Day 7 - Parkes

Today, I was woken up by the sound of balloons inflating. The first three balloons were going up! Sadly, today was only a practise flight, so there were only 5 balloons.

Then, we packed up our tents and moved to the neighbouring sports ground, where the temporary overflow camping ground was located. We had been allowed to stay there for as long as we wanted for only 15$ a night.

Once we had moved, we drove on to Parkes for another day trip, this time in the opposite direction from Cowra. We were heading to Parkes. In Parkes, there was a massive radio telescope, the "Dish", and we were going to visit it. When, after a good hour's drive, we arrived, I was astonished at how small it looked. It had once been the largest radio telescope in the southern hemisphere! but as I got closer, I realised that it was bigger than it looked.

The "Dish"

The Dish is very important. And the reason for that is that in 1969, NASA gave over the responsibility of filming the moon landing to the Dish, due to the fact that NASA was simply going to be on the wrong side of the Earth for filming.

It was so important, they even made a movie about it (called The Dish). And the telescope, as it said in the movie, "is still in the middle of a sheep paddock".

When we arrived, we browsed the souvenir shop until the next 3D Cinema session, which started every 30 minutes. When the movie started, we were treated to 3 different videos, one about the evolution of space telescopes, one about Marsian exploration, and one about how massive the universe is. They blew our minds!

After the 30 min session, we went back outside to see the telescope. Close up, it was as massive as they said.