Lewis (Lew) Cottrell
Orroral Valley
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Lew Cottrell at Orroral Valley, August 1965. |
Lewis (Lew) Keith Cottrell was the first Deputy Station Director of Orroral Valley. He joined the first Station Director, Tom Reid, who had begun in August 1964 when the station was in the earliest phases of construction.
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Lew Cottrell helps uncrate equipment at Orroral Valley, August 1965. |
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Lew Cottrell, standing at right, lights his pipe in this mid-1966 staged scene for a NASA / WRE cameraman. The location is the Orroral Valley Station Director’s office. Station Director Tom Reid is at right, partly obscured by the printout he is examining. Standing at left is Jim Fenwick, who has just delivered the printouts. Bill Brear is seated at left, next to Ted Peppercorn, seated at centre. Frame enhanced from footage found in the US National Archives by Mark Gray. |
After the departure of Tom Reid to become Station Director at Honeysuckle Creek on 7th August 1967, Lew was appointed Acting Station Director of Orroral Valley.
Dennis Willshire, StaDir at Island Lagoon, Woomera, was appointed as Reid’s replacement. Somewhere around this time, Cottrell decided to make a change, and resigned from the Department of Suppy in order to go to the Royal Australian Navy. Apparently he left Orroral Valley in the first week of October 1967, two or three days after Willshire’s arrival.
Exactly what his civilian role was in the Royal Australian Navy is unclear, though it seems to have involved naval telecommunications, and apparently there was some work on the Ikara anti-submarine system.
Lewis Cottrell died in Brisbane in June 1993.
References
E-mails from
Lew’s son Graham, March 2012.
Unpublished memo from John South to Ozro Covington, 06 September 1967.
The Brisbane Courier Mail, 01 July 1993.
If you can contribute more about Lew, please make contact.