Honeysuckle Creek to Canberra to Sydney

(note – July 2026 – there’s still a bit more to come on this page, including maps and some audio.)

The Television pictures of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk were relayed from Honeysuckle Creek to Canberra using a temporary microwave link.

While there was a microwave link (for voice and telemetry) from Honeysuckle Creek to Tidbinbilla via the passive repeater on Deadman’s Hill, there was no capability to send live television out of the station and to the rest of the world.

So, for example, during Apollo 8, while live TV from lunar orbit was watched in station, the world saw the TV via Goldstone and Madrid.

The large dish on the Honeysuckle microwave tower was directed towards the passive repeater on Deadman’s Hill. This provided the link to the Wing (HSKX) at Tidbinbilla. The smaller dishes added to the tower for Apollo 11 (see below) were directed at the temporary tower next to the road. This tower had a line of site to Williamsdale. Base: Google Earth.

Shortly before Apollo 10, NASA planners worked on finding a way to connect Honeysuckle Creek to the Cooma to Canberra microwave radio link. The nearest of those repeater towers was on Gibraltar Hill, 4km east of the locality of Williamsdale, 18.2km east of Honeysuckle Creek.

Honeysuckle was shielded by hills, which also meant that a line of sight link from the station to Williamdale would not be possible. However, a point 170 feet (50 metres) above ground level, and 470 metres ENE of the Honeysuckle microwave tower could see the Williamsdale tower.

The PMG (The Australian Postmaster General’s Department) erected a 170 foot temporary guyed tower, and a passive repeater (two dishes connected by a waveguide) was installed near the top.

The location of the temporary TV tower is marked on this image derived from Google Earth. It was next to the road, less than a kilometre from the station’s front gate. Signals from Honeysuckle’s microwave tower were beamed through the passive repeater on the temporary tower and on to Williamsdale.

The location of the temporary TV tower is still a cleared area. John Saxon inspects it in this March 2009 photo by Betty Saxon.

Four smaller microwave dishes were installed on Honeysuckle’s microwave tower, right next to the Operation Building.

Mike Dinn remembers: “Two dishes were for Parkes (via Sydney) incoming – prime and backup. The other pair for outgoing TV, prime and backup.” Screenshot from ABC footage taken on the morning of the Moonwalk. Used with permission.

And another view, taken from the top end of the car park, in the direction of the dish. From ABC footage shot about a week before the landing.

This photo, preserved by Ian Grant, has the tower without the extra ABC-TV outside-broadcast backup dish on the top platform.

Photo by Hamish Lindsay. Scan by Colin Mackellar. Filters applied to enhance contrast. Original photo here. Another photo showing the temporary TV tower can be seen here.

PMG Senior Technician Trevor Gray was based at Honeysuckle for the Moonwalk, and monitored the outgoing video.

At Williamsdale, 18km away, an Outside Broadcast van belonging to AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia) was stationed at the base of the Cooma to Canberra microwave tower. The van remained in place, in bitterly cold weather, for the duration of the mission. The Williamsdale microwave tower’s diesel backup power supply was kept running throughout the mission in case the mains power failed. (Bruce Ekert recalls that similar precautions were taken throughout the microwave network which carried Apollo 11 signals.)

Once the TV signal was inserted into the link, it was sent the 27 kilometres to Red Hill in Canberra, where PMG technician Bruce Ekert was monitoring the signal. PMG technician’s assistant Bob McFadden also helped with the link and with the extensive testing beforehand.

The Williamsdale microwave tower still stands on a high hill to the east of the hamlet of Williamsdale. Base: Google Earth.

The Williamsdale microwave tower – at left – still stands at an elevation of 1073 metres on Gibraltar Hill, 4km east of the locality of Williamsdale and the Monaro Highway. To the right, a taller tower to support cellular telephony is a more recent addition. This distant photo was taken from a point 4.2km to the ENE, on Williamsdale Road, near the intersection with Burra Road. Photo: Colin Mackellar, November 2025.

A zoomed in view from the same location. The equipment building is clearly visible just to the left of the base of the tower. Of the two microwave dishes near the top of the tower, the one on the left points to the Bredbo repeater (on the way to Cooma). The dish on the right points to Red Hill in Canberra. Photo: Colin Mackellar, November 2025.

From Red Hill the TV was sent via microwave link to Sydney – and from there to Moree and via Intelsat III F4 to Houston.

Trevor Gray, PMG

Trevor Gray with Colin Mackellar at the Apollo 11 50th anniversary event in Canberra, July 2019. Photo: Steve Howard.

