Meet Suzy Jackson: a safe place for science

By  Gerard Gommeaux-Ward 31 March 2025 8 min read

“It had this real sort of setup like Wallace and Gromit, you know?” Suzy Jackson said.

She's sharing a moment when NASA wanted to land the Curiosity Rover on Mars.

“First of all, we've got the aerobrakes and parachutes and thrusters, and then we have the sky crane to lower us and we thought there's no way that's going to work. Mars eats rovers.”

As Suzy described the challenge of communicating with a 401 MHz beacon – radiating no more power than a mobile phone – from the surface of Mars using a makeshift receiver at Parkes Observatory, one thing is unmistakable. She loves this work. 

Having been part of some astronomical projects like building the 36 antennas that make up our ASKAP radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country, Suzy has lived a life of doing really cool things.

These days, Suzy's a Site Leader at New Norcia ground station. She helps look after the European Space Agency (ESA)'s 35m antenna, tracking a huge array of spacecraft in deep space.

Over her tenure with us, she’s not shared to anyone that she is trans. Until now.

On the path to becoming a scientist

Suzy recalls a time when she was six years old, being taken to the psychologist by her mother. The doctor watched her play, and she thought nothing of it. Then the doctor and mother talked separately for a while, and her mother’s attitude shifted.

“She was steaming in the car on the way home. She was so angry,” Suzy said.

“He would have said, ‘if you don't push them away, they're going to grow up and they're going to be gay’. You know, no concept of growing up being trans, of course, just because that didn’t even enter anyone's consciousness.”

Tragically, the psychologist’s advice for curbing Suzy’s femininity amounted to ignoring her until she conformed to the ‘right’ way of behaving. What made it even harder was that, until then, her mum had been her ally.

From that point on, Suzy was just ignored. Unless it was time for a haircut – then it was WWIII. As a teenager, Suzy felt hopeless. She took to sitting in the back of class with her hoodie up. 

“Puberty was really tough. I think I broke a bunch of teachers’ hearts because I was one of those students that had heaps of possibility.”

One of the few safe spaces she had was the school’s library.

“You could go to the library at lunchtime, and you could read stuff and they wouldn't kick you out. And there was always a teacher or a librarian around. It was a safe place.”

“So I read. I did stuff. I turned into a complete nerd.”

A degree of precision

Finishing high school, Suzy’s parents had university as an expectation. She enrolled in engineering mostly just to keep them happy.

Suzy didn't find university inspiring, and she left after one semester. She then took a job at the Department of Defence for a traineeship as a technician. That was a cruisy role, but she found a mentor – an ex-submariner – that inspired her once he quit.

“We went down the pub to have lunch and he poached me to work at this obscure little place south of Canberra called Orroral Geodetic Observatory where they were, I kid you not, shooting lasers at satellites,” Suzy said.

This work was much different. Exciting, new and just cool.

“It was just this bunch of eight crusty old surveyors and this thumping big laser, and thumping big optical telescope that was just doing the most amazingly cool science,” Suzy said.

“And that wrecked me completely. Ruined me. After that I couldn't get a real job,” Suzy said. 

We’re all just shooting stars

One of Suzy’s jobs consisted of spending time laser ranging late at night – making calibrations and routine checks to zone the laser in on spacecraft. Suzy started talking to others via Internet Relay Chat (IRC) around 1993, one of the pioneer online tools of real-time chatrooms pre-world wide web. It was in there that she discovered great connections to others that helped her gather the "guts up to come out".

And it was among those eight crusty surveyors that Suzy felt comfortable enough to come out as trans at 22.

“These surveyors were just the most amazingly protective, amazingly wonderful guys you've ever seen in your whole life,” Suzy said.

“And this was during the Dark Ages. They just banded around and they were like ‘Nobody harms Suzy ever.'”

A wonderful memory Suzy shared was with a guy everyone called Grumpy Cooper.

“I'm coming out to him and I said, ‘Oh, you know, I'm trans, blah, blah, blah’ and he says, ‘Oh, what's your name?'” Suzy said.

