Canberra, 28 January 1966
Secret
Air violations of New Guinea border
The background to the attached Sydney Morning Herald story in today’s paper2 is as follows—
2. On 22nd November an RAAf3 Caribou aircraft through a navigation error by the pilot, intruded about 10 miles into West Irian at the northern end of the border and remained over Indonesian territory for about 12 minutes.4 Six [Indonesian] border penetrations have been reported since 24th December, all within an area of 17 miles east of the border, and as far south as the border between Papua and New Guinea.5
3. Since becoming aware of the above, we have been in touch with the Department of Air to check that no further violations, deliberate or otherwise, have taken place from our side to ensure that they do not occur in future. If the need arises for Australia to protest to the Indonesians over air violations of the Territory, we need a record from our side of strict observance of the border.
4. As you will see from the press report some of the facts of the situation have now reached the Australian press, presumably from their sources in New Guinea. The author of the story told the Department that he had information about the Indonesian intrusions; but that he understood that these had ceased following representations by Australia. The reporter was not given any attributable comment by the Department, but it was pointed out to him that any crossings of the border had to be seen in the context of difficulty of terrain, and the question of representations by Australia, which he was told had not been made, had to be seen against the background of our interest in making progress on the border demarcation. The reporter was not disabused of his idea that the Indonesian flights were connected with their border survey work.
[matter omitted]
[NAA: A 1838, 689/1 part 2]
1 Gordon Jockel, First Assistant Secretary, Division I, DEA.
2 The article reported that an Indonesian plane had recently been seen over several small bases in PNG. It claimed that the Government was ‘aware of the violations but has not protested because, for the sake of good relations, it assumes they could have been accidental … [The plane] is assumed to have been one which the Indonesians are using to photograph the border in preliminary work for the joint [Australian-Indonesian border] survey’ (NLA: mfm NX 15). For background on border issues, see Document 7 and editorial note ‘Survey of the border between West Irian and PNG’.
3 Royal Australian Air Force.
4 One sentence expunged.
5 Irian Jaya, formerly known as West New Guinea, was administered by the Dutch until 1963, after which it was controlled by Indonesia (see paragraph 8, Document 12).