Day 4. June 23 2022. The Dish Day

Dish day. Roughly 50 minutes from Forbes is a famous scientific installation in the middle of a sheep paddock. In 2000 it was made famous by the working dog crew in the movie The Dish. If you haven’t seen it, go and log onto Netflix now, buy it online, do whatever, but it is one of my favourite movies of all time. The radio telescope in Parkes installed out there played a pivotal role in bringing the pictures to the world when man walked on the moon, and the movie dramatises the event in a lovely and entertaining way.

When looking for places to go and see, this popped up as a possibility but I was scared it would be a bit like turning up to pissweak world. However, it was anything but. The dish itself is quite impressive in it’s size, and incomprehensible in what it does. It literally does sit on top of a stand and weighs the same as two 747s. When it moves, it does so almost silently and majestically. The visitor center managed to avoid tacky and the coffee managed to put a real spark in your step. I spent a while trying to figure out where the movie shots were taken from and comparing to what I remembered. Highly recommend, 1 billion stars.

Parkes itself seems to have rebelled after being snubbed from the movie (most town scenes were done in Forbes). For some reason, they have decided to be the center of Elvis world in the southern hemisphere. Lovely statue, heaps of signs, posters, flyers and a festival held near his birthday every year. This has NOT avoided tacky and the only explanation is that Elvis himself has set this up to continue hiding out, and every year enters his own look alike competition to come third and remain under the radar.

Back to Forbes in the afternoon and a wander around looking for some of the filming sites for the dish. Found a pub and Forbes municipal chambers that were the Parkes council chambers in the movie. Had fun to try and play in my head the movie parts where the buildings were.

Forbes is also Ben Hall country and sung about in the song Streets of Forbes by Weddings, Parties, Anything. Have racked up two song references so far (see Tarcutta), found a stock and station agent (not a stocking station – one mondegreen cleared up for me) referenced in “The year she spent in England”, (WPA Again) so can start seeing a theme popping up…..