Nui Dat ('small hill') was an ideal location for the new Australian Task Force base. It was on a main highway, Route 2, approximately 30 kilometres from the port of Vung Tau which was the new Australian logistic support base. Nui Dat was some distance from Phuoc Tuy's provincial capital, Ba Ria, and was sufficiently isolated to enable the Australians to manage their own operations. However, the area around Nui Dat had been a well-known Viet Cong stronghold and many of the residents in nearby villages had family members in the Viet Cong.
The first reinforcement battalion to arrive at the new base in April 1966 was 5RAR, which included the first draft of National Service conscripts. The newly arrived troops erected their tents, dug foxholes and worked to set up base defences. A 12-kilometre barbed wire fence defended by claymore mines surrounded the new base and the perimeter was cleared of jungle, rubber and forest to deprive the Viet Cong of cover for attacks.
Fundamental to the security of the new base was the removal of all the civilian residents from within a 4000 metre buffer zone to an imaginary line - Line Alpha. Together with the US 173rd Brigade and 1RAR, 5RAR conducted their first operation, Operation Hardihood, removing the villagers, their livestock and their possessions from Long Phuoc and Long Tan and relocating them at nearby Hoa Long, Dat Do and Long Dien. During the operation, Private Errol Noack, a 21-year-old National Serviceman from Port Lincoln in South Australia was accidentally killed by 'friendly fire'. He had been in Vietnam for twelve days.
In June 1966, 1RAR finished their 12-month tour of duty and boarded HMAS Sydney to return home. They were replaced by 6RAR, most of whom had just disembarked from the Sydney. The newly arrived 6RAR troops were transported to Nui Dat where they found conditions were still very basic.
After two weeks sleeping on the ground, we got Second World War tents; they all had holes in them. We got some floor boards and we all dug drains to get rid of the water round the tents. We had stretchers to sleep on… Things start to get a bit tense with some people, living in these conditions, living out of ration packs because there is no kitchen set up. Water everywhere, red mud everywhere and it starts to test a few people; people start to do their block a bit…
[John Robbins, 6RAR in Michael Caulfield, The Vietnam Years, Hachette Australia, 2007, p 159]
There was a network of Viet Cong tunnels and bunkers underneath the area around the village of Long Phuoc. This enabled the guerrillas to remain after the villagers had been removed. When mortar attacks against the task force area continued, three companies of 6RAR were ordered to search, clear and destroy the deserted village. The mission, Operation Enoggera, began on 21 June and continued until 5 July. When it ended only Long Phuoc's pagodas and churches remained.
It was obviously a rich village in the days when that part of the country was at peace… The buildings were well constructed and sound, filled with furniture, the place just reeked of a pretty rich productive area. Not a dirty hamlet with shacks falling down or anything like that. We knew we had to do it and we bloody well did it quite successfully, but we did not like it.
[Colonel Colin Townsend, 6RAR in Ian McNeill, To Long Tan, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, p 255]
Most Australian units and individual soldiers served in Vietnam for a 12-month tour of duty but most combat soldiers saw little of Nui Dat. The Australian style of counter-insurgency operations kept troops away from the base for long periods and many men only returned for a few days between 'ops'.
After ten years of war every Australian infantry battalion except 9RAR had served two tours of duty in Vietnam. Most had been based at Nui Dat which, by the time the base closed in November 1971, had developed into a military town with buildings, roads and street signs, a field hospital, an airfield and helicopter pad.