Minitrack, Island Lagoon – Photos
Photo by Keith Aldworth
Keith Aldworth worked at Minitrack, Island Lagoon, 1965-1966, before moving to Tidbinbilla.
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When I was at Minitrack, I was a fresh, young New Australian. It was the first job that I applied for and I virtually walked straight into it. Noel Johnson was chief engineer and Eric Hird was Station Director. They interviewed me together and I seemed to fit the bill. Started the next day. Such was the informality in those days. I really enjoyed working there and it was difficult for me to accept that it was going to end. They had to persuade me to go to Tid in the end. One real regret that I have from my days in Woomera was that I did not use my camera much. Hindsight is a fine thing but how I wish I had some photos. I did take some pix inside the building and I still have them but they are very under-exposed and even with Photoshop, I cannot get them to come up to much.
I was inspired by my good fortune in landing a job like that and it all seems to be a dream now. I have some vivid memories from there and sometimes, little extras come back. Telling you just recently of the optical system we had there flushed out some cobwebs.
I am not sure if I have told you this little story before, but I doubt that I did. One of my colleagues there, Ed Mitchell (there were two Ed Mitchells), was something of a Pommy knocker and he was always verbally giving me a hard time. I took it all in my stride, such jibes a ‘Ten pound Pom, here and gone, whinging pom, and plain old Pommy bastard, were common. I never let it spoil my enjoyment of the place but it did get a little wearing at times. One day, He and I were detailed to do some maintenance on a huge log periodic antenna that we had there to receive timing signals from WWV and WWVH. The antenna was atop a tall tower which was hinged in the middle, to enable any work to be done on the antenna. The lowering and raising were done with a winch and a steel cable. Ed stayed at the bottom to operate the winch and I had to climb up about fifteen feet to release the locking pin. It was a really hot day and the flies, were at their Woomera worst. Thousands of them all over us. Climbing around on a tower and waving away the flies was a hazardous exercise. Just as I was nearing the bottom of the tower, puffing a bit, I managed to inhale a fly. My spluttering, red in the face and having a terrible time trying to eject the darned thing was hilariously funny to Ed and he was in paroxysms of laughter. Just as I managed to get it out, Ed, still laughing like a drain, managed to ingest one of his own. Well, that was justice enough for me and I turned and walked back to minitrack to get myself a drink. Five minutes later, in came Ed, still red in the face and extremely angry with me for leaving him out there to ‘choke to death’. It seems that he had really been in quite dire strife.
Everyone thought that he had been dealt justice and they told him so. From that day forth, he did not use his epithets on me again.
Funny how such things remain vividly in the memory, isn’t it. 21/02/2007