OT : Australian intervention in Solomon Islands

deccan · #1 July 23rd, 2003, 12:21 AM

Doh, top item in the news yesterday and today is the export of dolphins from S.I. It's even in the Yahoo headlines.

deccan · #2 July 25th, 2003, 05:01 AM

Ozzie troops are in town patrolling the city centre today. They got airlifted in yesterday. No action of any kind though.

Baron Grazic · #3 July 25th, 2003, 05:49 AM

Troops or Police because we sent 150 Police officers too?

It is reported that SI will be receiving 2225 members of the 'Australian-led intervention force' with soldiers and police from Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

13 RAAF Hercules tranport aircraft have began flying in, plus the HMAS Manoora landed about 600 troops at historic Red Beach yesterday.

Q · #4 July 25th, 2003, 10:51 AM

Now this made the way to the news even here in Europe. And it was mentioned that some people see a danger of Australian "colonialism" in the region.

Again my best wishes to you and the people of the Solomon Islands for a more peaceful future.

deccan · #5 July 26th, 2003, 01:37 AM

Yeah, there are both police and troops. Also, I think my house got buzzed by a very low-flying Ozzie chopper yesterday. That's probably because we have a fairly big compound with lots of cargo containers and heavy equipment and high fencing completely surrounding the perimetre. I think they wanted to make sure that we weren't some kind of militant base. Heh.

deccan · #6 July 27th, 2003, 01:50 AM

Heh. I had a personal run-in with the Ozzie intervention this afternoon (Saturday). Five Australian troops (they were definitely soldiers, not police, were in army fatigues, carrying big assault rifles) pulled up at my front gate in a pickup. Only two of them got out of the car though, and since I was in the yard at the time, they talked to me.

It seems that they've noticed that we had fresh gravel strewn over our compound (because we have heavy machinery moving in and out all the time and they tear up the earth) and were interested in buying some gravel. They said it was for fixing up the potholes in the roads here. So I sent them to our sister company from which we get our gravel.

Still, with our high fencing, and the fact that our front gate is actually a side gate into a rather narrow lane (we keep the real front gate permanently closed for security reasons), the only way they could have known the ground inside our compound is covered with gravel was yesterday's chopper.

So maybe their real reason for visiting was to scope us out on thr ground?

deccan · #7 August 1st, 2003, 02:43 AM

Alexander Downer is in town. I heard that he will be meeting with members of the Ozzie expat community today.