Security, we have a problem

By Jacqueline Maley and Leesha McKenny
Updated November 9 2012 - 1:26pm, first published October 6 2010 - 3:37am
THE astronaut Buzz Aldrin has stepped onto the moon and moonwalked on Dancing With The Stars. But it was his minders who made one giant leap - to stop an interloper - at his Sydney media conference yesterday.
THE astronaut Buzz Aldrin has stepped onto the moon and moonwalked on Dancing With The Stars. But it was his minders who made one giant leap - to stop an interloper - at his Sydney media conference yesterday.

THE astronaut Buzz Aldrin has stepped onto the moon and moonwalked on Dancing With The Stars. But it was his minders who made one giant leap - to stop an interloper - at his Sydney media conference yesterday. All had been going well at the Sofitel Wentworth before his appearance as guest of honour at the Australian Geographic Society Awards tonight until a bloke down the front in a fedora asked a question. It was the space conspiracy theorist Jarrah White, who quizzed Aldrin on whether he knowingly gave a piece of petrified wood - which until last year was thought to be moon rock - to the former Dutch Prime Minister Willem Drees shortly after the Apollo 11 voyage in 1969. ''Petrified wood? Well, that doesn't sound like it came from the moon,'' Aldrin responded, before suggesting the sample was switched sometime after 1969. ''What happens to that display once it is presented to somebody isn't the responsibility of the United States, and it certainly isn't the responsibility of the crew that gave it to them.'' That's that then. Or, it was for the rest of the conference. All further questions - on the greatest feats of the 20th century, on his heroes - were gently put to Aldrin by people associated with the society. ''You accepted my planned question very well,'' Aldrin joked in response to one. But the octogenarian, who later dismissed White to Diary as an attention seeker, has proved adept at handling his kind before - punching the amateur space hoax filmmaker Bart Sibrel in the face for ambushing him and calling him ''a coward, and a liar, and a thief'' in 2002. And while on the topic of space hoaxes, Aldrin had some revelations about Michael Jackson's famous dance move. ''That's not the way you're going to walk around the moon - backwards,'' he said.A LICENCE TO THRILL