Honeysuckle Creek

and The Little-known Heroes Of The Moon Walk Broadcast

- Andrew Tink

AS POLITICIAN-turned-writer Andrew Tink viewed the opening scenes of the 2000 film The Dish, he thought “wrong person, wrong place” as he watched actor Sam Neill playing fictional character Cliff Buxton walk towards the Parkes radio telescope. The film portrays Australia’s role in relaying live television footage of the first man on the Moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. But it omits the pivotal role of NASA’s Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, about 300km south of the Parkes Observatory, near Canberra.

Honeysuckle provided the historic live footage of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon that was seen by more than 600 million people worldwide at 12.56pm (AEST) on Monday 21 July 1969.

Andrew has made it his mission to right the record and recognise the crucial role of the Honeysuckle team, particularly station director at the time Tom Reid, in bringing those images – some of the most watched footage in human history – to the world.

AFTER 19 YEARS as a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly, I stepped down in 2007 and took up writing, mostly biographies. I knew Tom Reid, who’d been the station director of NASA’s Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station during the Apollo 11 mission, through his daughter Marg – we’d dated during the early 1970s.