The first contingent of the biggest Australian force deployed in the Pacific since World War II left yesterday for a dangerous and uncertain mission in the Solomon Islands.
Anxious families farewelled about 600 troops and military support personnel aboard HMAS Manoora as it sailed from Townsville.
It is expected to arrive in the Solomons in time to join the rest of the 2000-strong Australian-led intervention force, members of which will be flown from Townsville on Thursday.
Some Australian soldiers forming part of an advance party arrived yesterday in the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara, aboard an RAAF Hercules aircraft.
The Federal Cabinet's national security committee will meet today to give the final green light to the mission to restore law and order in the Solomons after five years of ethnic conflict and political upheaval.
It will also determine the rules of engagement for the force, which set out under what circumstances police and troops may open fire.
HMAS Manoora, which returned recently from Iraq, will provide logistic support and is carrying police vehicles, landing craft, helicopters and a mobile hospital.
The arrival of the force will complicate another issue, which has been generating rising tensions - the export of dolphins from the Solomons to Mexico.
There were scuffles and angry exchanges at the airport in Honiara yesterday morning when members of the foreign media sought to photograph and film preparations for the loading of dolphins onto a Brazilian plane chartered to
carry them to Mexico. A New Zealand cameraman was kicked by police and his assistant was punched by police and other unidentified men.
Several members of the media had videotapes and photographic disks seized before a senior officer later intervened to have them returned and said the police
action at the airport should not have happened.
More than 30 dolphins have been kept in pens on Honiara's main beach during recent days and dozens more are being held on the small island of Gela off the coast awaiting export.
It is not yet clear whether the Australian intervention force will act against the operators or charge security guards acting for the syndicate over a series of assaults, including the serious weekend beating of a boat driver for assisting a foreign news crew.
There were also fears last night that the dolphins would suffer on the long journey to Mexico and that not all of them would survive.
Locals opposed to the export have branded the scheme cruel and offensive to traditional customs.
International animal welfare organizations are campaigning to have the operations of the foreign syndicate closed down.
Locals involved in the operation say that buyers –including Taiwanese, Thais and Japanese- have visited the Solomons to inspect the dolphins.
Source: Written by Craig Skehan, Herald Correspondent