Harold Holt’s Memorial service

22 December 1967

 

Cooby Creek

Australian Prime Minister Holt (1908-1967) arriving for the opening of Honeysuckle Creek on 17 March 1967.

Photo by Ron Hicks.

 

A sad use of Cooby Creek –

On Friday 22 December 1967, Cooby Creek relayed to the world live television pictures of the Memorial Service for Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt.

The service was held at St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in Melbourne and the broadcast was the most complex real-time TV operation conducted in Australia to that point.

 

Cooby Creek

In this frame from film published by the National Film and Sound Archive, Mrs. Holt is escorted from the Cathedral after the service. One of the television cameras which televised the proceedings can be seen at right, circled.

 

Prime Minister Holt had disappeared while swimming at Cheviot Beach on Port Phillip Bay five days earlier, on Sunday 17 December 1967. His body was never found.

Many world leaders, including US President Lyndon Johnson and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson flew to Melbourne to pay their respects.

 

Cooby Creek

Prime Minister Harold Holt clearly enjoys using the track ball to move the Honeysuckle 85-foot antenna just after the opening ceremony on 17 March 1967.

At right, the Prime Minister’s wife, Dame Zara Holt, also watches the antenna move.

 

Just nine months earlier, Prime Minister Holt had officially opened Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station.

 

Davis Cup

Four days after the Memorial Service, Cooby relayed television of the 1967 Davis Cup tennis final between Australia and Spain – from Milton Courts in Brisbane, on 26–28 December.

It’s likely the Davis Cup satellite broadcast was planned well before the unexpected loss of Prime Minister Holt, and would have been the first live program sent from the Eastern States by satellite (other than the segments from Our World in June).