Keith McCredden has provided the following photos:

L to R  Back Row.     Karl (Charlie) Raecke, Geof Day, Geof McDonald, Keith McCredden, Len Martyn.

Front Row.      Alan Rogers (C&W), Dr Clarke, Manager R.H. (Randy) Payne, Peter Beechy (C&W) Alex Griffiths.

Mrs Betty Griffiths,  Mrs Molly Raecke,  Mrs Dixie Payne,  Mrs Clarke,  Mrs Ann Rogers,  Mrs Rita Day.

3 Griffiths children.  3 Payne children and John Day.

                                                                        LIFE ON THE CRESCENT

                                                          (Nothing ever happens at Doonside)

Our address was:

Staff Cottage No. 8, OTC

Doonside Crescent, Doonside.

Our parents insisted that this was how we were to write it & write it we did! You didn’t argue with your parents in those days. We had the longest address in our respective classes! More than fifty years later it is still burned into my memory!  Why were we at this place in the middle of nowhere? Apparently, the houses were purpose-built for people like our Dad, a family man, who had been travelling many miles to get to work. Our parents paid rent, but as to how much, well they never discussed money & we would never be brazen enough to look at Dad’s pay envelope on which all of these details were written.

In this house we spent the most integral part of our lives. My brother & I loved it there. No houses were “islands”, none had protective fencing, nor was there a fear of the night & what it might bring. We felt safe in our little community, or as one man put it our: “space-aged” microcosm. Our house was to us a roomy, three bedroom, brick home, with an inside laundry & toilet! My school friends’ homes had outside toilets.

I was in disbelief when I heard that their toilets were emptied by men called: “night soil men”, not to mention the incredible stories that were attached to the aforementioned!

Opposite our home was a “common”, just a large section of grass (& bindis) on which there was a tennis court. Yes, a tennis court! (I have been reliably informed that Bringelly OTC had a swimming pool!) We played many a lack-lustre game on that much loved clay court, with only two ancient tennis balls between us & no ball boys or girls to fetch the balls that were lobbed over the high fences. By “us”, I mean in particular, the Simms & the two Woods families & of course, we two Ritchie kids. I recall having an in depth discussion about Margaret Court when she was in the finals in the Australian Open (I think); we all agreed, using our combined wisdom about the game, that she was always far too nervous & just wouldn’t be able to get over these nerves to beat whoever it was she was playing! She won.

We never had “strangers” play on our court, unless you include the Ladies Tennis Club of course, but they weren’t really serious players were they!   

The “Common” was also witness to home-made go-kart races (thanks to the boy we called The Professor-Michael Mahoney who was a genius go-kart maker) & to many a fabulous Cracker Night.  We would collect wood for weeks in anticipation & our Dads were able to buy a huge bag of crackers at work for each of us. Those nights saw the odd letter-box meet its demise with a “tuppenny bunger”; today’s kids didn’t invent this ridiculous prank! When the Cracker Night was held at Bringelly, we were a bit disappointed at first. I thought we would never arrive & it was so far out in the sticks! How wrong we were. It was truly fantastic. The bonfire was enormous! We could run around with our ration of crackers unsupervised, leaving our parents somewhere.  The OTC would put on a big fireworks display & at the end of the night we would have sticks in the embers loaded with bread or marshmallows. To my knowledge no child was harmed in these nights of frivolity!

There was never nothing happening at the OTC “cottages”.  Behind our house, & a mere 10 minute walk across the paddocks, was a very much alive Eastern Creek. I recall having a friend over one summer day. Off we went with our slab meat sandwiches &  bottle of made up cordial down to the creek for an adventure picnic. Once there, we found a nice little spot where the water was flowing quickly & where we could pretend we were making a little hideaway. We put the cordial into the cold water for later & when we were organized, ate & drank just like “The Famous Five”. The creek really was beautiful in our day;  the water was crystal clear & it was pure escapism with the water flowing noisily over rocks & around grassy banks, exposing little pieces of earth that we could pretend were our secret islands.

The “paddock” was an important part of life too. There were many cows wandering around in the “top” paddock & when I asked Dad about their presence, he said in a fairly flat tone that the butcher paid to have them graze there. I had an innate sense of foreboding, so I cut that conversation short. Apart from the “cows” there was an old horse for which we felt very sorry. She looked ancient & behaved like an unloved, unwanted old girl. For this reason we would feed her any left over bread, apples, carrots & so on, over the barbed wire fence. We declared her name to be Sally, & no, I don’t know why. All my family fed her without a problem: “Hold your hand flat so she can’t bite you.” I did! What they didn’t tell me was that one should never turn one’s back on an old horse, or maybe that should be ANY horse. She bit my back & literally pushed me sprawling several feet across the “house” paddock; of course I howled & she was not my friend anymore! I suffered for quite some time with the bruising. Do I have a fear of horses? OF COURSE I DO!!

It was the paddock that saw some of the Crescent’s teenagers practise their driving “skills”. My brother worked a milk run before school & always, during the holidays, found some sort of job to earn money, so he had the “wheels”: an FJ or is that an FX Holden, with no floor. He used to take me to school in it & the girls at school drooled over him & his car. Anyway, I had a go at driving it in the paddock. Strangely, I don’t have a fear of cars, but I should have, because I “drove” it straight down a slope towards a muddy ditch; that would have been fine, except that there was a huge tree trunk before the ditch & I managed to “hang” the car up on the log & it took the boys quite a while to lever the old girl off. I drive quite well today…I think.

The paddock was also a “greenie’s” dream. Sometimes Dad would walk across the paddock to or from work, depending whether Mum needed the car. When Dad walked home from night shift in colder weather, he would often collect mushrooms. They were huge, & Mum or Dad would put them straight into the buttered frying pan for breakfast. They loved them. They encouraged us to try the upside-down, brown things, but for me, it was all about the cow poo!

