Updated
On a wet and cold morning 50 years ago, Kevin
Gallegos got in a car with three colleagues and drove from his home in
Torrens in Canberra to work.
Key points:
- Kevin Gallegos was one of 80 people working at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station
- The "little dish" was built by NASA outside of Canberra for the manned moon missions
- Author Andrew Tink said a "muck up" in California meant the Canberra dish was needed to receive Neil Armstrong's first steps
The Brindabella Mountains were dusted with sleet showers as they travelled the 30 kilometres towards Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, south-west of the nation's capital.
It was a typical freezing mid-winter morning in the ACT, but this was not going to be a typical work day for Mr Gallegos.
Four hours into his shift as a radio technician he would be part of history, playing a pivotal role helping Neil Armstrong step onto the Moon and getting those unforgettable images of NASA's Apollo 11 mission back to Earth.
Around lunchtime in Australia on July 21, 1969 as Mr Armstrong uttered the immortal words, "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", it was Mr Gallegos behind the controls helping to transmit some of the most-watched images in human history.
Honeysuckle Creek was one of three tracking stations built by NASA around the world specifically for the Apollo manned Moon mission.
The others were in Madrid in Spain and Goldstone in California.
On the day of the Moon landing, Mr Gallegos had the crucial role of making sure the links between the tracking station at Honeysuckle Creek and the Apollo astronauts were maintained as they stepped onto the surface of the Moon.
At 27, the Brisbane-born former Royal Australian Navy technician was the "young pup" on duty that day.
"When I came on shift, it was on, so I thought, 'here we go'," he said.
Mr Gallegos said they were well trained and ready for the big moment.
"We just about wore the stuff out training for it," he said.
"When Armstrong stepped on the Moon, there wasn't really much for me to do except monitor things.
"At the time, the moment didn't really hit me, I was too busy making sure it was all bubbling away and listening to NASA getting all excited on the network."
But historian and author Andrew Tink said Mr Gallegos's role that day can't be underplayed.
"Once Armstrong and [Buzz] Aldrin stepped onto the surface of the Moon their communication, their life support systems, everything that kept them going had to be switched through Honeysuckle Creek," he said.
"I liken them to umbilical cords … absolutely crucial communication and life support equipment that allowed mission control to know how they were going."
These links to the astronauts' space suits came through Honeysuckle Creek and then onto NASA Mission Control in Houston, Texas.
"Kevin Gallegos was in effect running the switchboard really," Mr Tink said.
"It demanded a very quick, dexterous thinker, a person who was calm in a crisis, innovative, who could handle changing circumstances very quickly … and that's Kevin Gallegos, he did that.
"He is very modest about his own extraordinary efforts that day, doing a stupendous job when it really counted, when Armstrong stepped on the Moon."
Mr Gallegos was one of 80 people working at Honeysuckle Creek on that day 50 years ago.
Mr Tink, who has written a history of Honeysuckle Creek, said if it wasn't for the work of Mr Gallegos and others, there would have been no live television images of Neil Armstrong taking those momentous steps onto the Moon.
"Honeysuckle Creek and Goldstone were both receiving a downlink TV signal of Armstrong's movements from the Moon," he said.
"But unfortunately the technicians at Goldstone mucked up their equipment and the only picture that got through of broadcast quality was the one coming via Honeysuckle in Canberra.
"So it's due to Honeysuckle and Honeysuckle alone that Armstrong's first steps and first words were televised around the world to an audience of 600 million people."
'This was a seminal event'
Mr Gallegos, 78, recently retired to Hope Island on the northern Gold Coast and with the help of family has taken 50-year-old photographs and memorabilia out of storage for the first time to display in his "man cave".
"Now, I look back and think, 'oh geez, in the history of mankind, this was a seminal event'," he said.
"I was very proud to be a part of that team … it taught me some good stuff for later on about the way a team should work together.
"We worked in harmony, everyone was focussed on the job."
He said it stuns him that Australia failed to capitalise on its crucial involvement in the space race.
"They still haven't gone back to the Moon since my day," he said.
"We missed an opportunity there ... we should have done something.
"It's a bit shameful really, to think that we did what we did, this team of blokes, and now we're a footnote in history, but we didn't follow up."
Honeysuckle takes its place in history
The fear that the work of the technicians at Honeysuckle Creek was being written out of history, fired Andrew Tink's passion for telling the story of the little dish in the ACT.He blames, in part, the movie The Dish for distorting history.
The 2000 Australian comedy tells the story of the Parkes Radio Telescope in NSW and its role in relaying the live television images of that "one small step".
"The Parkes dish was not online at that time that Armstrong stepped on the Moon," Mr Tink said.
"The biggest single error, in my view, in the film The Dish — and it's a very big error — is the suggestion that it was the Parkes dish that brought live TV footage of Neil Armstrong's first step to the world.
"It was not, because it was Honeysuckle that did that.
"This is one of the greatest moments in all history, in my view, the moment that a human being first steps onto a celestial body.
"That moment will never happen again … and it was the little tracking station outside Canberra that captured that moment when the other dish that was supposed to be doing it, mucked up the equipment."
Honeysuckle Creek had a humble end after playing such a glorious role in space history.
The Honeysuckle dish was dismantled after the station closed in 1981 and was transferred to the nearby Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station.
"The little dish from Honeysuckle was rebuilt down there and remained in action doing space tracking until 2010 when it was retired due to metal fatigue," Mr Tink said.
"The dish is now stowed and will be preserved but the buildings [at Honeysuckle Creek] were eventually demolished because they were badly vandalised."
Mr Tink said while it was a sad end for the tracking station, Honeysuckle Creek can now take its place in the history of space exploration.
"A team of Australians did what even the Americans could not do at the absolutely climactic moment of the whole Apollo program," he said.
"The very best minds in the western world had been working on this project for a decade and at the critical moment, it was an Australian team that nailed the TV of the event and I just think that's something to be very proud of."
As the world marks the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, Mr Gallegos will travel to Canberra to celebrate the achievement with former colleagues.
"I haven't been back to any of the milestone celebrations," he said.
"I've always been too busy or too lazy, and I thought 'I'm definitely going to this one'."
Mr Gallegos said many of his former colleagues have passed away but he was looking forward to the chance to reminisce with those that return to Canberra.
"We'll meet up with all these oldies and tell a few yarns and a few fibs at the same time," he said."I've also found out that when you don't turn up, absence makes the heart grow fonder and suddenly, I'm a hero for some reason and I don't know why."
And in his typical modest and understated way, Mr Gallegos said they had much to celebrate.
"I thought we did quite well that day."
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