Mrs ODonahue at Hamelin Pool saves the day
Gemini Titan 1 launch
The launch of GT-1
On Wednesday April 8th, 1964, the first unmanned Gemini mission, GT-1, stood ready for launch. Though not yet officially opened, Carnarvon Tracking Station was supporting the mission. At this time, all of Carnarvons telecommunications was carried via PMG (Post Masters General Department) telephone lines.
Western Australian telecommunications historian John Moynihan writes,
Between 1948 and 1952 a telephone trunk line was erected, inland, between Mullewa and Carnarvon, via Gascoyne Junction. This was designated trunk 709. It was connected to Perth by a carrier telephone circuit ex Mullewa.
Just over a minute before the liftoff of GT-1, a lightning strike 105 km from the station cut off links between Carnarvon Tracking Station and the township with all points south. John Lambie, PMG tech supporting the station, remembers,
This open wire trunk line carried the 12 channel voice carrier system, plus the voice frequency telegraph system. The lightning strike had vaporised 3 metres of heavy copper wire and the outage caused the town to be cut off from the outside world. This was before troposcatter systems and OTC Intelsat communication backup so the tracking station was also without SCAMA and Teletype connection to the worldwide NASCOM network, and Goddard Space Flight Centre, Maryland, USA.
Quick thinking by staff in the Perth main trunk room terminated the NASCOM telegraph traffic channel to Carnarvon, and in collaboration with the technician staff at Mullewa looked at the options to pass information to Carnarvon.
In the late 19th century and early days of the 20th century when electric Morse communications had been established along the coast they had suffered with salt spray build-up and unreliability. When voice telephony systems were planned it was thought reliability would be improved by choosing an inland trunk route from Carnarvon, via Gascoyne Junction, and the pastoral town of Mullewa, then on down to Perth.
Primitive single wire, earth return circuits still ran down the coast from Carnarvon to Hamelin Pool and then to Shark Bay. Similar single wire circuits ran across country from Mullewa to Northampton, and from Northampton to Hamelin Pool. The lines from Mullewa to Northampton and Northampton to Hamelin had recently been made redundant and sold off for scrap. Thankfully, the contractor had not begun the job of recovering the wire and poles, and a circuit link was a possibility.
