Easter Picnic at Orroral Valley

22 April 2025 / Author: Jo Blackburn - Photos: Jo Blackburn, Simon Trickett, Tony Mcdonald and Annemie Wilson

“She calls us outside
To tumble in crunchy leaves.
She's here! Autumn's here!”
– Angela Heffer

And call us outside she did. Well what else to do when the hot cross buns have been demolished and the chocolate has not yet arrived? A picnic of course.  

You gather together a few Mx5’s driven by a few friends and off you go into the glory that is the Namadji National Park and the surrounds of Canberra in April. It’s hard to beat it.  Nine cars, 16 people, picnic baskets and sunshine.

The Orroral Valley tracking station was an Earth station in Australia, supporting Earth-orbiting satellites, as part of NASA's Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network. It was located approximately 50 km south of Canberra and was one of three tracking stations in the ACT, and seven in Australia.  The station supported the joint Apollo-Soyuz project in 1975, which saw American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts link in Earth orbit and conduct joint experiments in space. In April 1981, Orroral tracking station supported the Space Shuttle Columbia. It provided telecommunication support to Space Shuttle missions until its closure in 1985.

The 26 m telescope was moved in 1985 to Tasmania, Australia, and now forms the core of the Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory run by the School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Tasmania.

Our route to the tracking station picnic ground took us via Uriarra Crossing, the cotter road, the Brindabella road (where nobody missed the turn to Tharwa), and on up the Naas Road to the Orroral Road.   

The Orroral road was closed in 2020 following bushfires in the summer of 2019-20 which combined with subsequent flooding caused extensive damage to the roads and bridges in the Namadgi National Park. The Orroral Road did not reopen until May 2023. 

And now for our picnic. Well there was Chef Ashley on tongs with the steak, sous chef Rhys on charcuterie, Mike on fold up chair construction, Tony on kangaroo photography, Maryanne on blueberry muffin duty, Iris on biscuits to go, and Berenice playing Easter bunny come early. The rest of us just ate the goodies in the Sun.

A relaxed drive home, some by the short way, others retracing our steps because that drive is too good not to do again.