PMG Senior Technician Trevor Gray recalls, October 2020,

“I was a Senior Technician, Radiocommunications Installation, PMG, at the time of Apollo 11.

I had a small team and travelled around NSW installing Radio Communications equipment including Microwave, UHF multichannel, Single channel phone systems, and mobile radio. Red Hill was Canberra’s Radio Terminal and was our base when in the area. I had done a lot of work in the Canberra area, including the installation of all the  equipment at Williamsdale, a repeater on the Canberra to Cooma Microwave system.

Maintenance and operations at Red Hill and Williamsdale was the responsibility of rostered staff from Central exchange, East Block. Central Exchange was Canberra’s Trunk Exchange. (Basically everything that wasn’t part of the local switched telephone network). They were backed up by Radio specialists at Redfern Radio terminal in Sydney.

Central Exchange had a lot to do with the Nascom network, but probably not much to do with the television because we, the installation team stayed for the mission and didn't hand it over to operations.

It is a pity that I didn’t fully grasp the historical significance of the event and kept more detail of the equipment arrangement etc. Maybe being 27 yrs of age has something to do with that. I have only my memory which tends to remember challenges, hassles etc., but not so much the things that fall into place and run smoothly. But first step on the Moon I’ll always remember.

I don’t remember installing extra links between Williamsdale and Red Hill. There was a very reliable standby bearer on the existing Cooma to Red Hill 4.2 GHz NEC system in both directions. All that was required at Williamsdale was the installation of a Television Modem and some modifications at Red Hill to patch the signals to similar 4.2 GHz standby bearers to Redfern in Sydney (Magneti Marelli Equipment).

The equipment used on Williamsdale to Honeysuckle Creek was Outside Broadcast Equipment using klystron valves running around 7GHz.

We attached the head units to larger than normal dishes which were tower mounted. I had never seen this equipment before, which is not unusual for installation people, but had a lot of experience with waveguides/dishes.

I remember using the lathe at Honeysuckle to machine a waveguide flange so that it would electrically mate with another flange (remove a choke). I had watched my brothers, who were fitters, operate a lathe. The alternative was to find a machinist, which takes time.

There were a few maintenance issues with the equipment. It was cold and wet and some connectors on cables carrying high voltage up the towers arced and broke down. After repairing them I remember encasing the joints in epoxy resin.

Some klystrons failed over time and I remember not having a klystron for a spare unit. I mentioned it to the storeman at Honeysuckle and he got American defense to fly one out overnight.

On the operations side, on the day, I was at Honeysuckle. I had waveform and picture monitors to check on the quality of the signals. At one point I noticed that the loading (voltage) of the composite signal from Parkes was getting too high, to a point where the links would have problems. I forget who I rang, but the levels were reduced.

Good to be part of it.

After installing the communication equipment at Black Mountain Tower, I joined the operations team there, and was OIC for a number of years. A few astronauts had morning tea with us there.

Trevor Gray, 27 October 2020.”

Trevor took these snaps of the outgoing picture on the monitor in Honeysuckle’s microwave tower wire room. This one was taken just after the first step, at about 109:25:50 GET, as Neil Armstrong explains, “There seems to be no difficulty in moving around, as we suspected. It’s even perhaps easier than the simulations of one-sixth g that we performed in the various simulations on the ground”. The world is seeing this Honeysuckle picture at this point. Image processing: Colin Mackellar.

At 109:38:05 GET, Armstrong moves from right to left from out of frame and into the sunlight, just as Bruce McCandless announces, “Here you come into our field of view”. The world is seeing the Parkes picture at this point.

Trevor Gray has shared this photo of his Apollo Achievement Award, in recognition of his part in ensuring the world saw Neil Armstrong’s first step onth the Moon.

Bruce Ekert, PMG

Bruce Ekert, who was based at Red Hill for the TV, was interviewed on 2nd June 2009 –

Here is a transcript of the above interview – Questions are in bold italics.

“I worked for the PMG and Telecom, as it was later to become, from 1963. This was interrupted in 1967 to 1969 by two years’ National Service. I was conscripted, and on 1st February 1969, I went back to my job with the PMG, which was as an electronics communications technician.

My area was actually from Sydney to Albury and Sydney to Bega and Sydney out west to Griffith, installing microwave radio links and radio systems wherever I was needed to go, that’s where I went.

And sometime in early '69, we were informed that there was a big job on, which involved a mission to the Moon. I don’t remember too much about how it was all organized, but one day we were told that we had to pick up some equipment. There was a truck coming down from Sydney with some AWA technicians who were going to work alongside us, and they were supplying the link equipment. And we had to go to a place called Honeysuckle Creek, which was south of Canberra, and install some equipment there.

