necessary, and totally sanitised before final packing and sealing for the trip back to Australia.

Once they arrive in Darwin the items are transhipped to move by train to the Sydney-based element of the FET at Moorebank for refurbishment/rebuilding prior to being reissued.

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