Honeysuckle Creek: The Story of Tom Reid, a Little Dish and Neil Armstrong’s First Step

226 Pages·2019·2.58 MB·English

by  Andrew Tink

HONEYSUCKLE
CREEK
ANDREW TINK is the author of celebrated books including Lord Sydney: The life
and times of Tommy Townshend, Air Disaster Canberra and Australia 1901–
2001. His biography William Charles Wentworth won The Nib award for
literature in 2010. Before taking up writing, Andrew was shadow attorney-
general and shadow leader of the House in the NSW Parliament, following an
earlier career as a barrister. Andrew is currently an adjunct professor at
Macquarie University.
HONEYSUCKLE
CREEK
THE STORY OF TOM REID, A LITTLE DISH AND NEIL
ARMSTRONG’S FIRST STEP
ANDREW TINK
A NewSouth book
Published by
NewSouth Publishing
University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052
AUSTRALIA
newsouthpublishing.com
© Andrew Tink 2018
First published 2018
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or
review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process
without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia
ISBN: 9781742236087 (paperback) ISBN: 9781742244297 (ebook)
ISBN: 9781742248721 (ePDF)
Design Josephine Pajor-Markus Cover design Lisa White Cover image Tracking Apollo 8 in lunar orbit on
Christmas Eve, 1968.
Photo by Hamish Lindsay.
Back cover image Photo of Tom Reid by Don Witten Author photo Elizabeth Tink Illustration opposite
Based on photo by Ron Hicks Printer Griffin Press
All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book,
but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.
This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.
The name Honeysuckle Creek and the excellence which is implied by that name
will always be remembered and recorded in the annals of manned space flight.
Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr.
Director of Flight Operations, Apollo 11
Contents Introduction
Och, Tommy!
Keep Your Chin Up
Senior Service Brand
Lieutenant Sparks
Woomera
Sputnik and Kaputnik
Before This Decade Is Out
Academic Interlude
Castles in the Air
At First Sight
A Moon Made of Cheese?
A Hard Man
Santa Claus
The Mop Handle
The Upside-down Camera
Like Flies to a Picnic Lunch
The Eagle Has Landed
A Prime Minister ‘Blinded by Science’
God Damn It: We Were Ready!
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
It was a Monday morning just after 6 am. Oblivious to the mid-winter chill that
would normally have kept us in bed until at least 6.30 am, my family and I had
been up for a while clustered around our kitchen radio. What we heard from
almost 250 000 miles away was a human voice – an astronaut’s voice – the voice
of Buzz Aldrin.
Six … forward … lights on … down two-and-a-half … forty feet … down two-and-a-half … kicking
up some dust … thirty feet … two-and-a-half down … faint shadow … four forward … four forward
… drifting to the right a little … OK … four forward … four forward. Drifting to the right a little.
Twenty feet … down a half …1
As Aldrin’s companion, Neil Armstrong, searched for a suitable place to land
their lunar module, Eagle, Mission Control in Houston reminded them that they
had only 30 seconds of fuel left. Would they make it? Or would they crash?
Then after what seemed like an eternity, we heard:
ALDRIN: Contact light!
ARMSTRONG: Shutdown.
ALDRIN: OK. Engine stop.
MISSION CONTROL: We copy you down, Eagle.
ARMSTRONG: Engine light is off … Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed!
MISSION CONTROL: Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys
about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.2
According to our kitchen clock it had just gone quarter-past-six. In our different
ways we were caught up in the high emotion of this moment: two men had
landed on the Moon. Then, as my father was wont to do, we were hustled off to
prepare for school. In my case it was a half-hour train ride from the Sydney
suburb of Gordon to Town Hall, followed by a walk across Hyde Park to Sydney
Grammar, an all-boys’ school where I was in fourth form.
Having recently turned sixteen, I was interested in girls but awkward in their
company. My schoolmates and I would clog up the entry ways of the old ‘red
rattler’ carriages as our train snaked its way down the North Shore line. Standing
nearby would be Monte girls who would get off at Milson’s Point and SCEGGS
girls going all the way to Darlinghurst. In our different groups we would talk at
the tops of our voices, generally showing off. The girls would hitch up their
skirts, just a little, while the boys would loosen their ties and effect a tousled hair
look, something I could never quite pull off.
On any normal day the commuters in our carriage could not have presented a
starker contrast, travelling in absolute silence and avoiding eye contact with
those sitting beside them, even though they invariably travelled in the same or
almost the same seats, day in and day out, year in and year out. Nearly every
North Shore commuter read a paper, mostly the Sydney Morning Herald. In their
cramped seats, the backs of which were uncomfortably stamped with the raised