There was going to be a link from Honeysuckle Creek via Williamsdale, which was an established PMG microwave repeater, back to Red Hill in Canberra.

So basically, we installed the radio equipment and some lineman riggers installed the dishes and the waveguides up the towers. There was one at Honeysuckle Creek, and there was another one outside Honeysuckle Creek on a clearing, which had two dishes on it, connected by a piece of waveguide called a passive repeater. And the signal from Honeysuckle Creek went to this passive repeater and then at an oblique angle to Williamsdale, and from Williamsdale then to Red Hill in Canberra.

The link from Honeysuckle to Williamsdale comprised AWA equipment, which had been used for outside broadcasts by AWA doing such things as the races, car races, et cetera, in Sydney and around Sydney, and I don’t know where else.

They stationed their end of the link at Williamsdale on the hill in one of their OB (Outside Broadcast) vans, and we connected the OB van to the PMG equipment inside Williamsdale building with cables – just across on a strainer wire, as I remember. And that was the link, basically, from Honeysuckle Creek to Canberra, which was established for Apollo 11.

 

This view of the Willamsdale tower – at right – is from the other side of the hill to the photos above. It’s taken from Williamsdale Road, about 1.75km SW of the tower. Additional cellular telephone equipment been added. Photo: Colin Mackellar, November 2025.

 

The link was an established microwave link from Red Hill in Canberra to Williamsdale and south, via Bredbo to Cooma, and from Cooma down to Bega, and via the Brown Mountain television station, and was the link that the ABC TV pictures used to go on. So it was just a matter of tapping into the link at Williamsdale and inserting the signal there that came from Honeysuckle Creek so that it could be switched and sent to Canberra and thus off to America via various different directions.

Everything was covered so that, if there happened to be a failure in one direction, they could easily switch the signal via another link – that was there was a microwave link from Canberra to Sydney – there was also a terrestrial coaxial cable from Canberra to Sydney – that were both able to be switched into with this with the signals coming from the Moon.

Basically, this OB van, the outside broadcast van of AWA, was parked outside Williamsdale, out in the weather, connecting a cable up the tower to a dish, which was facing back to Honeysuckle Creek, and the video, audio cables, power cables, et cetera, went across the strainer wire into the building in Williamsdale.

This van sat out on the hill in all the weather, very cold weather, winds, because it was July, middle of winter, and it was very bitter.

I was lucky that I wasn’t out at Williamsdale during the mission. I happened to be in Canberra in Red Hill, but I was on on duty for twenty four hours or more. I remember I didn’t go home. I used to live in Queenbeyan and I didn’t get to go home all the time the mission was active.

And the men at Williamsdale, the AWA technicians, were able to use our building and our kitchen facilities, such as they were, to make a cup of tea, etc., and some food. But they were in this OB van out on the side of the hill in the weather all the time.

Yes, it was like microwave sites were. They were on right on top of a hill with no trees, because trees only impeded the signals. So it was on top of a bare hill. It’s beside the highway, the Monaro Highway outside Williamsdale township. The site is still there today. The microwave tower is still in use, I presume, and the original building and tower are still on the hill, right out as you drive up from Cooma to Canberra. So it’s a pretty exposed position.

Outside of Honeysuckle Creek, outside the security gates, there was a cleared area and there was a guyed tower put up because there was no line of sight situation from Honeysuckle Creek to Williamsdale. But from this tower, which was only about 750 metres to a kilometre away from the main Honeysuckle building, there was line of sight through a V – a gap in the hills. So we beamed the signal from Honeysuckle Creek to this temporary tower, and then it was redirected through this gap in the hills over to Williamsdale.

I was the technician – I had a senior technician above me was Trevor Gray And we had one technician’s assistant that I know of, his name was Bob McFadden.

And I’ve been trying to think if there were any others that were directly connect worked on the on the link. There were other assist tech assistants that came and went from time to time, but there was no other permanent tech’s assistant or technicians that were actually on the mission. There were various riggers and linemen that put up the temporary tower and they put up the the dishes and waveguides up the tower for the communications. There were quite a few of those and they came and went and we didn’t actually see them very often because they did the job, put the dishes up, put the waveguides and all the cables up the tower and then they were gone, they’d go to another site. And then we’d come in later and connect the radio equipment to it all and then line the dishes up and get it all going.

And how high was this guyed tower outside the honeysuckle gate?

I have an idea it was about 150 to 180 feet in the old terms, which had put it at about 50 meters.

So it was a fairly serious tower.

