For a brief moment in 1969, events in Vietnam were overshadowed by those occuring 380,000 kilometres away. Cartoonist and ex-serviceman Paul Rigby captured the moment and the mood of the moon walk for Sydney's Daily Mirror newspaper.

On July 20,1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Pictures, along with his famous statement, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" were broadcast back to an estimated audience of 600 million people.

This was possible thanks to two Australian tracking stations, the Parkes radio telescope NSW, and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station outside Canberra.

The first eight minutes of the broadcast were carried by the smaller Honeysuckle Creek before Parkes took over.

But the most important minutes of the 20th Century nearly went unrecorded.

At a critical moment, the Parkes radio telescope was unexpectedly struck by a series of 110-km per hour gusts of wind, which threatened the integrity of the telescope structure. Fortunately cool heads prevailed and the wind died down, just as Buzz Aldrin turned on the camera.

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While Vietnam was the first televised war, it was also covered by the relatively new tabloid style newspapers. Always sensationalist, sometimes scandalous - the days news distilled into an attention grabbing, eye catching headline.

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Mines are cheap, easy to manufacture, easy to deploy and provide an effective counter to a modern, mechanised force. They are more effective when they wound rather than kill, because every casualty ties up many support and medical personnel.

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Whether it is a soldier or a civilian, mines do not discriminate. Undetected they can remain in the ground long after hostilities have ceased.

You can do have your say in eradicating land mines by joining the International campaign to ban mines by visiting www.icbl.org.

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