On a more ridiculous note, the paddock was also a protector of “sinners”. I always thought Mum was a nagger about cleaning my room. One afternoon, I was outside the back door & could hear her going on about something I hadn’t done; I couldn’t hold it back anymore, “ I just wish she’d shut up!” I mumbled under my breath. Well, all hell broke loose. Mum had heard the word “shut up” & came flying out of the house with the feather duster yelling threatening things at me. I bolted, bare-footed, straight down to the paddock & hid in the grass, crying (I did a lot of that). I knew that Dad would be home from work at 3 o’clock & that he would protect me from a wallop. Well, after an eternity, I peeked over the top of the grass & that’s when I saw Dad coming towards me. I sobbed what had happened & hid behind him all the way back up to the house, safe from Mum’s ire…..for the moment.  In retrospect, I am thinking that I should have been more scared of snakes, but my fear of Mum’s retribution would have been, shall we say, uppermost in my 11 year old mind.  

Bungarribee House was a part of Doonside’s, & therefore the OTC’s history & was taught to us in 3^rd or 4^th class at Doonside Primary School. I was so excited & told our teacher that we lived near it & that we went there a lot. Because I was so shy & rarely spoke, I doubt that she even heard me; today I can say, “Her loss!” My brother & the boys would go to the house & I would tag along, but I couldn’t climb to the top of the building, that we knew as the “Barn”, to get inside. I was really jealous that they could see what was inside & I couldn’t! They said that there was just paper & stuff. When I asked Dad, he said that the OTC stored all their old, unwanted paper work there. That was an anti-climax!! I remember that there were thick bars on the windows of what looked like cells on the outer side of the barn, but we worked out that they might have been where they kept horses. Nearby, was what must have been the building where all the horse work was done. There were harnesses, horseshoes, nails for the horses’ hooves & other farrier equipment. It was fantastic! We never, never took anything from this building, leaving it all there for our next visit……

There was rumoured to be an escape tunnel leading from the House to the twin Oleander trees in the paddock; well naturally we looked for it. We started at the twin trees where we found bricks & debris, but I think we needed proper shovels, not spoons, & an archaeological team to find this tunnel…if it did exist!

I have since found out that there was indeed a tunnel, so I am now wishing that we had persevered.

Near the Barn was an enormous fig tree, with big spaces between the old roots so you could hide from each other, but even better, there were strange marks in the tree; these marks, we decided, were the whip marks from all those poor convicts being punished. I hope we were wrong.

With any old building comes a story of some kind involving ghosts & haunting. My Dad told us that when one OTC worker was walking home after night shift, he saw an apparition sitting on a post. That was enough for us to believe; after all, this was an adult who saw the ghost! We therefore never went there at night….ah, no, that’s not quite true. There was a dare amongst us kids to go up there one night; so with a couple of flashlights, we set out. Looking back, I have no idea how we even escaped from our homes undetected so late at night, around 9 or 10 p.m. The boys went ahead of my OTC friend & me, then came bolting out of the darkness, flashlights darting all over the paddocks as they fled from the Barn yelling out some rubbish story about ghosts, so my friend & me ran home. The stunt the boys had pulled became fodder with which to tease us for a while, until the next “event” they dreamed up.

I would be less than truthful if I didn’t admit that there were some downsides to living in this beautiful little oasis. Walking to school in Winter was “bracing”. By the time I arrived at school, I honestly had icy crystals on my poor legs; those were the days of box-pleat winter tunics, no trousers then. Walking home in Summer was just as horrendous. I think now as I peer back & look at the reality of the times, I can see that we never really shared our life at the Crescent with school friends. The distance from the centre of Doonside was an obvious problem; a car was a necessity & my friends’ parents did not possess any such transport. The day I had that friend over for the “picnic” at the creek Dad had the car at work so I had to walk to her place to get her, walk with her back to the Crescent, then walk her home & walk back home alone. That was the only time I ever had a friend over.

My friends lived in “housing commission” homes or what Mum & Dad called “war service” homes. These names meant nothing to me then. I just knew that when I visited them, their parents were usually reluctant to have me, & I could see that their houses were quite small & that the décor was not what my Mum had. I don’t ever remember seeing my girlfriends as lesser kids, in fact they were highly intelligent & I felt a bit inferior. The ultra smart Michael Knight was in our class, leaving us at the end of Year 11 for a private school. There were never discussions about “class” at our place so there was no false judgement. Mind you I was put in my place one day when a friend told me that when I first arrived in  3^rd  class, she thought I was a “native”!! Our years in New Guinea had given me a bit of a tan apparently.

There are so many stories both good & bad, along with brilliant memories attached to Doonside; many of them may seem quite trivial, yet when it is you who have experienced them, they take on a vastly different & more meaningful relevance to your life. I expect that all of us could write a book about our experiences, but sometimes you just can’t do justice to your own life.

Lorraine Thomas  (nee Ritchie)

In Nov 1963, almost 50 years ago, the first undersea phone cable was opened. It was operated by Australia’s sole international carrier, OTC (Overseas Telecommunications Commission), and provided circuits to New Zealand, Fiji, US, Canada and the UK (primarily). It replaced the days of HF radio communications and was the first cable to allow reliable and clear communications at a global level for voice, data and telex and really brought Australia into the connected world of telecommunications. The delivery of international calls via international satellite was still a decade away.

Prior to the introduction of the Compac Cable Australians were reliant upon a HF radio schedule against which they would book a call through an Assistance Operator employed by the Postmaster General’s Department (PMG) located in the GPO in Sydney. That means that if you, say, wanted to call a friend or relative or business associate in another country you would have to ring the operator and ask for a call to be placed at a particular time. The Australian operator would ring the Assistance Operator in that other country and schedule the call with the person or number that you wanted to call. The Australian operator would call you back at the appointed time to connect you to the person or number that you wanted overseas. If atmospheric conditions were bad, the quality of the call could be affected and may even cause communications to be impossible.

As a trading nation, the Compac cable set the scene for our current place in the world and business growth boomed on its introduction. The Compac Cable was a major step forward in communications significantly changing the way in which Australians communicated and operated their businesses. It brought Australia closer to the international community and gave Australian greater opportunity to participate in the global community.

The Overseas Telecommunications Veterans Association (OTVA) is made up of staff (like myself) that were either at the opening or worked on keeping the cable operational and can assist in recounting information or experiences during that period of historical significance to Australia and to Australians.

The Compac cable has been replaced and is no longer in operation, superseded by modern fibre optic cable. Compac was a coaxial cable and supported 80 telephone channels.

