Another inside view of the HPTS museum, note the glass and porcelain insulators and antique telegraph and telephone equipment. Located near Shark Bay, Western Australia.

This location gained its moment of fame in 1964, during the GT-1 Gemini space mission, when the main communications link between a tracking station in Adelaide and a communications station in Carnarvon broke down, so the voice and data communications were carried over the telephone lines between the two locations, and this starion served as the connection between them. Lillian O'Donahue was the telephone operator (this was in the days before automated telephone exchanges). Mrs O'Donahue made an extra six dollars in overtime pay for her working the entire long hot night. Her photo is posted [id=267312086]

At that moment in time, the high space tech of the 1960s cooperated with the remote Outback Australian telephone tech of the late 1890s and early 1900s.