I said, ‘Oh, it's Suzy,’ and he goes, ‘Well, I tell you what – Suzy's a damn sight better than Tall Streak of Misery. Let's go with that.’”

In the early 90s when Suzy was readying to transition, none of the resources available today were around. No websites dedicated to sharing important information. No proper representation in pop culture.

“The trans role models we had were tragic stories, and we were a staple on TV shows, like the tragically murdered trans woman on crime shows,” Suzy said.

When Suzy came out to her parents, their reaction was akin to the world ending.

“[They said to me] You're never going to be employed, you're going to have a horrendous, horrible life. They thought this because that's what they've been told by everybody,” Suzy said.

Suzy’s parents struggled to process her coming out and transition as an adult, burdened by long-term guilt. This ultimately led her to cut contact with them. They have since passed away.

One of us, one of us

It wasn’t until a university colleague encouraged her to apply for a summer placement with CSIRO that Suzy joined us – and never looked back.

She mentioned the inclusive environment she felt here, even when there was a lack of legal protections at the time for 1998. The kindness and discreet support from Human Resources meant that Suzy could just get on with the work.

Suzy was unintentionally stealthy at work about being trans. Being ‘stealthy’ means transitioning and living as a different gender without disclosing one’s gender history.

She never expected people wouldn’t know, but since everyone accepted her as she was, it became increasingly difficult to come out again.

Looking at the progress

“It’s incredible how far we've come as a society in the last 30 years,” Suzy said.

“Science has always been such a positive place. Not just at CSIRO. When I was a teenager and in my 20s, it was like, ‘science is just science’ and they don't give a damn about how you look. They care what's in your brain.”

Suzy started running the New Norcia site five and a half years ago, which was scary at first.

“They've been a really great bunch of guys. I always end up in these little places with good people,” Suzy said.

“I think the whole time I've been at CSIRO I've been completely affirmed, not necessarily as trans, but as me.”

“The environment has always been ‘Hey, you're you, we love you, we love what you do here. Build us more toys,'” Suzy laughed.

Suzy reminisced on her work dangling atop Murriyang, our Parkes radio telescope, and building receivers for the Australia Telescope Compact Array near Narrabri on Gomeroi Country.

“Occasionally I'll be on a meeting with somebody from Parkes and they'll say, ‘Oh, yeah, we're talking about the Suzy Box" and I'm like, ‘Hang on, which one's that?'” Suzy laughed.

Stepping out and stepping up

When explaining why she chose to speak up now, Suzy emphasised that being public and visible has never felt more important. The rapid changes happening globally have strengthened her resolve to share her story.

“I'm a team leader, with eight guys who work for me,” Suzy said.

“I've got so much responsibility in the organisation. I've got this 27-year history here and being able now to stand up on Trans Day of Visibility and say, ‘actually you know how you've got this idea of what a trans person is in your head? Well, that's me, because you've been working alongside me for a quarter of a century, and I am a typical trans woman.'”

“And guess what? There's probably a half a dozen other trans women and men around this organisation who are just quietly working away doing what they're doing, who don't want to be bothered. Whether they disclose this part of themselves is totally up to them. But I always find it incredibly beautiful.”

Future focused

When asked what she’s excited about lately, the international SKA project came up. 

“Everything we're doing is just so cool,” Suzy said.

“The collaboration across multiple countries to make it all work is brilliant. I love working with the European Space Agency (ESA). They are very much in the same vein as we are, and they're celebrating their people and saying, ‘Hey, this is who we are’, and they're a great mob.”

Suzy said in the last six years, seeing our involvement in Mardi Gras each year has been amazing.

“All of a sudden [CSIRO] is out and we're flying the colours,” she said.

“People are sharing their pronouns on their emails. People are publicly standing up and saying, ‘hey, we accept you.’”

Suzy’s weekend involved spending Saturday morning making tie-dye shirts with teenagers as part of TransFolk of WA – a peer support service for transgender people and their families in Western Australia.

“This really amazing advocacy and support organisation had a meetup at a youth centre, and they had all these teenagers showing up making tie-dye tops and just having just an awesome community. The atmosphere of pure ‘you are loved, you are accepted, you are perfect just the way you are'…how good is that?” she said.