Conference call between the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand for the opening of the Australia / New Zealand section of the Compac cable

Opening of the COMPAC Cable, audio, ABC Broadcast on 3rd Dec 1963  Courtesy of Christopher Ross.

Opening of SEACOM Cable, audio, ABC Broadcast on 30th March 1967  Courtesy of Christopher Ross.

 by

Guntis („Gus”) Berzins

Background

As part of its space programme the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1963 established a Tracking Station on Brown Range, about 10 km outside Carnarvon.  Subsequently, the USA embarked on Project Apollo, the project to put a man on the moon, and great emphasis was then placed on security, including security and reliability of communications.

With communications via satellite becoming technically feasible, and in order to enhance security, NASA developed a plan to connect its principal overseas tracking stations via satellite communications links with the various control centres in the USA.  To implement this plan NASA intended to let a contract for the provision and operation of the satellites, earth stations and all other necessary facilities to the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), an entity established by the US Government in 1962 for developing satellite communications.   The plan envisaged the establishment in twelve months from October 1965 of three satellite earth stations in the USA (Brewster Flat, Washington State, Andover, Maine and Hawaii) and at three non-US locations – Ascension Island and the Canary Islands in the Atlantic and Carnarvon in Western Australia.   However, OTC(A), as Australia’s international telecommunications operator and Cable and Wireless as the telecommunications operator for the U.K. overseas territories (including Ascension Island) made it clear that under their national telecommunications laws Comsat would not be permitted to establish and operate commercial telecommunications facilities in their territories and insisted that they should be the operators of the planned earth stations.  Telefonica of Spain, as the responsible operator for Spanish territories later joined this stance[1].

OTC(A) thereby took on the responsibility of providing an earth station in Carnarvon, to be ready for service by October 1966.  Given this very short time scale, and since Comsat had already developed a specification for a transportable earth station including a folded cassagrain horn („sugar scoop”) antenna, OTC(A) essentially specified a similar station and let the contract to the same company as Comsat – Northrop Page Communications Corp.  This was to be Australia’s first satellite communications earth station; the first of many.

To provide the satellites for the system required by NASA, Comsat had negotiated an agreement with Hughes Aircraft Company for the development and construction of four satellites, based on the successful experimental „ Early Bird” satellite (later renamed „ Intelsat I”), which had allowed early tests of satellite communications over the Atlantic, between the USA, UK, France and Germany.   These were drum shaped satellites, with the drum covered with solar cells and the communications antenna projecting from one end.  Since the antenna radiated a doughnut shaped beam, the satellite had to be correctly orientated toward the earth for maximum strength signals and this stability was achieved by the gyroscopic effect of spinning the satellite.  The satellites were to be place in a geostationary orbit, i.e. an orbit about 36,000 km above the earth in which they essentially appeared to be stationary above the same point on the equator.

Although Comsat had negotiated the agreement for these satellites, they proposed that ownership and operation of the satellites be taken over by the „Intenational Telecommunications Satellite Organisation” (Intelsat), an intergovernmental organisation established in 1964 to provide international telecommunications by satellite.   Although the organisations was established by governments, the shareholders (so called „ Signatories”) were in most cases the countries’ telecommunication entities. Comsat was the US Signatory as well as the Manager for the organisation whilst OTC(A) was Australia’s signatory.  Intelsat took over responsibility for the satellites and they were duly named Intelsat II, with the initial satellite to be launched for Pacific service.

Preparing the Carnarvon Earth Station for Service

In February 1966, as a relatively young engineer, I was appointed to the position of  „Senior Engineer” in OTC(A)’s Planning Department to be part of the team planning the establishment of the Carnarvon Earth Station.  This appointment put me into the then very new field of satellite communications, which was personally both a most interesting and challenging job.  As a result during 1966 I attended meetings in London, Washington and Madrid, as well as Sydney, in which the organisations owning the earth stations for the NASA communications network agreed on various aspects of operating and maintaining the network.   Whilst in Washington I also visited Page Communications, to observe and discuss progress in construction of the earth station equipment.

To prepare for operating the earth station, it was necessary to select staff who would man the station as well as provide training courses for them, since satellite communications was a totally new field for OTC(A) and it did not have any staff with experience in this field.  Consequently we not only selected staff from our various other stations, but also tried to find technicians from outside OTC(A) who had some experience in this field.

In September 1966 OTC(A) transferred me to their Operations Branch and I was designated to be the on-site engineer responsible for acceptance testing of the Carnarvon Earth Station, i.e. testing to ensure that Page Communications had met the defined specifications, and in general for commissioning the earth station to be ready for service.  In carrying out these duties I was in Carnarvon from the 29 September 1966 until 9 February 1967 and was assisted by Donald (Don) Kennedy, who was an Engineer Grade II at the time and stayed in Carnarvon about the same length of time.  He now lives in the UK.

The Station Manager of the OTC(A) Carnarvon Earth Station at the time it was established was Leo Mahoney, a worldly wise personality with extensive experience and technical knowledge, who was assisted by the Deputy Station Manager Jack Gray a good humoured man with long technical experience.  The technicians on the station had been selected to be young and capable of absorbing this new technology and comprised Terry Etherington, Jim Harte, Roy Hunt, Terry Nipperess, Al Pilgrim and Tony Wallbridge, and Senior Plant Officer Dave Reynolds.

At the time I arrived in Carnarvon most of the equipment was in place and the construction was substantially complete and the emphasis was on getting the equipment and the whole station operating.   The main building and the power house had been costructed, the transportable vans were in place, the folded cassegrain antenna had been constructed and the staff houses were close to completion.  In addition a „boresight tower” had been erected in a field on the far side of the Gascoyne, some kilometers from the earth station, sited precisely north.  The boresight transmitted a signal, which simulated the tracking signal from the satellite.

