PETER KOHN

I DON’T know what was more momentous for me about July 21, 1969 — humankind setting foot on the moon, or being home during the day and watching TV. Thankfully being a fairly healthy kid, I didn’t take many days off school, so it was a novelty to be allowed to come home in the middle of the day to watch the tube.

Westall High School in Clayton, in Melbourne’s southeast, had made provision for all pupils to view history in the making. Children who had family at home could go home to watch, and all who couldn’t, were able to watch at school.

In fact, I was to find out years later, when I called in to do an AJN interview, that the wife of my interviewee, who had been a teacher at my school, was the staff member who made sure that all kids who couldn’t go home would be in the auditorium that noon, in front of a TV set, as Neil Armstrong descended the ladder of the lunar module.

Other teachers had been apathetic, but she caused a ruckus, and insisted that the school TV was set up in the auditorium, so the students could be a part of history.

As planned, I rushed home in eager anticipation, and set up my Thorn Atlas tape recorder, (a reel-to-reel model) to make a sound recording of the moonwalk telecast. In those low-tech days, before VCRs and DVD, that was state of the art.

Watch footage of the historic moon landing:

My method was to sling the microphone cord over the channel knob so that it hung in front of the TV’s speaker. I asked my mother and my grandmother, who were also riveted to the TV, not to talk too loudly, as their comments would be recorded on the tape.

Only a few days earlier, on July 16, there had been another novelty. I was allowed to stay up almost until midnight, to view the launch of the Apollo 11 mission that would take Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins on their lunar mission.

Staying up that late was something that in those days, I could normally only do on New Year’s Eve. Again, in the mind of an Aussie high-school kid of the 1960s, the thrill of staying up late to watch TV was just as great as the momentous event that gave me this opportunity in the first place.

The launch time is burned into my mind, 11.32pm, Australian Eastern time.

By the time I’d got up to go to school on the morning of July 21, the lunar module, Eagle, had landed in a location dubbed Tranquility Base, and I knew from the breakfast news reports that this would be a thrilling day.

So here we were, eyes glued to lunchtime TV, watching a fuzzy grey picture (TV in those days was all black and white, and although the worldwide telecast was in colour, there aren’t many hues on the moon, so it didn’t matter).

But I do remember feeling proud that we Aussies were relaying the sound and vision to the rest of the world through our space tracking station at Honeysuckle Creek in the Australian Capital Territory.

In fact, the delay to overseas was six seconds, so we Australians, on our school breaks and our office lunch breaks, were technically the first to see history in the making.

Initially there was an endless image of the lunar module, and finally, just as murmurs of impatience were emanating from my co-viewers, Armstrong appeared on the ladder (captured on an external camera). All the while, we heard the chatter between the astronauts and Houston Control, complete with those great pops and crackles.

Shortly before one o’clock, after what seemed an eternity, Armstrong placed his moon boot into the lunar dust and pronounced: “This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” You could almost hear Planet Earth suck in its breath.

I learned later he had actually fluffed the line. It would have made more sense as it was originally scripted: “One small step for a man … “ But give the guy a break. Hanging onto a ladder on a vehicle parked on the moon, while the world was watching, was one tough gig, even if it hadn’t been a speaking part!

It was a real anti-climax when my mother told me I had to go back to school a bit later. I wanted to take the rest of the day off and stay glued to the screen. But she wouldn’t hear of it.

English, maths and geography, at least the stuff we were being taught, seemed a bit mundane that afternoon, after watching a man walk on the moon.

Peter Kohn is the AJN’s Features Editor based in Melbourne and the author of two novels, Rachel’s Chance and View From A Sandcastle.