William John Miller
17 December 1936 – 17 January 2026
known amongst friends as Blue or just Bill.
Red Lake, Woomera.
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Bill Miller at Red Lake, Woomera, circa 1962. |
A tribute by Bruce Window
I met Bill when I joined the QLD Police Force as a Cadet in the Wireless Section about February 1955. He had joined as a Cadet about a year before me. The Wireless Section provided Police Communications Services and Support throughout QLD and was based at the Police Depot, Petrie Terrace, Brisbane.
As Cadets, we did radio technical training at the Brisbane Technical College at Apprentice level as well as on-the-job training in the Wireless Section, both in operations and maintenance. Cadets also had daily sessions to learn Morse code. This was because urgent Police messages, both interstate and intra-state were sent by Morse radio telegraph.
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Cadet Bill Miller (R) training as a Morse operator for QLD Police Radio VKR. |
Bill and I became good friends and as our technical knowledge increased, we became competitive home-constructors of Hi-Fi equipment and sending and receiving Morse code.
When Bill reached 19 years, he was sworn in as QLD Police Constable and transferred back to the Wireless Section on shift work telegraphy. He was a year ahead of me in that regard. Not long after being sworn in, Bill spent about one year at the Wireless Section, Rockhampton, where he obtained a Second-Class Commercial Operator’s Certificate issued by the PMG Department.
While Bill was in Rockhampton, the Police radio network was being expanded and Bill was transferred to Cairns to install the new radio station VL4CX. I visited him there on vacation in 1958 after the station was operational.
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WJM left tuning up first police transmitter in Cairns (VL4CX ~1958). |
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Bill Miller at an antenna site for police radio, situated in the Cairns Railway yard. |
Bill was ambitious and, after about 18 months in Cairns, he resigned and joined Weapons Research Establishment, Woomera, as a Technical Assistant to Tom Reid’s Telemetry Unit.
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Telemetry staff outside instrumentation building Range E at Woomera. |
Early in 1959, I was sent to Cairns to take over from Bill before he left QLD Police. I was there for a few months until a permanent officer was selected. We kept in touch over the next two years with occasional letters in which he wrote about what an exciting place Woomera was and the type of work he was doing.
For my vacation in May/June 1961, I decided to drive from Brisbane to Woomera and visit Bill and his wife, Selma who I knew from Cairns. My intention was to assess whether I was interested in what WRE offered there. What I saw, and what Bill told me about the work there, impressed me. A year later, as an engaged-to-be-married man, I returned to Woomera as a Technical Assistant in WRE. When Bill met me on arrival, he told me I was so lucky because I would be working at the NASA site at Island Lagoon.
Accommodation in Woomera Village was controlled by WRE and usually had waiting times of a few months for Married accommodation. When I returned to Brisbane to get married in November 1962, I did so with the knowledge that Bill had offered my Bride (Maria) some short-stay accommodation in a bedroom at his Unit.
As newly-weds we appreciated Bill and Selma’s generosity, which surprisingly, was only necessary for a fortnight until Maria got a job as a Hospital Nurse with Single Accommodation.
This was the beginning of two years of family friendship. We did barbecues, dance-nights at the Mess, coffee or music evenings with Bill/Selma and other friends, and occasional kangaroo shoots.
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Bill was not keen on Roo shoots, but he was an active member of the Woomera Rifle Club. |
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William John Miller. |
It is interesting that in our 3 years together at Woomera, Bill never mentioned his work on NASA’s Gemini manned flight missions. It is unlikely that there was an Official Secrets aspect to it, but perhaps he felt there was.
Bill and Selma had three children during their stay in Woomera. Two more were born in later years. Unfortunately, their marriage ended soon after that.
Bill surprised me one day in 1964 saying the he was Transferring within the Commonwealth Public Service to the Attorney General’s Department. I lost track of Bill for many years after he left Woomera. We re-established our friendship in our retirement years of the 2000’s and kept in loose contact with phone calls and emails and occasional interstate visits.
RIP Bill.
(With much thanks to Bruce Window for these remininscences and photos of Bill.)
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Addition brief notes by Colin Mackellar –
Bill Miller was a member of the Australian team at Red Lake Tracking Station, north of Woomera, for the Mercury and Gemini missions.
Bill had joined the Weapons Research Establishment at Woomera in 1959, as a Technical Assistant in the Telemetry team at Range E, working under Senior Scientific Officer Tom Reid.
When NASA wanted to place a tracking station for Project Mercury near the existing FPS-16 Radar at Red Lake, north of Woomera, in 1960, the NASA station came under Reid’s oversight and he was designated Officer in Charge.
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The Red Lake Telemetry and Acquisition Building. Transparency: Bill Miller. Scan and restoration: Colin Mackellar. |
As Tom Reid was in the process of selecting staff to man the Red Lake station, Bill took the initiative. He approached Tom and his wife Betty (also called Liz by Bill) while they were shopping at the Woomera store. Bill asked about a position he had in mind at Red Lake. Could be made responsible for the Recorders in the Telemetry area? This possibly unorthodox approach was successful!
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Woomera store (right) with petrol bowsers outside. Coffee lounge in the centre distance, with the new shops under construction at left. Late 1960 or early 1961. Photo: Pat Delgado. Scan: Jan Delgado. More photos here. |
Bill wrote (e-mail, April 2013),
“I was responsible for the Ampex recorders and their operation.
I had three tape recorders to mind. Two instrument recorders: half inch tape and 120 ins per second, and a wonderful Magnacorder quarter inch tape and was the machine all audio Hi Fi freaks desired (it recorded the voice transmissions).”
These would record spacecraft engineering data, astronaut health statisticas as well as voice communications.
Miller’s allocation to the Recorders resulted in a unique recording of the Mercury space tracking network during John Glenn’s pioneering orbital flight in February 1962.
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The Telemetry Area at Red Lake Telemetry. Transparency: Bill Miller. Scan and restoration: Colin Mackellar. |
Bill remembered,
“The set up at Red Lake was: A small team of Yanks came into the empty building and began installing racks, running cables and generally setting up the skeleton.
We got the antennas working and other outside things. The racks were filled with commercially available equipment:
Tape recorders from Ampex, receivers from Nems-Clarke, power supplies etc. They did a great job which I watched with envy.Tom Reid’s team calibrated and got all going. …
The antennas were calibrated by an ex Army fellow, first name Charles, The yanks called him Chuck. I had red hair and they called me Rhode Island Red.”
He recalled the simulations prior to MA-6, John Glenn’s flight –
“Tom insisted we have some sort of practise. Six in total. We turned the antennas to look at the boresight tower where there was a small suitable antenna which connected to the Signal Generator on the racks inside. Various routine were performed to ensure things worked as a system.”
While most of the staff would travel between Woomera township and Red Lake in the bus, Tom often was driven to and from the station by Bill, and the two became life-long friends.
When, in late 1961, Tom Reid decided to move his family to Adelaide and apply to join the South Australian Institute of Technology as a Senior Lecturer in Electronic Engineering, he asked Bill for help. Tom did not want to advertise his intentions by having a secretary prepare his application, so he turned to Bill. From his time in the Queensland Police Force, Bill was well able to type and had his own personal typewriter, so that was how the letter of application was produced.
After Tom Reid left, Bill continued to support the Mercury missions and the early Gemini flights as well.
He treasured many fond memories of his time at Red Lake in the pioneering days of manned space exploration.
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The Red Lake Telemetry and Control Building. |
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William John Miller. |
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