The earth station equipment, although not necessarily state-of-the-art in all aspects, nevertheless in some areas was quite demanding and station staff had to be quite proficient to understand how the equipment functioned, how to maintain it and how to repair it when it failed.  Most of the equipment was located in three transportable vans – Operations, Maintenance and Power van provided by Page Commnications. The main receiver was a parametric amplifier, certainly a state-of-the-art device at the time whose operation depended on being cooled to 17⁰ K by a special gaseous helium refrigeration system to achieve the requisite sensitivity.   For transmitting the station had two power amplifiers that used water cooled klystrons and could deliver 12 KW of RF power.  The folded cassegrain antenna had an aperture of about 13 metres square and consisted of two reflector surfaces, a parabola and hyperbola, which required very precise alignment to achieve the design antenna performance. The antenna was on a mount, which moved in azimuth and elevation („az-el mount”) and was driven by a hydraulic control system.  It could be steered in three modes – by following a tracking signal from the satellite, by „programme tracking” using data received by telex from Comsat and recorded on punched paper tape,  or thirdly, purely manually by moving a joystick on the control panel.  The tracking system was fast and powerful and could turn the 25 ton antenna at a speed of 5⁰ per second and the effect of using the joystick to simultaneously turn the antenna horizontally and raise it in elevation gave the appearance of the antenna screwing into the sky.  Needless to say such an extreme maneouvre was not required to track geostationary satellites and was simply a demonstration of the antennas capability, and sometimes resulted in blown power fuses.  The earth station was planned to provide seven voice/data circuits to the USA, one of which was subdivided to give three telegraph circuits.  In addition, there was a separate orderwire circuit. To pass the communications and tracking, telemetry and command signals to and from the NASA Tracking Station at Carnarvon, the earth station was connected to it by means of duplicate telephone cables laid on Browns Range.   The station was connected to the Carnarvon town power supply, but it also had two emergency power systems in the event of problems with the town supply.   The whole earth station, including equipment, buildings and staff housing had cost OTC(A) about $3 million.

During October and November 1966 the Page Communications engineers from the USA, with the assistance of the station staff were getting the equipment operational and lining it up.  However, there were many difficulties – with the antenna tracking system, with the power amplifiers (transmitters), the parametric ampliefiers and the emergency power system.  A note of humour was added by the Post Office in Sydney, who readdressed our mail to the „OTC Satellite Faith Station”, an address we thought aptly captured the mood during this period.

Launch of Intelsat II-F1 satellite

The Intelsat II-F1 satellite, which was due to be placed above the Pacific Ocean and used for Carnarvon – USA communication, was launched on 26 October 1966.  In a letter dated 30 October I wrote: „The construction of our station is considerably behind time but the Americans are trying hard to more or less get it ready for service.  For the first two days after the satellite launch we tried to receive the satellite signals but without success, but on Saturday (29 October 1966) we finally received the signals and everyone was very elated”.  My diary entry for 29 October reads: „Satellite first acquired between 1130am and 1200 am” (probably should have read „1200pm”).

Communications satellites are positioned in a circular geostationary orbit by having the launch rocket initially place them in a long elliptical orbit, called the transfer orbit, whose apogee (highest point) is at the same height as the geostationary orbit.  Following orbital calculations and after some time in the transfer orbit, a small solid fuel rocket motor built into the satellite called, the „apogee kick motor” is fired when the satellite is at its apogee to place it in the circular geostationary orbit.

Unfortunately, when the apogee kick motor was fired on Intelsat II-F1, the motor nozzle blew off and the satellite remained in an orbit similar to the transfer orbit.  So, although the communications functions in the satellite worked perfectly, it was useless for its intended purpose as it was not stationary above the Pacific, as required, but rather precessed around the earth in its elliptical orbit.  From our viewpoint, failure of the satellite was probably fortunate, as we kept having various difficulties with the earth station and in reality it was far from being operational.   Nevertheless the satellite, even in its errant orbit, could be used on an intermittent basis for testing the earth station.

My diary entries record the following significant events:

12 Nov. 1966: „Acquired satellite and for the first time looped signals through it, using a power of about 4KW.  This occurred around 0400 GMT”.

13 Nov. 1966: „ Established first contact between Carnarvon and an overseas station (Hawaii) at 22.21 GMT (12th Nov.)  Initial contact was by o/w (voice) but later communications carriers were also transmitted and received.  Antenna initally tracked successfully on autotrack but later autotrack suddenly failed and manual tracking was required”.

Historic Carnarvon – Goonhilly TV transmission – 25 November 1966

Transmission of TV by satellite had been demonstrated in the early 1960’s across the Atlantic via the Telstar satellite and across the Pacific in 1964 between Japan and USA with the Relay satellite. OTC(A) had designated Cyril Vahtrick, an engineer by profession and one of its senior management staff, to examine and lead the development of satellite communications by the organisation.  As a result of the overseas demonstrations he recognised the public importance and impact of making a TV transmission between Australia and overseas. He also recognised that the impending launch of the Intelsat II-F1 satellite provided an opportunity to attempt a TV link between Australia and the UK, using the Carnarvon earth station[2].

It was intended to establish the Australia-UK link-up by transmitting the TV signals to the Brewster Flat earth station in the USA, carrying the signals terrestrially across the USA and using a trans-Atlantic satellite link to reach the UK.  This had the added complication that the originated TV signal in Carnarvon would have to be the US NTSC 525 line standard.

Some time before the satellite launch date, a team of ABC engineers arrived in Carnarvon and together with the Page on-site engineers we worked out the necessary arrangements to hook up the ABC outside broadcasting equipment with the earth station.  Presumably via OTC(A) Head office we also agreed on the detailed engineering arrangements with Goonhilly.   Consequently,  five days after the satellite was launched, on 31 October 1966 two OTC(A) engineers – Jim Robertson and Ken Howe – arrived in Carnarvon from Head Office in Sydney together with the necessary additional video equipment .  However, this was also the day when the apogee motor was fired on the satellite to place it into geostationary orbit. Unfortunately,  the motor failed and the satellite remained in a highly elliptical orbit.

Nevertheless, the next day, according to my diary, the ABC proceeded to set up their outside broadcasting equipment, which had come by road from Perth.  To link-up with Goonhilly, one of the upconverter/downconverter sets, of which the earth station had two, had to be retuned to the common frequencies agreed for the transmission, leaving the other set available for testing with the USA.   Even though the satellite was not available, it was possible to loop the transmit and receive directions of the earth station and demonstrate that the TV transmission worked back-to-back.  In my diary I recorded: „surprisingly good results”.

News of the possible TV transmissions was known in Carnarvon and there was a general air of expectancy and excitement. However, after some days, recognising that the TV transmission was put back for an indefinite time, the ABC people departed and the town was again its usual quiet.

