The pentagrams in the Australian desert have transfixed online sleuths. Photo / Google Earth; CNES
The pentagrams in the Australian desert have transfixed online sleuths. Photo / Google Earth; CNES
It looks like a very Aussie version of a crop circle – an other worldly but enormous shape mysteriously spotted in the middle of the outback.
And it had thousands of people stumped as to what the "super creepy" installation was.
It's the latest perplexing object found in isolated outposts, such as the silvery monoliths that popped up across the globe, everywhere from Utah to Adelaide.
Towering mystery: Monoliths like the one discovered in Utah have inspired online sleuths. Photo / File, via AP
Unfortunately for fans of UFOs, the shape found in the Western Australia desert is not extraterrestrial in nature.
It's more mundane than that – and yet still full of mystery.
Naturally, speculation turned to a previously "unknown alien settlement" or an artwork similar to Britain's famous and eerie chalk markings on hillsides.
Someone explain this! Vanessa Hammond freaked out over the find. Photo /@vanessahammond
One suggested it was a space station, another that it was a secret base to modify the weather and make clouds "completely disappear".
But Ms Hammond eventually found her way to the somewhat less exciting truth.
She had stumbled upon a naval station, the Harold E Holt Naval Communication Station to be precise. It's named after the former Australian prime minister.
It's remote, but not isolated. The town of Exmouth lies just six kilometres to the south. The town was built in the late 1960s to support the base.
The Harold E. Holt communication station is the most powerful in the Southern Hemisphere - though rarely visited. Photo / Wikimedia Commons
Jointly run by the US and Australian navies, it provides very low frequency communications to ships and submarines in parts of the Pacific and Indian oceans.
The shape is created by a series of towers that radiate out at hexagonal points from a central mast called Tower Zero, which is 387m high.
"Fun fact," Ms Hammond said. "It is one of the biggest (towers) in the world."
But mystery remains about the station.
A diagram of what was the tallest object in the Southern Hemisphere. Photo / CC US Navy
In 2008, two Qantas jets flying from Perth to Asia suffered malfunctions while flying close to the base.
One of the theories is that the station's transmissions were interfering with the aircraft systems.
The manager of the base said it was unlikely that the transmission could have caused such an issue, but it's never been completely denied.
