From weather control to radio wave weaponry: inside the crazy conspiracies spawned by Exmouth’s VLF towers

On a remote patch of land in the North West at the end of a road to nowhere, surrounded by one of Earth’s most remarkable natural landscapes, sits ground zero for an insidious project to dictate the world’s climate. Australia, so it is believed, is a major player in a secret worldwide government plot to control the weather through Exmouth’s very low frequency towers. It is a completely outlandish idea which has for half a decade held a groundswell of believers and even compelled one individual to make a change.org petition to decommission the VLF towers. This is the Exmouth HAARP theory. “It’s HAARP; it’s no secret, every Australian knows it and it’s used for weather modification,” Sacred Knowledge2015 posted to YouTube three years ago, which was promptly trashed by an ex-HEH employee. HAARP stands for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program and was an Alaskan experiment which burst high frequency radar signals into the atmosphere to study the effects of solar flares on communications equipment — important research for everything from GPS navigation to missile detection. But theorists believe the HAARP program controls the weather. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez even reportedly claimed in 2010 HAARP or a similar program triggered the Haiti earthquake. In 2010 this theory got a head full of steam in Australia too when mysterious patterns appeared on the Bureau of Meteorology’s radar system. First there was an “ice doughnut” shape over Kalgoorlie, then a red star over Broome and a spiral known as a ring of fire fault over Melbourne. This was proof, conspiracy theorists claimed, of Exmouth’s involvement in weather modification. “We have the world’s largest ionospheric heater at Western Australia’s Exmouth,” Charlie Ozcelik wrote in his change.org petition. “Just Google VLF group and NWC transmitter and scientific documents relating to experiments carried out in our atmosphere will fill your desktop. “Are we picking up segments of these experiments on the radar images?” The BoM eventually posted a disclaimer on its radar feeds, putting the images down to “occasional interference to the radar data”, but some remained sceptical. Like the Woodside flame in Karratha and the Super Pit in Kalgoorlie, plenty of punters also like to argue the VLF towers create a so-called dome over Exmouth which prevents rainfall, which 2021’s downpours have debunked. And Exmouth conspiracies aren’t just centred around the towers’ weather-altering potential. If the towers are a weather weapon, NAVCOMMSTA Harold E Holt 10km back down the road to Exmouth is a murky operation shrouding out-of-this-world projects in secrecy. The not-so-secret submarine communication base named after the Australian Prime Minister lost at sea was commissioned in 1967. Much like Nevada’s famed Area 51 and the Northern Territory’s Pine Gap, a perceived veil of secrecy surrounding the station has spawned some wild theories. Some claim the base can remotely power battle ships. Others have said it is involved in the cover-up of proof of alien life. Then there was the outlandish video shared to US YouTube outlet Science Channel’s 3.9m subscribers back in 2017. “You may know of Area 51... but can you identify this top secret spot in Australia,” Science Channel’s intro stated in reference to the clearly marked and well-known facility passed by thousands of people every day. In that video, which has been viewed by about 320,000 people, the channel went about talking up the secrecy and rumours surrounding the base. “November 2014, the World View 3 satellite is passing over the vast, empty wilderness of Australia’s North West Cape when it captures a huge symbol etched onto the earth,” the video begins. “Close analysis of the image reveal at the points of the hexagram there are thin, spike-like structures casting long shadows.” Journalist Andrew Gough adds: “a hexagon a mile wide in the middle of the desert”. One minute in the bubble is finally burst, but not without more mayo lathered on. “This is no mine,” the presenter says. “The World View 3 satellite has captured an image of the most secretive and controversial military site in Australia. “The base is rumoured to operate top secret space surveillance systems developed at White Sands missile range.” The presenter said “people believed” the base could be used to communicate with submerged nuclear submarines. Several signs around Exmouth and a wealth of information online and in print makes it clear this is the purpose of the base. One theory which gained mainstream media coverage and was touched on in the video involved mid-air drama onboard two passenger planes in 2008. QF72 was forced into an emergency landing at Learmonth in October that year after its air data reference units became faulty, leading to sudden pitch manoeuvres which injured some of its occupants. Speculators latched on to claims of electromagnetic interference from HEH at the time of the incident. The 313-page Australian Transport Safety Bureau report made clear it was “extremely unlikely” HEH affected the planes, but speculation grew again in December when QF71 experienced a similar fault. The Australian and International Pilots Association even called for commercial aircraft to be barred from the area as a precaution until the cause of the incident was better known. “We operate in the kilohertz range and the aviation computers operate in megahertz, so there's a big difference,” base manager Russell Levine said at the time. That Science Channel video offered a different theory. “The incident provoked speculation the site could be part of a secret radio wave weapons program,” it said. For the record, the ATSB found a failure of automated air-data processing was responsible for false data, which led to flight control computers ordering pitch-downs.