After some days the orbit of the errant satellite had been recalculated and tests confirmed that communications wise it operated satisfactorily.  Furthermore, its new but unplanned orbit was such that until 26 November, for some hours each day, it would be visible from both Carnarvon and Goonhilly, the earth station in the UK, after which there would be no mutual visibility for a lengthy period.  Consequently OTC(A) Head Office again considered that the TV link-up with Goonhilly should be attempted. Calculations indicated that such a transmission would be feasible towards the UK, because Goonhilly had a large antenna, which could easily receive the TV transmission from the satellite, but would be marginal from the UK towards Carnarvon, because its antenna was considerably smaller and hence the received signals would be weaker.

All would have been well but the earth station continued to experience one problem after another and after taking stock of the situation I telexed OTC(A) Head Office on 21 November recommending „that no engineering tests be performed with Goonhilly during this mutual visibility period” only to receive a reply the next morning „TV transmission Carnarvon – Goonhilly scheduled for 25 November”.  So much for recommendations!  Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of Page engineers and the station staff, the earth station was made more or less operational in the next days and preparatory testing for the TV transmissions commenced at 14.00 local time on 23 November, with a loop TV transmission through the satellite.    As predicted by calculations, the picture quality (as recorded in my diary) was „very noisy”.

The next day we tested with Goonhilly, exchanging TV test patterns and pictures from 0530 to 0700 UTC (13.30 to 15.00 local) and my diary says: „Received picture very noisy, but Goonhilly receives good picture”.   The testing with Goonhilly was coordinated via a telephone circuit, which had been set up using the Compac submarine cable.

On the day of the actual broadcasts, 25 November 1966, there was a general air of expectancy and excitement, both at the earth station and in Carnarvon itself.  There were ABC and Channel 7 vehicles and staff on the earth station and the ABC had set up a temporary microwave link for relaying signals between the earth station and the town.   Although initially arrangements for the broadcasts had been only with the ABC, at some stage Channel 7 indicated that they wished to be involved.  The station staff had equipped one of the station’s rooms with TV monitors for viewing the broadcasts by VIPs, station staff and wives.

For the transmissions we had agreed that Don Kennedy would man the control panel and primarily ensure correct pointing of the antenna, whilst I was in the rear of the Operations van, together with a number of other OTC(A), Page and ABC staff observing the TV quality on the monitor and liasing with Goonhilly over the coordination circuit.  The received signal was continually being monitored in the Carnarvon station, so that even whilst transmitting towards Goonhilly, we were receiving and monitoring the video signal as looped through the satellite and we could see when there was a deterioration in the quality, principally due to the antenna not tracking the satellite precisely.

At the UK end, the broadcasts to and from the ABC were passed from Goonhilly

to the BBC studios, whilst the broadcasts to and from Channel 7 to the ITV studios.  There were a total of four broadcasts, i.e. each pair of organisations (ABC – BBC and Channel 7 – ITV) sent and received broadcasts from the other.

The ABC broadcast consisted of interviews of a group of British staff who worked at the NASA Tracking Station in Carnarvon. They spoke to their relatives in a BBC studio in London and described their lives and some showed their children to the great delight of their relatives in London. The interviews took place on the main street in Carnarvon and the ABC also showed scenes of Carnarvon and people describing life in the town.  The broadcast was in real-time, spontaneous and interesting, and is described in detail in a recently published book.[3]   In the return broadcast towards Australia, the BBC showed the eminent scientist Sir Bernard Lovell, who talked about the future uses of space for various purposes, essentially a „talking heads” broadcast.  Compared to the lively ABC broadcast, I felt the BBC could have prepared something more interesting for this important occasion.

I believe that following the ABC broadcast to the BBC, Channel 7 sent a broadcast to the ITV in the UK, but I have no information or recollection of the content.  Similarly, following the BBC broadcast to Australia, the ITV broadcast to Channel 7 and there is a photograph of a British newspaper headline, which is probably one of the items they showed, and an ITV presenter.

According to my diary Goonhilly initially received test pictures from Carnarvon at 0400 UTC (12.00 local), however, I could not reconstitute the exact sequence of the actual broadcasts.  The agreed schedule (according to my diary) had the BBC transmitting for 15 minutes towards Australia at 0545 UTC (followed by the ITV) and the ABC subsequently transmitting towards the UK for 15 minutes starting 0630 UTC (14.30 local), followed by Channel 7.  Newspaper reports indicate that the ABC broadcast indeed started at about 0630 UTC (14.30 local), but according to a private letter of mine describing the day, the transmission towards Australia followed that to the UK, rather than preceded it.

According to my diary the first programme was at 0515 UTC (13.15 local), although it is not clear which programme this was.  However, the diary also illustrates just how fortunate we were regarding satisfactory operation of the station.  I have recorded that at 0455 UTC (i.e. 20 minutes before the first broadcast) „paramp requires readjustment and antenna lowered for this purpose”.  A subsequent entry states: „At about 0600 UTC autotracking starts to give error as indicated by picture variations and switched to programme track with 1 minute data.  After that switched a number of times from one type to the other”.  Don Kennedy recalls: „I remember that we
did have trouble with the autotracking system, and did switch to program
track, even manual at times”.[4]

However, the end result, as I have recorded, was that „Goonhilly reports very good pictures”,  resulting in a highly satisfactory and interesting broadcast in the Australia – UK direction.   As predicted by calculations, due to the relatively smaller size of the Carnarvon earth station antenna, the video signal received in Carnarvon was such that the picture could be made out but in reality was quite marginal and noisy and was not used by the ABC or Channel 7.

I have recorded that „after the satisfactory both way transmissions between Carnarvon and Goonhilly, there was great elation in Carnarvon town and the mayor Wilson Tuckey, shouted free beer to all the people involved in one of the four hotels which he owns”.   There were quite a few beers downed that evening.

