By HELEN SPAIN
I don’t know how many people own an ex-satellite earth station, but I expect not many.
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I own the land and buildings of what was the old Moree Satellite Earth Station, about 7 kilometres north of Moree on the Carnarvon Highway.
It has been my husband Jim’s irrigation manufacturing business, Irritek, since 1995.
Huge steel pipes and irrigation infrastructure are made in the building for large scale irrigation farms from Hay NSW to Kununurra in Western Australia.
However, 50 years ago on March 29, 1968 the Moree Station Earth Station had a very different purpose.
It was opened on that day as Australia’s most advanced commercial Earth tracking station in the world.
It was said by the head of the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (now Telstra) that the Moree Station would give Australia an efficient system of international communications by voice, telegraph, telex, data transfer, audio broadcast and the first commercial international live relays.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers both ran features on the station and the opening.
On April 1, 1968, the station relayed live footage of United States president Lyndon Johnson announcing he would not seek another term as US president.
Moree earth station played a key role in the coverage of man’s first steps on the moon on July 21, 1969.
It was responsible for the relay of the moon landing footage to the world. The footage was caught by the Parkes radio telescope and Honeysuckle in Canberra and relayed to Moree for transmission to the US and beyond.
So there in the middle of the black soil plains of Moree, with its big white dish facing out to the satellite 37,000 kilometres away, was an almost otherworldly window into the world and beyond to space.
About this time my family moved to Moree and my father, Clive Corderoy, bought the farmland surrounding the earth station.
I have been connected to the station ever since. It played a curious role in Moree community life. Its scientists and technicians lived in their purpose built homes in Moree. Rotary exchange students came out to the station to phone home and talk to their parents.
In 1988, my father told me the station was going to close and he was submitting a tender for its purchase.
He was the successful tenderer and became the owner of the station towards the end of 1988.
The two dishes were dismantled and moved to Sydney and Ceduna.
Since then, Irritek started business in the station in 1995 and I inherited it from my parents.
The old station building is still a building of purpose. However, the official station opening plaque at Irritek’s office door, the old OTC switchboard, the disused lift, the four flights of stairs to the dish tower and the sheer weight of its concrete construction, all remind us of the building’s first purpose, as Australia’s telecommunications link to the world and for relaying the first steps of man on the moon.