Bush Legends: How Mingenew’s cluster of radars help reveal secrets of space

Beneath the quirky secrecy of a bush plot filled with space radars in the heart of WA’s Mid West, lies a love story with equal intrigue. By day, Sandy Jones tracks satellites in the skies high above his Mingenew home. In his spare time he operates a makeshift recording studio in the town’s old bank building, constructed in 1908, alongside his former actor-cum-author wife Andrea Sheldon. The granddaughter of well-known Canadian novelist Michael Sheldon, her credits as a young actress included a role alongside Halle Berry in the 2003 box office hit Gothika. But more on that later. The further the gravel track winds out to Mr Jones’ workplace on the Mingenew outskirts, the more a feeling of mysteriousness deepens. Even the sign directing visitors to the WA Space Centre’s tracking station points the wrong way down another beaten track. And Mingenew Shire chief executive Nils Hay does nothing to dismiss the notion of stealth. “It flies under the radar,” Mr Hay says with a cheeky grin, describing the NASA-controlled site. Mingenew’s space precinct includes the Swedish Space Corporation-owned and operated WA Space Centre, Geoscience Australia’s Geodetic Observatory, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and the recent commercial addition, Capricorn Space. It came to be because of the unique radio quiet zone hovering perfectly above the town, which also has an optimal average number of clear and sunny days. On any given day, there are people shuffling around in virtual silence and the occasional movement of the radars can be somewhat unnerving. “There is a lot of pinging going on in here,” Mr Jones says with a laugh. “But when the oscilloscope is pinging, it means we’re doing a good job.” A Kojonup-born son of a shearer, Mr Jones had an interesting journey to being stationed at Mingenew, including playing gigs around the Perth music scene and completing a science degree at Curtin University in 2014 after his 13 gap years and a marriage breakdown. “That was pretty bad timing as all the exploration departments had been disbanded and there was no money being spent on exploration at the time,” Jones lamented. “If I’d done it straight out of high school like I was supposed to, everything would have been fine. But the boom was over.” Still, Mr Jones admitted being unable to resist the magic of science. “Geophysics was always fascinating to me because you could see what was under the ground without necessarily having to drill,” the 41-year-old said. “I also heard there may have been some dynamite involved and that you could blow some s..t up and that sounded like fun to me.” After a brief stint working with sensor-based sorting machines in Sydney and then Melbourne, the job as assistant manager at the Mingenew observatory came calling for the father of two WA-based teenagers. It has also more recently evolved into 12-hour shifts of tracking up to 100 satellites regarded, in a strange way, as pets. The work is continuing WA’s significant status in unlocking the secrets of the sky, following the vital strategic role played by the Carnarvon Tracking Station, almost 600km to its north, in the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. “We’ll have a picture of the sky and all the satellites that are up and then we have to choose the ones we want to hit,” he said. “Then we sort of video game-style manually dial it in with the telescope until we’re able to identify it.” The resulting data is crucial for mapping reference frames by measuring time and distance to determine exact spots on the ground under the tracking truck they are sitting in. “We’re looking up into space, but mainly caring what’s underneath our feet,” he said. “If we didn’t have the data we wouldn’t know exactly where we are. It’s like a submarine in a wheat paddock — that’s how it feels.” Montreal-born Ms Sheldon moved to Australia with a previous boyfriend. She fell in love with Fremantle and then fell in love with Mr Jones after meeting him through a mutual friend. “He just grew on me like a fungus,” she said. Partly inspired as an author by Russian surrealist Mikhail Bulgakov, Ms Sheldon has found therapy in her writing while battling a complex illness that began with Lyme disease and has included chronic fatigue, migraines, myalgia, narcolepsy and cataplexy. “I’m much better at dealing with my circumstances when I’m writing,” Ms Sheldon, 39, said. “One of the things I’d like to eventually teach is writing with limitations and how that can help you approach your life differently. Writing is something where I don’t need anyone else to do it, but I can engage with the writing community when I feel up to it. “Writing takes me to my happy place ... a place where the world makes sense again and a place where magic still exists and where the depth of things are important and valued. It’s a very kind, hopeful place even where there are dark, scary things.” Ms Sheldon had an acting agent from the age of 12, but said her grandfather had always claimed she would be a better writer than actor. “He was right, I never fully loved it,” she said. “I think I loved the idea of it and I loved the art, the craft and the being on stage. But I loathed the business and got to a point where it wasn’t worth it. “With my writing, I have more control over my world. When you’re acting, you’re serving other people’s visions.” When the pair first moved to Mingenew two years ago, they admitted to being underwhelmed. “We drove through the town and in 90 seconds it was over,” Mr Jones said. “We just looked at each other and thought, ‘What have we done?’. But we got used to it and here we are.” The Mingenew district was first settled in the 1850s because it was ideal country for cattle, but the town was not gazetted until 1906 after the subdivision of government land. Mr Hay believes further tracking station opportunities in Mingenew, which had long had agriculture as its main economic driver, added potential room for great growth in the town and the region. “A lot of people, even locally, don’t realise the significance of what’s actually out there,” he said. “It is a super-significant piece of infrastructure ... nationally unique and internationally significant in terms of the quietness of it. It enables all sorts of satellite communications that aren’t possible in other places. “That station is the most productive of its kind in the entire world, by a margin. They’ve even got the comparisons in graphs on the fridge out there because they are so incredibly proud of it. “They are out there measuring quasars and earth’s position in the galaxy, science stuff that goes well beyond my comprehension. And who knows what other secret spy stuff is going on out there ... ” The Mid West Development Commission recently helped secure $80,000 in State Government funding to explore developing the tracking station’s infrastructure, including optic fibre to improve the site’s telecommunication capability. “At the moment it is faster to put a hard drive in the back of a car than it is to send the data over the internet,” an almost incredulous Mr Hay said. “They’re doing this world-leading science work and still, that’s the reality.”

Bush Legends: How Mingenew’s cluster of radars help reveal secrets of space

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