Completion of the Earth Station

During December 1966 work continued to make the earth station operational and Page Communications engineers gradually demonstrated satisfactory operation of various pieces of equipment, although we continued to have problems. Don Kennedy recalls: „I also remember that we had an azimuth gearbox fail fairly close to
going operational, and the servo system really didn’t like operating on
one gearbox without the antibacklash system of two gearboxes. Much
oscillation, and impossible for the antenna to track a satellite.”.[5]

A particular difficulty was to demonstrate that the receive sensitivity of the station (i.e. antenna gain/system noise temperature or G/T) met the specified figure of 31.7 dB.   It had been intended to measure the antenna gain using the calibrated signal transmitted from the boresight tower, but this proved unsatisfactory, as the boresight tower was not nearly high enough and the earth station received not only the direct signals from the boresight, but also interfering signals reflected from the ground.  At overseas earth stations there were mountains nearby on which to place boresites, but this was not the case at Carnarvon and in the flat countryside it was just not feasible to build a tower high enough to avoid ground reflections.  The accepted method of measuring earth station G/T at the time was to use the radio noise produced by the star Cassiopeia A, which is the strongest radio star in the sky.  However, this method was only suitable for earth stations with large antennas, such as Goonhilly, but the radio noise from the star was too weak to give an accurate result for a smaller antenna such as Carnarvon.  This question was not settled until much later. Don Kennedy recalls: „As far as measuring the G/T of the antenna, that was difficult. Greg Nichols (an OTC(A) engineer) and the CSIRO did a lot to fix the feed frequency response, which was very bad in the low end of the frequency band, and measure the G/T”.[6]

As the next Intelsat II satellite for the Pacific was due for launch 11 January,1967,  just before Christmas 1966 Head Office indicated that OTC(A) wished to take occupancy of the earth station provided Page Communications demonstrated satisfactory 24 hour operation.  Page attempted to demonstrate this on 22 and 23 December, but there was a dispute about the result as at one stage the tracking system became unstable.   After a break for Christmas there was further remedial work on the equipment and after consultations with Head Office on 5 January 1967 I handed Page engineer Dave Williams an inspection certificate stating that the earth station was ready for beneficial occupancy by OTC(A).

Intelsat II-F2 was indeed launched on 11 January 1967 and the apogee motor was fired two days later to place it into geostationary orbit, this time successfully.   However, the satellite still had to be drifted to its final position in the orbit, and it only became visible to Carnarvon and we started to use it on 1 February.  Nevertheless, apparently using the errant Intelsat II-F1, in January we started to work with our corresponding earth station in the USA, Brewster Flat, to test and line-up the circuits as part of the overall communications system required by NASA.

Cyclone „Elsie”

An interesting interlude during January was provided by cyclone „Elsie”.  As happens during this time of year, a cyclone, christened „Elsie”, developed off the NW coast of WA and moved slowly south offshore along the coastline and as usual, the main question was when and where would it suddenly turn inland and make landfall.  The meteorological bureau in Perth kept us up to date with forecasts and after some days it was apparent that „Elsie” may come as far south as Carnarvon.  Consequently on 19 January Leo Mahoney and I decided to close the earth station and batten it down in preparation for the cyclone.  This involved removing all loose building material, which might fly in the wind, tying down three huts near the station and finally tying down the antenna.  This was an interesting process and involved securing the antenna with heavy steel hawsers to 12 concrete blocks set in the ground around the antenna.  Once secured, the brakes were released to avoid straining them, and the antenna swung slightly, held only by the hawsers.  The antenna structure was designed to withstand cyclonic winds.

It was two more days before the effect of the cyclone was felt and it passed some 80 miles north of Carnarvon, nevertheless wind speeds reached about 60 – 70 mph at the station and there was torrential rain.  In 24 hours the Gascoyne river rose from a dry river bed to a wide river full to the banks with brown water.  There was no significant damage to the earth station and the antenna cyclone tie-down arrangement had been proven, but in some of the newly painted parts of the antenna the paint had peeled off.  Obviously, shoddy workmanship.

Although the earth station survived virtually unscathed, there was considerable cyclone damage to the banana plantations around Carnarvon, and significant flood damage.  The road south of Carnarvon was cut off at the Wooramel River, where the bridge was washed out and after some days a flying fox was set up to ferry material across.  Some of the American engineers from Page Communications drove out there one Sunday and reported back that „those Australians are certainly interesting people: they transported one sack of potatoes across on the flying fox, and the rest were cases and cases of beer”.

Commencement of operation

Everything was coming together fast. Around 1 February we started 24 hour manning of the earth station. Finally, I have recorded in my diary: „Carnarvon in service 1200G (20.00 local) 4th February (1967)”.

For about the next week there was a period of intense testing and lining up with the USA and when that concluded, my responsibility at the earth station was finished.  On 10 February, together with my wife Laima we drove the 1000 km back to Perth to return one of the leased cars we had during the commisioning, and subsequently returned to OTC(A) Head Office in Sydney.   Don Kennedy returned to Sydney by air about the same time. The station was left in the capable hands of Station Manager Leo Mahoney, Deputy Manager Jack Gray and the station staff.  It had been a 3 ½ month period in my professional career that was interesting, challenging and unforgetable.

Some personal reflections

My wife Laima and I were „city folk” and life in a small isolated town such a Carnarvon was a new experience for us, particularly as we were not even living in Carnarvon itself but on an isolated sandy ridge some kilometers from town.  After work we usually had dinner in one of the pubs with the Station Manager Leo Mahoney and then had a few beers.  It felt rather isolated and lonely. Some evenings, for entertainment, at sunset we would get into the car and drive some distance along the road to Geraldton seeing only saltbush, herds of kangaroos or the occasional emu.  At that time Carnarvon did not even have TV, just an indoor and an outdoor cinema, and, as I wrote in a letter: „some of the films are so old, that I was probably not even allowed to go to the pictures when they were produced.”

Laima was a professional librarian, so to pass the time, she occasionally went to the local library and helped the librarian Mrs. Dupress with some tasks.  Mrs. Dupress was an interesting personality who sometimes reminisced how she had „gone East” to Sydney in 1928, describing it before the building of the Harbour Bridge.

I had a friend living in Perth at the time and with Christmas 1966 aproaching, in a telephone conversation I half jokingly suggested to him that he visit us for a few days. To my surprise, he took up my suggestion and some days after Christmas he drove the 1000 km from Perth together with a friend and his girlfriend. They stayed with us for some days and we spent the time fishing or on the beach and drinking beer.   It was nice to see a personal friend.

