Tim the Yowie Man journeys back to the heart of Australia's space race history with behind-the-scenes footage of the iconic Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, the portal to a pivotal moment in humankind.
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00:00 2, 1, 0, all engines running.
00:05 It was here, at the former Honeysuckle Creek tracking station,
00:12 on Monday the 21st of July 1969,
00:15 that video tech, Ed Videovon Renoir,
00:19 flicked a switch that enabled over 600 million people worldwide
00:24 to see Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon.
00:29 OK Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.
00:33 There's not much to see here now,
00:35 with the tracking station decommissioned in the 1980s.
00:38 However, we still have reminders of that momentous day
00:42 via a series of videos that Ed, or Videovon,
00:47 as he was known to his work colleagues,
00:49 shot on his personal Super 8 camera.
00:52 He recorded segments in real time,
00:54 as well as from a replay of the telemetry tapes immediately afterwards.
00:58 Videovon's tapes went missing for a while,
01:00 but he managed to find them in storage in 2005,
01:04 and they tell a remarkable story of the day's events.
01:08 (MACHINE GUN FIRE)
01:15 From Neil Armstrong coming down the ladder,
01:18 about to make his first steps on the moon,
01:21 to the astronauts disposing of their rubbish bags
01:24 and their personal life support packs down the ladder.
01:28 (MACHINE GUN FIRE)
01:29 There went something.
01:32 It looked like a portable life support system.
01:35 He also managed to film some of the more candid moments of his colleagues
01:39 during what was an otherwise intense day at the office.
01:43 You can check out more of Videovon's remarkable videos
01:47 at honeysucklecreek.net,
01:49 a website created by Colin McKellar
01:52 as a tribute to the men and women who worked here
01:56 at the former Honeysuckle Creek tracking station.
02:00 (MUSIC)