A very familiar sight to anyone who worked at Honeysuckle Creek or Orroral Valley – the Tharwa Bridge over the Murrumbidgee River in November 1963 as seen from the Tharwa side.

(Opened in 1895, it is the oldest surviving bridge in the Australian Capital Territory and is still in use.)

Transparency from the Tidbinbilla archives. Scan: Colin Mackellar.

Not everyone loved the Tharwa Bridge. This cartoon by Pat Lynch is from Orroral’s Comment 21 staff magazine for February 1972.

Preserved by Philip Clark. Scan: Colin Mackellar.

Remembering Honeysuckle’s Ken Lee. In the Space People section.

LOS the PMG’s man at Carnarvon John Lambie. (The photo shows John in the new Carnarvon Apollo control Room, June 1967.)

Read John’s story in the Space People section.

In 1983, Amateur Radio Operators from Orroral Valley tested a potentially crucial backup communications strategy for the Space Shuttle. Read the story in the Orroral Valley section.

Watch the video in full screen.

Remembering Honeysuckle Creek Station Director Tom Reid MBE, 15 years on.

Hear this 1994 interview with Tom Reid, by Hamish Lindsay.

Honeysuckle’s early days. A lonely figure walks beside the original track to Honeysuckle, along the side of Dead Man’s Hill, in this 1966 transparency by Ian Hahn.

See Ian’s slides here.

Hamish Lindsay took this photo of a wombat at Honeysuckle Creek in September 1972.

(5x7" negative HSK/5/9/6/1/261. Tidbinbilla archives. Scan by Colin Mackellar.)

Honeysuckle Creek’s first manned mission, Apollo 7, was an Earth-orbit shakedown of the Command Service Module, 12–22 October 1968.

See the full collection of featured items at this link.

Also see some related (and some unrelated!) video at vimeo.com/honeysuckle.

Some of them are collected here.

Updates | News| Previously featured items

Honeysuckle Creek

Intro
Early Days (Location, Construction, Early scenes, Opening)
The Station (Technical descriptions, photos)
Honeysuckle People, Stories. (incl. Visitors, StaDirs, Reunions, and more.)

Apollo Missions

The Manned Space Flight Network,
Mission Control Center - Houston,
MSFN Technical Information Bulletins

Preparing for Apollo, Goddard Sims, Station Readiness Tests,

Apollo Summary,

Apollo 1, Apollo 7, Apollo 8, Apollo 9, Apollo 10, Apollo 11, Apollo 11 TV, Apollo 12, Apollo 13, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, Apollo 17, ALSEP, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Leaving the MSFN.

Deep Space Missions

Last Days Honeysuckle Today The Books

Videos

Interviews

Space People

Other

Other Stations
Tidbinbilla, Goldstone, Madrid, Carnarvon, Guam, Ascension Island, ARIA, Deakin Switch, Parkes, Muchea, Red Lake, Island Lagoon, Orroral Valley, Cooby Creek, Carnarvon OTC, OTC (Aust), BFEC, Santiago, Darwin, Texas (Corpus Christi), MILA.

Missions Supported by Other Stations
Mercury: Friendship 7, Faith 7.
Gemini: Gemini 3, Gemini 4, Gemini 5, Gemini 12.
Mariner IV, Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager.

Department of Supply
Pioneers, WRESAT, Woomera.

About / Contact
Tips on navigating the site
Links

A message from Christopher Kraft, 14 March 1974, on the occasion of Honeysuckle leaving the Manned Space Flight Network.

Honeysuckle Creek
The story of Tom Reid, a little dish, and Neil Armstrong’s First Step – by Andrew Tink, 2019.

Click for more about the book.

In 2019, the Royal Australian Mint Moon Landing Coins commemorate the Moon landing.

Click for more about the coins.

Australian Prime Minister John Gorton visits Honeysuckle Creek on the day of the Moon Landing, Monday 21 July 1969. Silent film runs for 4'02" – a 14MB MPEG4 file.

The Prime Minister after his tour inside Honeysuckle’s Operations building. Unedited news film runs for 5'14" – a 21MB MPEG4 file.

The Honeysuckle antenna today

The old Honeysuckle antenna was used for its last official track in January 2010.

DSS46 photos.

And here’s a tribute page of photos on the occasion of the shutdown.