Not far from the earth station, at the junction of the roads to Geraldton and Carnarvon, there was a „Neptune” petrol station, with a restaurant that was regarded by the station staff to be the best in Carnarvon.  My wife and I had only been married in January 1966, so as we were in Carnarvon for our first wedding anniversary, naturally, the choice for this important occasion was the „Neptune” pertrol station restaurant.    The restaurant had a juke box offering mostly country and western music, but there were two records of melodies popular at the time –  “Edelweiss” and “Laras theme” from the film „ Dr. Zhivago”. Hearing these melodies still brings back memories of Carnarvon and the „Neptune” service station.

This was certainly a period in our lives that left a lifelong impression!

Photographs

Photographs can be found at the following OTVA link: Establishing Carnarvon ES gallery

Guntis Berzins – biography

Born in Riga, Latvia in 1938.  Family fled to Germany during World War 2 in 1944 to avoid Soviet occupation of Latvia and, after living in refugee camps in Germany, family emigrated to Australia in 1949.   Attended schools in refugee camps and subsequently in Australia in Bathurst, Parkes and Sydney. Studied at the University of NSW in Sydney, receiving B.Eng. degree in 1960 and M.Eng.Sc degree in 1967, both with specialisation in telecommunications.  1960 to 1979 with OTC(A) in various posts concerned with planning and operation of submarine cables, satellite earth stations and maritime radio stations. With Dept. of Posts and Telecommunications, as Deputy Director, in 1980 preparing specifications for Australian national satellite system (Aussat).  Moved to London, UK in 1980 and worked until 1993 with the International Maritime Satellite Organisation (Inmarsat) in various positions, in the latter years as General Manager responsible for developing satellite communications for aviation.  Moved to Latvia in 1993, initially as Director, Department of Communications in the Ministry of Transport and from 1994 to 2002 as Board member and State representative for telecommunications organisation “Lattelekom”. Elected to the Latvian Saeima (parliament) from the “New Era” party in 2002 and served as deputy until 2006, and again from 2009 to 2010, during the latter period as Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee.

Married, wife Laima, and four grown up sons.  Now living in Riga, Latvia

Info from Kim Hargreaves (Joan’s proud daughter):

Joan Sullivan was a €10 pom who joined OTC in Spring St approx 1953/54 and retired 1985.

From Spring St she went to Martin Place, Paddington, Broadway & back to Paddington where she retired. Attached are 2 photos taken today with her grandchildren and another last week on her 87th birthday.

Up until today we were trying to work out if we could get her to the reunion but not possible today at my bother-in-laws fathers funeral was hard enough. My sisters and I thank you for taking the time and effort to include mum in this reunion and wish you and all the vets a wonderful time celebrating.

Thankyou again and all the very best wishes to you all – warm regards – Jackie Salvador, Julie Robinson & Kim Hargreaves.

From Laurie McIlree:

Hi Peter,

The attached website contains a photograph of a cable station on Fanning Island and I am wondering if anyone can tell me if it resembles the original cable station there or a building later on as the site does make mention of cable station staff working on the island.

http://www.janeresture.com/kiribati_line/fanning.htm

My daughter (google, Annie Frances) who does entertaining on passenger ships has visited Fanning Island and has been unable to find out any one who is aware of the old cable station building and I was hoping on her next visit this photograph may jog a memory.

Thanks

Regards

Laurie

Plays to history at Carnarvon.

NBN Co has decided to build a satellite ground station near a former tracking station that was involved in NASA’s Apollo Moon project.

The Shire of Carnarvon Council has approved negotiations for the sale of land adjacent to the former Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) satellite earth station.

The station provided mostly communications support for NASA’s own tracking station, located about five kilometres away.

Construction on the NBN Co satellite ground station is due to begin next year.

“The new NBN ground station is set to give Carnarvon an economic boost, which is great news for the area and an important initiative that has actively been pursued by Council staff,” Carnarvon Shire President, Karl Brandenburg, said.

The Carnarvon site is one of three chosen in Western Australia to host NBN ground facilities.

A further two ground stations are to be built at Moonyoonooka, about 13 kilometres east of Geraldton, and at Binduli, which is 11 kilometres southwest of Kalgoorlie.

All three locations were known to be under negotiation for several months.

The regional investments by NBN Co were welcomed by the respective councils.

NBN Co will have a total of ten ground stations supporting its satellite service. Viasat won a $280 million contract to build the facilities.

Peter Burgess and Bruce Boler told Robert Brand that they recalled cable repeters being buried behind the station. If this is true it might be a good idea to approach Telstra to retrieve these items which may be of historical significance so that they can be displayed in the Powerhouse or Telstra Museums.

Any ideas?

THE SECRET SUBMARINE CABLE THAT NEVER EVENTUATED

(Cyril Vahtrick)

The 1956 Olympic Games had finished in Melbourne and OTC was still trying to come back to normal, with new equipment such as T.E.D. (Teleprinter Error Detection)  and T.O.C. (Teleprinter on Cable) to be brought into service. Christmas was approaching when Chief Engineer Bob Long summoned me into his office with some excitement. He had on the table a pink covered document marked “Secret”.  I hadn’t seen an official secret document since my Radar days with the Air Force during WW2 and was intrigued at what this might be about.

The document was quite bulky, but I was told to stay there and read it.  What it contained was a comprehensive study and recommendation for a submarine telephone cable to provide a link fromBritain toAustralia, proposed by aBritish Commonwealth group called the Cable Network Design Committee (CNDC) based inLondon.

We had heard sketchy reports about a coaxial submarine cable (TAT), with submerged valve operated repeaters which had been laid across the Atlantic that year, but the idea of having valves (electron tubes) inaccessible at the bottom of the ocean seemed almost like science fiction at the time.

The proposal contained in the report was to lay a coaxial cable, capable of carrying 36 simultaneous telephone circuits from UK via Ascension Island to Cape Town, thence a microwave to Durban and then a smaller capacity 24 circuit cable following the old telegraph cable route across the Indian Ocean to Cocos Island and finally Perth. A later smaller cable across the Tasman toNew Zealandwas also mentioned, with connection via microwave acrossAustralia.

