Getting ashore without a port

The Deputy Commander of CJTF 629 Group Captain John Samulski (right) and the task force's amphibious operations planning officer Lieutenant Commander Richard Westoby study charts of the Banda Aceh area. The devastation brought to the Banda Aceh coast by the Boxing Day tsunami made it nearly impossible to move heavy equipment ashore from HMAS Kanimbla, the Navy's amphibious transport ship that is stationed offshore.

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By Corporal Cameron Jamieson - filed 28 January 2005

There's a major problem planning coastal operations in the Banda Aceh area.

Not only was the coast destroyed by the impact of the Boxing Day tsunami, the initial earthquake moved the entire landmass of the region nearly 40m towards the east in a matter of moments.

Into this nightmare of coastal re-sculpturing, Lieutenant-Commander Richard Westoby has entered.

A former British Royal Marine officer, who recently transferred to the Royal Australian Navy, Lieutenant-Commander Westoby has used his wealth of amphibious operations experience to help plan and conduct the movement of the Army engineers on HMAS Kanimbla from Darwin to Banda Aceh.

Speaking from the Combined Joint Task Force 629 headquarters, located in Medan, Northern Sumatra, he said the tsunami had almost made it impossible to bring landing craft ashore in Banda Aceh, but persistence and dedication to the task had brought an unusual solution.

"Having seen the photographs and television, we knew the major ports had gone, the rivers had all been congested, and all the beaches had been swept away or the back-flow of water had made them incredibly shallow," he said.

"We sent the Navy hydrographers in to see where we could get in, but they couldn't find anywhere suitable.

"There was the horror that we would have to move 30km down the coast and then use the road system to get back to Banda Aceh, which would have taken days because we would have needed low loaders to move some of the equipment."

The situation was desperate - the engineers needed to come ashore as quickly as possible to help ease the suffering of the Indonesians, but the dogged determination of the hydrographers, Navy clearance divers and the landing craft crews helped save the situation.

While the major canal that leads from the northeast of Banda Aceh into the sea had been damaged and blocked with debris, the Australians found a path to the damaged end of one the canal walls.

The damage allowed the landing craft to dock with the wall itself, and the engineers then turned the wall into a road so that the heavy equipment could be brought ashore, only 3km away from the engineer's camp.

Lieutenant-Commander Westoby said he was pleased with the can-do attitude of those involved in the whole amphibious operation.

"They understood the pressure of having to move away," he said.

"They found the only place on the coast for 30km where we could come ashore, and we managed to get everything off the ship and ready to go within 24 hours."