TRUST ISSUES
NEW ABC DRAMA ‘PINE GAP’ DRAGS THE TOP-SECRET WORLD OF LIFE WITHIN THE SECURITY FACILITY OUT OF THE SHADOWS AND INTO THE SPOTLIGHT
People who work at Pine Gap are notoriously cagey about what they do at the Us/australian joint defence facility 18km southwest of Alice Springs. That’s what actor Stephen Curry discovered first-hand during filming of the six-part drama named after the top-secret establishment, which starts Sun., Oct. 14 at 8.30pm on the ABC and is due to air on Netflix later this year. “I heard this story that if you ever ask someone from Pine Gap what they do, they reply, ‘I’m a gardener,’“Curry says. “One day when I met someone who worked there, I put it to the test and asked what he did. Sure enough, he was a gardener. All I can think is with that many gardeners working out there, Pine Gap must have the best gardens in the country.”
Created by Greg Haddrick and Felicity Packard (both part of the creative team behind the Underbelly franchise, among other credits), Pine Gap depicts an unfolding crisis at the spy satellite base. The staff in the A-crew intelligence team are forced into action when a civilian plane is shot down over an APEC summit in Myanmar, in close proximity to the US president and Australian prime minister.
Intense pressure is put on the A-crew to uncover the culprits, and while a small terrorist organisation is initially blamed, it soon turns out there is a mole within Pine Gap. When the facility’s server is hacked, it’s a race against time to discover who the mole is before any more lives are put in danger. What develops is a curious case of everyone in the team emerging as a suspect as an international stand-off brews between the US and China, throwing the world closer to a conflict.
Into this chaos arrives Curry’s character, Jacob Kitto, a new mission director who the 42-year-old Logie-winning actor describes as “very good at his job and very bad at people. Basically, he’s a complete a---hole.” The scenario faced by Jacob and the other characters allows the drama, Curry explains, to explore the real-life situations faced
by the teams within the security facility.
“When you stop to think about all the things that are monitored and verified through Pine Gap, it’s fascinating because it’s tangible with what later ends up in our headlines and becomes the events that affect the geopolitical relations all around the world,” he says.
“As the TV drama plays out, it becomes an interesting study between the two sides within Pine Gap, which we’re told is a case of the Americans tell the Australians what they need to know and the Australians do the same. One of the richest territories of the drama was the whole thing of maintaining the integrity of your own side while being within a team environment.”
Besides what actually goes on at the base, that push and pull between the staff from both nations – portrayed by Australian actors such as Curry, Jacqueline Mckenzie and Tess Haubrich, alongside an international cast including Parker Sawyers and Steve Toussaint – is one of the things people are most curious about when it comes to Pine Gap.
David Rosenberg, who wrote the book Inside Pine Gap about his 18 years working as a technical liaison officer at the outback facility, reveals he’s questioned about those international relations every time he does a public speaking engagement. “People always ask about the dynamics between the Americans and Australians at Pine Gap, and if there is a sense of trust that exists between them,” the Us-born writer says. “Trust is a big issue whenever people talk about Pine Gap.”
When Haddrick and Packard discovered Rosenberg’s book, he was brought on board as the drama’s technical and creative consultant. “I thought this was a story simply waiting to be told,” says the author, whose book is being reissued in a new edition in October. “There are lots of myths and misconceptions about what actually goes on at Pine Gap. The issues I discussed with the creators was the working relationship between the Americans and Australians, the structure of the leadership and the trust that exists. This was, of course, not to make a documentary, but a drama that is the geopolitical thriller that is the television series.”
As a consultant on the drama, the former Pine Gap employee was called on to verify the accuracy of the way operations at the facility were depicted in the scripts, visiting the set five times. “On those occasions, I felt like I was back at work,” says Rosenberg, who is now an Australian citizen and calls Sydney home. “It did feel very authentic in the work that was bring portrayed and the intensity of the operations. If you were to go looking for a fictional portrayal of Pine Gap, this series pretty much nailed it.”