1969 was a momentous year.   It was my senior year in primary school and I was doing well at school.  My brain had been awakened and was like blotting paper to this fascinating world.  My interests rampaged across the sciences of aeronautics, electronics, chemistry, physics, astronomy and quite naturally space travel.  I stalked the main public library for interesting books.  I discovered the separate Reference section and photostated pages from the various Janes[1]  so that Dean and I could discuss the latest weapon systems at home.   They were carefully selected because of economic strictures.

The moon shot captured our imaginations.  It combined the derring do and adventure of Boys Own and the science and technology that I was interested in.  It was probably the most exciting and fulfilling year of my life.  I was too late for the Mercury program but had followed the Gemini program and the build-up of the Apollo program leading to the moon.  I had checked out the requirements to be an astronaut and wasn’t too fazed by the 6’ and 175lb requirements as I hoped eventually to reach.  I ended up a touch under 6’ and, with a bit of steroid abuse, would have made the 175lb.  However the requirement of US citizenship threw a spanner in the works.  Damn, I’d been born in the right era but the wrong country.

Finally it all came together and the Eagle landed.  Without TV in SA, we had to follow it as best we could via the radio and the few pictures published in the newspapers.  Later we would catch some of the TV feeds while watching British Movietone which was a current affairs program sandwiched between the cartoons and the main movie at the bioscope.  Without an outside broadcasting unit on the moon, the videos weren’t great and there were few selfies.  Even without these, or maybe because of these restrictions, we were rapt.

As good as it got.  A frame grab from a moon landing video

The whole school had to do class projects celebrating the landing.  Each class had to do its own project and Mr Saayman appointed me to project manage our efforts.  Yikes, I was now learning project management as well.  OK, so there weren’t any critical paths but I had to hone my boy management skills.  Our centrepiece was the largest earth globe we could find suspended in one corner and a moon suspended in the other.  The latter was constructed from a soccer ball that was covered with grey plasticine and pockmarked.  Alan de Kock had a large plastic model of the Apollo 5 standing about 1m tall.  It was split into its various sections and they were suspended at points across the ceiling, showing the stages of separation, culminating with the fully deployed moon lander on the moon.   Someone had a smaller model that placed at the earth showing how it started.  The walls were festooned with all the pictures and newspaper articles we could find and diagrams explaining the stages of the flight.  I was very proud when we won the best classroom.

Dean and I wrote to NASA and a few months later received a photograph showing the three astronauts modelling the NASA 1969 line of spacewear.

Picture that we received from NASA (not the original).  When I searched for this photo, I noticed that Neil Armstrong is not in the centre as he should be – strange!

[1] Janes were various reference works covering all aspects of weaponry such as ships, aircraft, weapon systems etc.