When General Gration had announced the establishment of the position of Commander Joint Forces Australia in 1988, he had mentioned that the commander needed to be ‘located away from Canberra’ and, four years later, as he neared the end of his command, Gration went further. He declared that the joint commands needed to be collocated on one site: ‘We have not yet fixed on a site, but I think it should be outside Canberra, but not too far—say no more than half an hour by helicopter.’^[27] The rationale for locating the headquarters away from Canberra was so that politicians would not interfere at the operational level of command. Over the following years there was much discussion about the eventual site for the collocated headquarters, but eventually, in 2001 the government announced that it was to be near Bungendore, just outside the Australian Capital Territory.^[28] There were various reasons for selecting a site near to Canberra, but one was the politicians’ desire that it be near enough that they could visit it easily—the very reason why Gration had wanted it to be further away. The project was delayed and in the meantime the shape of the new headquarters was influenced by several more operations.