Honeysuckle Creek today

Honeysuckle Creek Today

Hamish Lindsay at what is left of Honeysuckle Creek, October 2003.

After it closed in 1981, the tracking station site lay abandoned and, in its remote location, the buildings were badly vandalised until the ACT government decided to demolish them.

It wasn’t until 2000 that a permanent display to mark the site was built. John Saxon explains how the display came to be –

“I was somewhat surprised one day to get an invitation from the ‘Minister for everything’ [Brendan Smythe MLA, ACT Urban Services Minister] to attend a breakfast opening of the Camping grounds at the site. Turns out Mike was out of town – at Parkes I think?

As I was the only ex-HSK worker there, the press took rather more interest in me than the Minister. But he took it very well and when I suggested that it was a great shame that there really were no signs saying that some fairly momentous historical events had taken place close to the new camping ground.

Actually there was one small sign that Mike had paid for out of his CDSCC budget. Brendan Smythe said he would see what he could do, and eventually (much to my surprise) allocated $60K for the signs.

The rest as they say is history. My only regret is that we were not consulted on the content and wording of the signs early enough in the process. But at least we were able to correct the majority of errors, but not the concepts.”

The Honeysuckle memorial consists of several displays in various spots on the foundations of the Operations building. In addition, there is a steel spire where the antenna was. See the photos below. It was officially opened in October 2000.

Brendan Smythe MLA Urban Services Minister of the ACT (left) and Dr Miriam Baltuck, the NASA Senior Science Representative in Australia (right) officially opening the display on 6th October 2000.

Photo: Hamish Lindsay. Click the image for a larger version.

This partial panorama (approx. 180°) is taken looking back to where the Operations building was.

Click the image for a larger version.
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The mound where the antenna was is on the left. Note the trees burnt by the January 2003 bushfires. This photo was taken in October. (Panorama: Colin Mackellar)

Mike Dinn writes – “Note the bushes to the left of the car. They were adjacent to the front door path (top side) and appear on every HSK picture of the front after the opening. Their size can be used to calibrate at least the relative date of a photo, if not the absolute one.”

The Display

Hamish Lindsay regards the display.

Janelle Mackellar at the display.