The Moon, Neil Armstrong’s heartbeat and me

Playing a direct role in one of the world’s most momentous — or in some quarters, contentious — events has made Lorraine Sartori more than just a little territorial. “It makes me angry, I know what happened,” Mrs Sartori barks at the conspiratorial theorists who claim the Apollo 11 first landing on the moon in 1969 was a hoax. “I want to slap them in the face. They weren’t standing where I was. We talked to them, we heard them and there is no question that it happened.” Mrs Sartori has the rare distinction of being able to claim that she was assisting the Carnarvon-based doctor to assess the vital statistics of US astronaut Neil Armstrong as he became the first person to walk on the moon. Now living in Geraldton, she had then been part of the 180-strong team of workers at the Carnarvon Tracking Station, which played a crucial strategic role in the celebrated lunar landing. And she had a clear recollection of hearing Mr Armstrong’s world-famous words on disembarking and watching heart-rate evidence of his “adrenaline rush” printing out on the paper in front of her as he took that first history-making step. “The ink was going madly up and down ... instantly you knew there was a fair bit of adrenaline ripping around inside him,” she said of Armstrong, who died aged 82 in 2012. “The minute his foot hit the ground, his graph went up about six inches (15cm). There was just total elation with three cheers instantly. I remember driving home after that shift thinking I’d never see that again and I haven’t. “None of us really took in how big it was at the time, but now you look back you realise that job was pretty bloody special. I still get a buzz just driving past the gate because it was such a big part of my life.” Mrs Sartori had, until a cyclone ripped through her Green Head home in the mid 1970s, kept the graph of Mr Armstrong’s results and was devastated at it having been ruined in the storm. She also recalled how, because there were no hire cars in Carnarvon, she and a friend would regularly have to fly to Perth to drive up to eight NASA crew some 1000km via the old Midlands road back to the station. “The ‘are we there yet?’ questions would start at New Norcia and we’d still have 600 miles to go,” she laughed. Mrs Sartori, 76, moved to Carnarvon with her family from Uaroo Station at the age of 11 because her father did not want her or her brother to have to go to boarding school. She had later been working in the local council offices where she gained a sense of the momentum building behind the Carnarvon Tracking Station. She gained employment at the station soon after it began operating in 1964. Her job in administration was loosely described as being a “key tapper” as opposed to the “knob twiddlers” in other parts of the operation. It had been a good financial gig, too, as their overtime bonuses meant they were taking home more pay than the set salary of the engineers. And that provided the foundation for some serious partying in the designated “Crew Room” built by then shire president Wilson Tuckey at his Port Hotel. “Carnarvon had been just a sleepy little hollow where the main things were prawning, bananas, mangos and beans and the airport lounge was just a tin shed,” she said. “Then it just became a totally different world here ... there was a lot of loud music and a lot of alcohol. “We were all young and into it and it was big and different and new and wonderful. It was very changing times for a town like Carnarvon.” Still living in Geraldton, she returns to Carnarvon at least once a year to go back out to what is now a brilliantly appointed and presented Space and Technology Museum. The facility, largely driven by local identity Phil Youd, provides key insights into the station’s important space role for more than a decade until it closed in 1975, even offering a simulated ride in a mock Apollo console. Mrs Sartori is one of many of the station’s former trackers who have been herded back together in a group organised by another ex-employee, Lauri Glocke. Their connection not only provides a social strength between the like-minded former workmates, but has also helped preserve many of the stories of yesteryear which may otherwise have been lost forever. There has even been a “LOS” file compiled to remember the contribution of more than 500 people who had worked at the station and had since died, or as is known in tracker speak, had a “loss of signal”. Mrs Glocke still answers to the “Teeny bopper” nickname given to her at 17 because she was the youngest member of the station’s crew when she started work at the station in 1968. She said she had pledged to continue the “Keeping the Memory Alive” work of late friend Terry Kierans because of her pride in what had been achieved at the site. She had virtually bludgeoned her way into a job as an equipment operator at the site which provided a key part of the world’s gateway to the moon. Rallying the old troops, who had revelled in a 2012 Carnarvon visit by Mr Armstrong’s Apollo flying partner Buzz Aldrin, had become a labour of love. “If we don’t keep the trackers together and keep sharing the memories, then a lot will be lost,” Mrs Glocke, 69, said. “Everyone would have just crawled away and we would have had LOSs that nobody knew about. Now to keep the memory alive, we need to get the families and the children in to keep it all going.” Sue van Dongen, 92, and Keith Deimel, 78, are two of the trackers who have remained connected to the station and both still live in Carnarvon. Mrs van Dongen, believed to be the oldest living former employee, originally came to Australia from England in 1961 planning to have an extended holiday and never left. She had a degree in agriculture, but found a role as an operator in the station’s Solar Particle Alert Network. “You didn’t need a degree to twiddle knobs, take photographs or climb up the radio or solar telescopes,” she said. “The best part of being out here were the people, really, and a lot of us have stayed friends ever since.” Mrs van Dongen was so committed to her job that she nearly gave birth to her first daughter while on duty, adding: “I was working here until 11 o’clock at night and she arrived the next morning.” Mr Deimel came from the city to the station as an electrician and remembered it as a robust beginning. “I had a old Series 1 Land Rover and I drove up to Carnarvon and thought the bloody road would never end,” he recalled. “The first night I got here, I went to Tuckey’s pub on a Saturday night and they were having a calcutta. I didn’t even know what a calcutta was and everybody was yelling and screaming and full of booze. “I was pretty tired from the trip so I decided to go to bed and found my bed was being occupied by a couple of people. “Later on, all hell broke loose outside at some ungodly hour with a mob fighting on the veranda and throwing beds over on the cars outside. I thought, ‘This is a new world’.” And that it was, particularly at the station. “The equipment that was available was largely untried, the frequencies we were using were pretty much untried and the back-up system was World War II radio equipment,” he recalled. Mr Deimel also had a unique take on how it must have felt to be one of the astronauts in the Apollo 11 mission. “It was like you were at Rottnest and put in a one-man submarine with one porthole to look out of,” Mr Deimel said. “You’re told, ‘We’ve done this before. We put an orang-utan in one of these and he came back OK. We’ve done all the calculations and all the figures and you should be able to leave here and go across to Fremantle and when you’re in sight of the North Mole, this will turn around and bring you back to this jetty at Rottnest. We know you’ve got no control, but you should be right. See you in four or five days’.” Mrs Sartori was also part of another major world event as a nine-year-old when she watched from her then Onslow home as Britain conducted the historic first atomic bomb tests at the nearby Monte Bello Islands in 1952. She said that memory remained just as vivid as the lunar landing. “We were looking out over Beaden Bay and it went off on my ninth birthday,” she said. “I was a very important little kid holding up my telescope and I was splashed over every newspaper you could find. “I vividly remember the feeling like someone was crushing your chest and all the cups were rattling on the hook in the kitchenette. “We were all out watching the cloud develop into a big mushroom. That was my other life.” If you have a worthy “Bush Legend” in your town, email steve.butler@wanews.com.au with the details

The Moon, Neil Armstrong’s heartbeat and me

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