GREAT BARRIER REEF — This is a recent photograph of live bombing at Raymond Island in the mouth of Shoalwater Bay, inside the Great Barrier Reef marine national park. Raymond Island has been a regular target for ship-to-shore bombardments and RAAF and US air force live bombings for the last 30 years.

Next to Raymond Island is Triangular Island, which serves as an underwater depth charge training area for Australian naval or army divers, who regularly set off depth charges of l00 to 500 kilograms of explosives, sending water spouts hundreds of metres into the air, according to a local fisher who watched it.

The whole area is zoned “conservation protected” and is home to three species of endangered turtles. The days are numbered for the dugong that feed on the rapidly disappearing sea grass meadows of the bay.

David Bradbury

From Green Left Weekly, July 27, 2005.
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