Australian Geographic – July-August 2019

56 Australian Geographic

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FTER 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.

Although I didn’t understand exactly what role Tom and his

team at Honeysuckle had played in televising the live broadcast

of Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon, I knew it had been

important and I wanted to tell Tom’s story. I knew him well

enough to understand that he would never have agreed to me

writing about his NASA career. Not one to blow his own trum-

pet, Tom would have done his best to dissuade me.

left politics after two decades in the NSW

parliament to focus on writing. His first book,

William Charles Wentworth: Australia’s

Greatest Native Son, won ‘The Nib’ CAL

Waverley Library Award for Literature 2010. His other

books are: Lord Sydney; Air Disaster Canberra;

Australia 1901–2001; and Honeysuckle Creek: The story of

Tom Reid, a Little Dish and Neil Armstrong’s First Step.

Andrew is a past president of the Library Council of NSW

and currently an Adjunct Professor at Macquarie University.

Andrew Tink

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S 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.

PHOTO CREDITS, PREVIOUS PAGE: COURTESY HAMISH LINDSAY; THIS PAGE, FROM TOP LEFT: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; NASA