Exercise Northerly was designed as a week of activities designed to enhance the skills and knowledge of Northern Territory Personnel, National Response Team (NRT) members and Industry attendees and encourage the strategic thinking of Maritime Emergency Managers.

The week commenced with two days of training held simultaneously with a two day master class for key maritime emergency decision makers. A two day functional exercise (which commenced with a hypothetical panel discussion) followed the training and development days.

The functional exercise consisted of an Incident Management Team (IMT) responding to a fictitious collision between two vessels spilling up to 400 cubic metres of heavy fuel oil into Darwin Harbour and its surrounds. There were no field deployments and no external engagement. All inputs and outputs were processed through exercise control.

The exercise was a valuable testing ground for recommendations that have been adopted from previous exercises as well as also identifying areas for future improvement; it is these areas that are the focus of the evaluation team’s report.