letters NSWGR, their only contact with each other was when they struggled to
turn their broadsheets’ pages. Without the need to utter a word, some commuters
had learned the art of turning their respective pages in unison to minimise any
disruption. The only words any of them ever spoke on these morning commutes
were directed at us. ‘If you continue misbehaving, I’ll take your names and
report you to the Headmaster; I’m an Old Boy you know!’ Angry words like
that.
But on the morning of Monday, 21 July 1969, the only morning I can ever
remember it being like this, every commuter in my carriage was talking: to the
person in front of them, to the person behind them, to the person opposite them
or to the person beside them. And there was just one question on their lips.
Exactly when would Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step out of the Eagle and
begin their Moon walk, which NASA had promised would be televised live.
The Herald was reporting that the astronauts would rest for some hours before
stepping outside, which in Sydney would coincide with everyone’s evening train
ride home. Some people said they would leave work early while others tried to
figure out whether, if they stayed in the city, they could watch TV screens set up
in department store windows. Still others, the ones dressed in the most
expensive-looking suits, quietly discussed whether to allow the television sets in
their executive dining rooms to be moved into their staff canteens. Complicating
all these discussions was a quote in the Herald attributed to the Apollo 11 flight
director, Clifford Charlesworth: ‘We want to stick to the flight plan. But you
know how flight plans are – sometimes you have to change them.’3
A few people in my carriage were able to listen to more up-to-date news than
the Herald could provide, through earplugs attached to spindly cords that
connected them to their transistor radios. One story which spread through our
carriage like wildfire was a radio news flash that the astronauts’ Moon walk
might take place as early as 9 am. And when our train arrived at its first city
station, Wynyard, the commuter horde which alighted there scurried along the
platform towards the exit signs with unusual swiftness.
By the time I arrived at Sydney Grammar, around 8.30 am, NASA’s best
estimate had been revised. It now seemed that Armstrong would emerge from
the Eagle a little after 11 am. This news caused consternation among the
teaching staff. They had assumed that the Moon walk would take place at the
end of the day when only the sports coaches’ after-hours training schedules
would have been disrupted.
Alastair Mackerras, who had only recently been appointed Grammar’s
headmaster, was determined to see his school excel academically. For fourth
form students like me, that meant getting a clean sweep of advanced passes in
the externally marked School Certificate exams which were then just a couple of
months off; in my case, ‘straight As’ in English, Science, Mathematics, History,
French and Latin. There was a rigid daily program of classes or periods, each of
which was commenced and ended by the ringing of a loud electronic bell.
The general sense among the Grammar staff was that disruptive as it might be
to this strict academic schedule, the boys should be allowed to watch live TV of
the Moon walk. And it appears that the headmaster, a classics scholar,
reluctantly gave in. Every available TV set was requisitioned to the various
classrooms; however, there were not enough sets to go around, so some missed
out altogether. Others, including me, were assembled in the science block
auditorium where a larger TV had been set up ready and waiting for the event.
However, the expected time came and went. On the screen in front of us
Channel 9’s Brian Bury did his best to fill in the unexpected programming gap
by going over the Eagle’s landing earlier that morning, as well as interviewing
guests such as Professor Stuart Butler from Sydney University’s physics
department. Although Butler was something of a celebrity, being well known to
us all for his popular comic strip series, Frontiers of Science, even he started to
wear thin after a while. Our teachers began fretting that we were wasting
valuable class time. In many cases, including mine, classes resumed on a
promise that when the Moon walk was about to begin we could return to the
science auditorium to watch it. Just over an hour later the summons came and we
found ourselves back in the auditorium, again watching Channel 9.
It was another false alarm as Brian Bury struggled again to fill the time. With
our frustration growing, we started to play up as only pimply, cynical teenage
boys can. Our voices, most broken but some not yet so, filled the auditorium
with a cacophony of noise while a range of missiles, including tiny spit-balls
launched from the hollow barrels of ballpoint pens, flew around. Then just as all
of us were about to be placed on detention by our furious teachers, a split screen
suddenly appeared behind Bury’s head and we could see pictures of Houston’s
Mission Control coming to us in real time. With the prospect of a live cross to