Exploring The Dish

Over the years I've spoent quite a bit of time working out in Forbes, a medium sized town in mid West New South Wales.

Forbes is (much to their disgust) known as a twin town with Parkes, which is a substantially bigger town, and as any Australian School kid from the 1960s and 70s will tell you, is home to the Parkes Radio Telescope. I still remember the rules we used to have at school, they had about 10 pictures across the top of them, and many rulers had a picture of the Parkes Radio Telescope.

Then for some reason, Parkes went out of favour and it was sort of forgotten about, at least from the cities point of view.

Then, two things happened that dragged Parkes back into the National (and perhaps global) consciousness:

  1. The annual ELVIS Festival
  2. The movie - The Dish

Once a year people flood Parkes to enjoy the ELVIS Festival, which, some say, is right up there with the Paris' L'Opera.

And of course the famous movie The Dish - which shows a dramaticised version of the role the Parkes Radio Observatory playing in the Apollo 11 Moon Landing back in 1969. It's a reallyu, really good film. If you haven't seen it, I strongly suggested having a look.

Anyway....I digress....I have spent a lot of time out in Forbes, and every chance I got I went over to have a look at the dish. Everytime you go there it looks a bit different depending on the position of the receiving dish. ANyway, here are a few photos I took of it back in 2020.