What is The Dish about?
The Dish is a 2000 Australian comedy-drama about the staff of the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, who helped broadcast television pictures of the Apollo 11 Moon landing to the world in July 1969.
The film was made by the Working Dog team, directed by Rob Sitch, who also made The Castle. Sam Neill played Cliff Buxton, the director of the observatory, with a cast of Australian comedians.
It tells a lightly fictionalised version of real events. The giant dish, in a sheep paddock outside the town of Parkes, was chosen by NASA to help receive signals from the Apollo 11 mission.
The real story
On 21 July 1969, Australian time, the Parkes telescope and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station near Canberra received television images of Neil Armstrong's first steps. Parkes pictures were used for much of the broadcast.
Strong winds buffeted the dish during the Moon walk, exceeding its safety limits, but the team kept it pointed at the Moon. The film dramatises this moment.
The Dish was one of Australia's highest-grossing films of 2000, and it brought new attention to Parkes, which now has a popular visitor centre.
Did You Know?
The Parkes radio telescope, completed in 1961, has a dish 64 metres wide and is known as Murriyang in the Wiradjuri language.