Views of the Station

The Carnarvon Tracking Station covered a large area (approx 2.6 sq km) on Browns Range.

These photos give some idea of the scale of the station.

Carnarvon Tracking Station Panorama

Click the image for a 6.6MB PDF panorama. It was assembled from several black and white photographs taken from the newly-completed 9 metre USB antenna in May 1966. The PDF file has two pages – the second one is the same, but without the annotations.

Or see just the labelled page as a .jpg file.

The photographs were probably taken by a Department of Supply photographer. With thanks to Trevor Mosel, Stuart Wattison (who scanned them), Paul Dench and Terry Kierans. Panorama assembled and annotated by Colin Mackellar.

Other photos from the same set may be seen here.

The bitumen road from the junction near the SPAN facility, looking towards the T&C Building (left of centre) and the USB antenna (right).

Notice the Dallas – Fort Worth Turnpike sign by the side of the road.

Paul Dench was leader of the team of eight from Carnarvon doing USB training at the Collins factory in 1965. (Collins Radio was the Unified S-band manufacturer, based in Richardson, Texas, just north of Dallas.)

Paul was one of the four who “rescued [the sign] from its lonely existence half way along the turnpike.” He says, “It is now fixed to my verandah wall.”

Update: As of June 2012, it is now on display at the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum.

Large, Larger.

Photo: Tom Sheehan, 1971.

Here’s the field-of-view superimposed on a station map.

And you can just make out the Turnpike sign arrowed in this 700kb detail from the panorama taken from the USB dish.

The Carnarvon Tracking Station Telemetry and Control Building – before Apollo.

The foundations for the Apollo USB extension are laid out in the foreground.

Taken just after sunrise, this photo shows the sea in the distance. The old Verlort radar, from Muchea is at right.

Photo: Hamish Lindsay.