The real jolt came with the financial analysis. With appropriate conservative design, it was estimated that such a system could be established for no more than 20 million pounds! Considering that we had felt courageous committing to purchase a few new HF transmitters at 10 thousand pounds each, the whole cable project looked an impossible dream to me.

Bob Long, on the other hand, not only saw this as the way to the future but, following the telegraph cable example, he immediately began to envisage a full British Commonwealth “round-the-world ”  telephone cable system by also crossing the Pacific and Atlantic.

As a major deviation from the route in the document, we did some great circle calculations and showed that we could save over a thousand nautical miles and a couple of million pounds in the Indian Ocean by following a great circle route from Cape Town to Western Australia via a repeater station on Heard Island rather than going via Cocos.

We had earnest discussions with Phillip Law, of Antarctic fame and he enthusiastically embraced the idea of a joint station onHeard Island. OTC had experience in seconding

Radio Officers to the Antarctic, so we felt we could handle the problem of staffingHeard Island.

After due consideration by the Commission, PMG and Treasury, an initial response went back to the CNDC from OTC proposing firstly a broad commitment to a “round-the-world” concept and also theHeard Islandalternative.  The latter idea was opposed byBritainbecause of the extreme latitude ofHeard Island, even though we showed that Oban inScotland(where the Atlantic telephone cable had landed) was at a higher latitude.

Following our submission to the CNDC a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference was arranged to be held inLondonin 1958. This Conference  recommended to participating governments a long term plan providing for the development of a British Commonwealthcommunications system by incorporation, gradually, of a round-the-world large-capacity cable system.

The release of information on another “secret” cable project under construction across theAtlantic(the CANTAT cable fromUKtoCanada) led to strong agitation from OTC General Manager Trevor Housley that the next step in the round-the -world system should be across the Pacific, thus joiningAustraliatoCanada,USAand UK/Europe.

With support from our Government, OTC initiated a British Commonwealth Telecommunications conference inSydney  in  September/ October 1959. The Conference was opened by Prime Minister Menzies and recommended that a trans-Pacific large-capacity cable be constructed as soon as possible. Trevor Housley was invited by the participating parties to be the first Convenor of a Management Committee for the project.

With experience of the explosive growth of telephone traffic across the Atlantic on the telephone cable and noting that CANTAT was going to be to a new design with capacity for a full supergroup (60 circuits) OTC successfully pressed for the same design across the Pacific. (In the event, by reducing the bandwidth of each voice circuit from 4 kHz to 3 kHz, this capacity was increased to 80 circuits). It was agreed that the cable would be named COMPAC.

It is interesting to note in retrospect that, although the transistor had made its first appearance about 1949, ten years later it was still considered that there was not enough experience with transistors to use them in submarine repeaters, despite the substantial advantage in working voltage, size, etc. Therefore the CANTAT and COMPAC repeaters would still be valve operated.

At the end of 1959, I was selected to go toLondonto join the CNDC, commissioned with the overall design and planning of the COMPAC project. This work proceeded quickly and, in the middle of 1960, the management Committee placed contracts for 8,700 nautical miles of  coaxial submarine cable and 335 submerged repeaters, making this the longest telephone cable system yet undertaken in the world.

I had the opportunity to visit the TAT and CANTAT terminals near Oban inScotland. It was interesting to note that the TAT terminal was buried deep inside a massive cliff face, accessed through a series of bomb-proof doors and no doubt designed to withstand an atom bomb. On the other hand the CANTAT  terminal was a conventional building built on a cliff facing the sea, with windows all around, perhaps indicative of a thawing of the cold war.

At home, OTC ran into stiff opposition from the PMG’s Department which saw OTC involvement stopping at the cable landing at Bondi, after which they would take over the terminal equipment. The PMG planned for the cable to be treated as just another long distance trunk route and they proposed that the then current PMG internal trunk signalling system should be employed on the cable. Since this was incompatible with the overseas systems into which we would be connected, OTC successfully demonstrated that special international equipment and a specialized overseas telecommunications terminal would be necessary to interconnect with other international systems.

With support from the Treasury, OTC finally received Ministerial approval to construct and own the terminal. After much searching, a suitable site was found inOxford Street, Paddington and we found ourselves getting into the business of constructing a multi storey city building.

Since virtually all the terminal equipment represented new technology for OTC, Orm Cooper was selected to attend a training course inLondon, while Perc Day joined a group inNew Zealandwho were being instructed by an instructor brought out fromUKin the specialized technique of jointing the special coaxial cable.

Despite our lack of experience at the beginning, all the installation work was satisfactorily completed on time and within budget. Finally, the big day came when the first section of the COMPAC cable toNew Zealandwas ready for service. My recollection is that Orm Cooper was the first person to talk on our first international telephone cable when power was anxiously switched on after the last cable splice was in place.

History records, of course, that this section of the cable was formally opened by Prime Minister Menzies on 9^th July, 1962.  During arrangements for the ceremony, the organizers (now extending way beyond OTC) were caught in a diplomatic dilemma as to who should call whom between the Australian and NZ Prime Ministers. Protocol suggested that, since Australia was the senior Commonwealth partner, the first voice to be heard should be our PM’s – on the other hand what if  something happened and our PM was left on the line calling “hello, hello” with no response?

A proper diplomatic solution was worked out. The call should originate in NZ, with an operator, who would have the NZ  PM on the line waiting, then the phone at our end would ring and our PM would be the first to speak! Because of the exact timing required, our PM had been asked to make a short speech to the assembled people at the opening ceremony inSydney, after which the call would take place. To guide him on timing, a light would blink when there was exactly one minute to go, so he could finish off what he was saying. When the light started blinking, the PM abruptly sat down virtually in mid sentence, leaving an embarrassingly long silent minute while nothing happened. Lots of fingers were crossed but the call came through exactly as planned and all was well.

The final section of COMPAC was completed in 1963 and the whole system through to UKwas formally opened from Londonby her Majesty the Queen on  3^rd December 1963 (or 2^nd December depending on where you were!).

As for the round-the-world Commonwealth cable system, this plan came unstuck about 1961 when South Africa left the British Commonwealth, so the original cable plans routed via South Africa never eventuated. Also by then, the idea of  a continuingBritish Commonwealthglobal submarine cable monopoly had been put to rest, being replaced by international joint ventures and the rapid development of satellite communications.