As a parade of senior Australian and United States commanders and their public affairs teams attempted to stay on message about the “humanitarian” aspects of the biggest military exercise ever in Australia — the shadow of China was cast over every facet of the intensive war gaming.

During a lightning visit to the exercise area on Sunday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott insisted that China appreciated that Australia was an ally of the United States.

Mr Abbott further confused things when he declined to rule out the possible future permanent basing of USA forces in Northern Australia.

The Marine Corps training rotation is scheduled to grow from 1100 now to 2200 in the next few years, but Mr Abbott left the door open for even greater access for USA forces to the deserted and wide-open training ranges of Northern Australia.

When asked specifically if there would be USA forces based in the north the prime minister was noncommittal.

“Let’s see what the future holds. I am not saying there will be more … but they shouldn’t shock or surprise anyone.”

Ask any of the thousands of USA Marines participating in Talisman Sabre — particularly those based on the tiny island of Okinawa in Japan — and they will tell you that the NT and Rockhampton are war games nirvana.

A man is cut out of a ute after it crashes with a USA Marines vehicle in Katherine in the NT.

Police said the crash happened at 1:45pm at the junction of the Victoria and Stuart highways.

The 34-year-old man was trapped in the ute for about 45 minutes while emergency services diverted traffic and attempted to free him from the wreckage.

Police told the ABC the man has been taken to Katherine Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

The six-wheel off-road truck is called a Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement - a vehicle used by the USA Marines to haul equipment and troops.

AUSTRALIAN and American environmental specialists were cleaning up a suspected fuel spill at a popular Darwin beach on Wednesday.

The ADF and Marines were notified of a marine fuel spill on Casuarina Beach, off Lee Point on Tuesday.

Results of sand quality testing revealed an area about 20m long and 10m wide that may have been contaminated in a spill which occurred during an amphibious offload as a part of Exercise Talisman Sabre — Australia’s largest combined military exercise, which runs through until July 21.

A spokesman said the ADF had “notified all appropriate government agencies”.

“The ADF’s environmental team took immediate steps to cordon the area and began to assess the extent of the incident,” he said.

It’s not known what caused the spill.

"It’s not known what caused the spill" - you don't think it might have been that big old Landing Craft that kept coming up onto the sand?

this Sunday a Darwin man was arrested while attempting to obstruct war rehearsal operations at Lee Point.

Despite standing in the water off Lee Pt right in the path of the USA Navy LCAC amphibious craft, it continued to rush back and forth past the protester until he was removed from the area by water police.

The arrested man said he was protesting the context of a growing foreign military presence in and around Darwin.

"This growing foreign presence has contributed to the largest ever Darwin component of the biennial Talisman Sabre war rehearsals, amid dangerous posturing towards China."

"Australia should maintain good relationships with the USA, which may include a military alliance, but this should not extend to tolerating USA military bases in Australia. It may make sense to do some joint training, but we should be careful to not allow this to be abused by our ally to send dangerous signals to other nations in our region."

This lone protest coincided with two protesters in Queensland entering the Shoalwater Bay live-fire training range to obstruct war preparations there.

Earlier this week, three other protesters were arrested in the same area.

further details: http://peaceconvergence.org/media-releases/

AUS­TRALIAN, Amer­i­can and Japanese troops will storm the beach to­day at Fog Bay, just west of Dar­win.

Dig­gers from the 2nd Bat­tal­ion will test Aus­tralia’s abil­ity to mount a full-blown am­phibi­ous as­sault as part of north Aus­tralia’s Ex­er­cise Tal­is­man Sabre, which in­volves 30,000 sol­diers, marines, sailors and fly­ers from Australia, the USA, New Zealand and Ja­pan.

The test will not only in­volve a success­ful land­ing and as­sault, but also the abil­ity to op­er­ate seam­lessly with a mas­sive force of USA Marines and their vast ar­ray of equip­ment that in­cludes huge hov­er­craft, Har­rier jump jets, Osprey ver­ti­cal take­off air­craft and am­phibi­ous land­ing craft that emerge from the wa­ter like sub­marines with wheels.

The 2nd Bat­tallion has be­come the na­tion’s first truly am­phibi­ous force and while they are not tech­ni­cally Marines the sol­diers are train­ing to spend months at a time on board one of the navy’s three new am­phibi­ous ships.

note: the aussies do still recognise they are not technically working for a foreign military.