Port Douglas residents awoke to a large vessel anchored less than two kilometres off Island Point yesterday morning. And it was still there today. What is it, they asked.
The international Automatic Identification System for ships revealed it as US Army Vessel Kuroda. Its last port of call was Cairns which it left on Monday night.
The vessel is 87 metres long and 18 metres wide. It has a very low draft and is capable of loading and unloading material from either the bow or the stern in less than four metres of water. The chart shows the vessel is in about 10 metres of water.
What is it doing there?
Good question.
I put that question and others to both the Australian Department of Defence and the US Army.
The US Army sent me an acknowledgement and said they would refer it to their media relations people who would get back to me as soon as they had some answers.
There has been nothing from the Australian Department of Defence. That, unfortunately, is fairly typical. Australian journalists frequently get information about military goings on in Australia from official US sources when Australian authorities remain mute. After a general question asking what it was doing there to satisfy local curiosity, I also asked: “Can you confirm whether it has an Australian pilot on board, as required by Australian law for civilian commercial vessels over 50 metres in the Great Barrier Marine Park zone?
I understand that though the US is not a signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the US military generally abides by it and by local laws.”
Any updates will be posted when they arrive.
Crispin Hull, former editor of The Canberra Times and regular columnist.