Yes, it was. It was it was quite quite a tall tower. It had, from remembrance, two or three sets of guy wires to keep it up in place.

You climbed it by climbing actually climbing the rungs of the tower on the outside of the thing. It wasn’t a really secure situation to be working on. It wasn’t all that bad a position because it was more secluded down in amongst the hills. But I presume when it snowed it wasn’t wasn't really good. But I didn’t happen to be there when it snowed.

 

Here’s a photo of Honeysuckle and the temporary link tower in snow some time in 1969, not long after Apollo 11. Click image for a larger version, or here for detail.

 

What did you have installed at Red Hill? Any equipment you had to put in that was different?

Yes, there was what’s called a patch panel or a patch rack. It was a full size nineteen inch by six foot high rack with panels in it, which all had all sockets for every possible possibility of connecting signals, video and audio signals from Honeysuckle Creek to Sydney via microwave links, via the terrestrial Coax cable.

Every microwave bearer, every microwave link that was available has had a standby connection into this patch rack. And our technician’s assistant sat there for weeks on and off when he wasn’t doing anything other major job, connecting up cables, putting connectors on cables and putting them in this rack. And I helped from time to time when he needed cables run here, there and everywhere. And it was quite a job running and connecting all these cables to every possible situation that might be might happen.

 

David Grant, Colin Mackellar and Bruce Ekert at the Apollo 11 50th anniversary event in Canberra, July 2019. Photo: Iain Schwilk.

 

Do you have any particular remembrances of what it was like on the day and what you saw or how it felt?

Basically, it was just another job that we were doing. We didn’t see it as anything – well, it was marvellous that it happened, and we saw basically the same pictures that the world saw, but albeit we saw them before the world because they came to us only second after Honeysuckle Creek at Williamsdale, we saw the pictures and it’s hard to remember how we felt.

I know that after the mission, we felt a little bit deflated because all the all the plaudits and all the congratulations went to mostly Americans and all the American tracking stations, et cetera, et cetera, and there wasn’t a whole lot of publicity for the Australian link, so to speak.

And of course, there was the power the backup power for the stations. There were diesel generators in Red Hill and Williamsdale, which were on for the complete mission. They didn’t turn the diesel generators off. And I did hear that diesel generators were on on every microwave station at least that carried signals from from the moon to America. There was no no breakdown of power. As well as the mains, of course. The diesel generators were on standby and they would have been switched in if there’d been a power failure anywhere.

The PMG contribution to the television and to the entire mission was really quite major, wasn't it?

We were the missing link. If we hadn’t had put that link in and had it working when Armstrong jumped onto the moon, no one would have seen it. Basically, Honeysuckle Creek and the PMG were the main source of signals.

Mike Tobin, AWA

Mike Tobin, right, with “Neil Armstrong” [Questacon’s Patrick Helean] at the Apollo 11 50th anniversary event in Canberra, July 2019. Photo: Louise M.

AWA’s Mike Tobin recalls,

“I was one of the 2 AWA technicians that Bruce Ekert was speaking of in his interview with you.

I was working for AWA in 1968/69 and after the riggers had installed the microwave dishes and OB van at Williamsdale we were deployed to commission the link to Honeysuckle Creek.

These dishes were installed before the tower was erected for the passive repeater at Honeysuckle therefore the riggers had set the antenna on a compass bearing. I can still remember climbing the Williamsdale tower on a very cold Wednesday morning to adjust the dish for peak signal from HSK and then the frightening experience of driving the old land rover through the ford on the Murrumbidgee river back to Honeysuckle.

I met up with Bruce in the comms room at HSK later that day.

Bruce does not mention that this link was also used to bring in the pictures from Parkes. One of the niceties of the AWA link equipment is that it could send full bandwidth video in both directions.” – e-mail, 13 July 2009.

 

Red Hill microwave tower, above Canberra, probably late 1960s or 1970s. It was erected in 1955. Bruce Ekert writes: “The dishes are as follows – The two dishes facing right are towards Sydney. The two dishes facing away to right rear are to Mt. Burrinjuck near Yass ... to Melbourne. The single dish facing left was the dish facing Williamsdale / Cooma. This is the dish which would have carried the video from Apollo 11/HSK.” Image source is unknown and was a poor copy. It’s been enhanced for clarity.

Red Hill microwave tower (arrowed) is *just* visible in this 1965 photo taken by Les Whaley from Mount Pleasant Lookout behind Duntroon. In the right foreground are the Russell Offices and the Australian-American Memorial which was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in February 1954. Medium format negative scan by Colin Mackellar.

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