Echoes of the moon at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station

The Canberra Times

Tim the Yowie Man journeys back to the heart of Australia's space race history with behind-the-scenes footage of the iconic Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, the portal to a pivotal moment in humankind.

Transcript

00:00 2, 1, 0, all engines running.

00:05 It was here, at the former Honeysuckle Creek tracking station,

00:12 on Monday the 21st of July 1969,

00:15 that video tech Ed Von Renoir

00:19 flicked a switch that enabled over 600 million people worldwide

00:25 to see Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon.

00:30 OK Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.

00:34 There's not much to see here now,

00:36 with the tracking station decommissioned in the 1980s.

00:39 However, we still have reminders of that momentous day

00:43 via a series of videos that Ed, or Video Von,

00:47 as he was known to his work colleagues,

00:50 shot on his personal Super 8 camera.

00:53 He recorded segments in real time,

00:55 as well as from a replay of the telemetry tapes immediately afterwards.

00:59 Von's tapes went missing for a while,

01:01 but he managed to find them in storage in 2005,

01:04 and they tell a remarkable story of the day's events.

01:08 We have a lift off, ready to go.

01:12 We are going to follow the ladder.

01:15 From Neil Armstrong, coming down the ladder,

01:19 about to make his first steps on the moon,

01:22 to the astronauts disposing of their rubbish bags

01:25 and their personal life support packs down the ladder.

01:29 There went something.

01:32 It looked like a portable life support system.

01:35 He also managed to film some of the more candid moments of his colleagues

01:39 during what was an otherwise intense day at the office.

01:44 You can check out more of Video Von's remarkable videos

01:47 at honeysucklecreek.net,

01:49 a website created by Colin McKellar

01:52 as a tribute to the men and women who worked here

01:56 at the former Honeysuckle Creek tracking station.

02:00 [Music]

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