Moon landing put Aussie town on map

PARKES, New South Wales - It was one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind - and pictures of the first Moon landing, which took place 40 years ago next week, were beamed around the world courtesy of a radio telescope located in a sheep paddock in rural New South Wales.

The observatory's role in the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 put the town of Parkes (population 15,000) on the map, and inspired a whimsical Australian film, The Dish. But as the 40th anniversary approaches, locals are recalling not only their town's part in the historic events, but also the fact that it very nearly did not happen.

The Parkes dish, the largest in the southern hemisphere, had been designated by Nasa as the main receiving station for television footage of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk on July 21. However, Armstrong and his fellow astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, opted to leave the lunar module six hours early, so at the last minute the task was reassigned to Nasa's tracking station at Goldstone, California.

The two men spent so long donning their spacesuits and depressurising the cabin that the moon was just rising over Parkes when they emerged. Goldstone and Parkes were both receiving the TV signal, as was Nasa's station at Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra. But Parkes' pictures were the best quality, so it was those that were transmitted around the globe.

What the 600 million viewers - one-fifth of the world's population then - did not know was that a violent squall had hit the observatory just as the broadcast began. Neil Mason, who was operating the telescope, recalls: "This great storm front came through and caught us all unawares. All the alarms were ringing and the control tower was shuddering and swaying."

The winds were ten times stronger than was normally considered safe, but John Bolton, the observatory's director, decided the operation was too important to abandon. So Mason, now retired but still living in Parkes, remained at the controls of the 1000-tonne dish.

"You just hoped the thing wasn't going to come crashing down on top of you," he says. Fortunately, the storm passed. Afterwards, David Cooke, the senior receiver engineer, stepped outside and looked up. "The Moon was still in the sky, and I thought, gosh, there are people up there, and we've helped to do that," says Cooke, now 77.

Cooke was also on duty in 1970, when the Parkes telescope played a key part in helping Apollo 13 to return safely to Earth following an explosion. To Mason, July 21, 1969 was just another day in the office. "I suppose we were playing a part in making history, but I didn't really think about it at the time," he says. Cooke says: "I guess we were pretty pleased to be involved, even in a small way. It's something you'll never forget."