About this website
(Written in December 2003, for the website launch. The site has grown a little since then.)
This site is an ongoing work by Colin Mackellar as a
tribute to the pioneering work of all who were involved with NASA’s Honeysuckle
Creek Tracking Station.
I was too young to be personally involved in Apollo (if you
look at this photo, that’s me in the foreground –
standing outside the Honeysuckle gate in 1971. I was nearly 15). But I have
always been very interested in both astronomy and manned space exploration.
(On holidays our family will often just “happen” to find ourselves
at places like Honeysuckle, Tidbinbilla, Parkes or Siding Spring.)
During the Apollo Program, both Honeysuckle Creek and Tidbinbilla
were household names in Australia (as was the Parkes Radio Telescope) and
I followed any media references to them closely.
It is surprising that there is not more information readily
available about Honeysuckle (other than the tremendous resources of Hamish Lindsay’s
book and Mike
Dinn and John
Saxon’s websites).
For that matter, there is very little on the Internet about
Tidbinbilla, Goldstone or Madrid from the Apollo days. This website is the
beginning of an attempt to help correct that.
Thanks
This “Honeysuckle” website would not have been
possible without the kindness and constant encouragement of three well
known Honeysuckle identities – Mike Dinn,
John Saxon and Hamish
Lindsay. They have been extraordinarily helpful in scanning photos,
sharing stories, answering questions and so on. (Hamish took most of the photos
on this site. If I missed attributing a photograph, it’s a good guess
that Hamish took it.)
I am also very grateful to many people – including many Honeysuckle Creek space trackers who have sent me a great deal of other material and given encouragement.
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Mike Dinn and Colin Mackellar at Tidbinbilla,
July 2002.
DSS-46 (the former Honeysuckle
antenna) is in the background.
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Mike Dinn, Colin Mackellar and Hamish Lindsay at Tidbinbilla, 22 July 2015.
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Mike Dinn and Colin Mackellar in the brand new Tidbinbilla Operations Room, 27 September 2017.
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Invitation to contribute / Appeal
for help!
If you are a former Honeysuckle worker, or if you have
information, photos, stories, grafitti, maps, etc. that you would like
to share, I would be delighted to hear from you. (See ‘Contact’
below.)
I’m also very glad to hear from anyone who worked at other MSFN, DSN and STADAN stations.
I have larger versions of many of the photos on the web site – feel free to ask.
About me
I was born in Sydney and have lived here most of my life.
My father and grandfather introduced me to amateur astronomy and I have continued
that interest, even though living in light-polluted Sydney.
During the Gemini and Apollo
missions I became closely interested in manned space exploration – and
first learned of Honeysuckle in, I guess, 1968.
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Me with the 1/96th scale Revell Saturn V model in 1969.
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I studied Geology and Geophysics at University in the 1970s – in the hope that lots of geologists would be needed for
interpreting the results of planetary exploration. It seemed like a good idea
at the time!
I also remember ringing Honeysuckle in 1976, when the station was supporting
Viking 1 – and spoke with several members of the team, who very kindly
took the time to explain what was happening.
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Looking at a portion of the celebrated Apollo 15 sample 15415 (dubbed “The Genesis Rock”) in the Pristine Sample Laboratory of the Lunar Curatorial Facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
This piece of anorthosite crystallised around 4.09 billion years ago.
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After working in exploration Geology (terrestrial only!) for a while,
I turned to study Theology at Moore College in Sydney and was ordained into
the Christian ministry in 1986.
For many years I was privileged to be the Minister
at an Anglican church in Western
Sydney.
(If you’d like to read one of my sermons with references
to Honeysuckle in it, there’s
one here from 2002 – a 100kb PDF.
And at the Apollo 11 35th anniversary
lunch in The Canberra Club on July 21 2004, I was very grateful to be
given the chance to say a few words – and you
can read them here – pdf.)
I’m married to Janelle and we have three children.
In the 2019 Australia Day Honours list, I was surprised and honoured to receive a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the General Division, “for service to community history” (meaning, mainly, this website and related activities, including participation in the Apollo 11 Telemetry Tape search). I’m very grateful to those who worked for that. I hope that our space trackers will see this award as a recognition of their pioneering work as well!
Contact
I’d love to hear from you. My contact details are –
Colin Mackellar
phone – 02 6100 6224 (Canberra number) |
Corrections
I’d be surprised if there aren’t many mistakes on
this site. Please tell me about them so I can get it right.
And if I have used any of your material and haven’t attributed
correctly, please tell me so I can fix it.
Colin Mackellar
Site launched Sunday, 14 December 2003. Updated regularly, time permitting. Still going as of 2024, with plenty more to add. Please check the Updates page to see what’s new.
Since 2012, this website has been archived by the National Library of Australia.
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I’m outside the main fence at Honeysuckle Creek
on 9th October 1971. The main gate is to the left, and the road behind me is the track to the coll. tower.
This is a new scan for the 40th anniversary of the photo being taken.
Large (1.1MB), larger (3.4 MB).
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That’s me –
at the sign at the beginning of what is now called “Apollo Road”,
leading up to Honeysuckle Creek – in October 1971.
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I didn’t expect to be let in the front
gate – and I wasn’t.
There was nobody on the gate that day!
(Large 1.5MB version here.)
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And just for comparison, here are
two photos of me in the same spot
– in 1971 and 2002.
In the 2002 image, the hill is still there – it’s just
hidden behing the trees
(and the elevation of the photographer is slightly different).
The sad difference is that the Tracking Station isn’t there any
more! :-(
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Click image for a larger
version. |
