**The Dish Celebrates 25 Years of Highlighting Australia’s Role in Moon Landing** The film "The Dish" has marked its 25th anniversary, reminding audiences of Australia’s significant contribution to the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Released in 2000, the movie quickly gained popularity and showcased how the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales played a crucial role in broadcasting the historic event to 600 million viewers worldwide. Starring Sam Neill as the lead scientist, the film creatively depicted a group of Australian researchers as the only hope for capturing images of humanity's first steps on the Moon. Neill reflected on the film's impact, stating, "To connect such a world-shattering event to somewhere extremely ordinary like rural NSW — people loved that. It is something that Australia can be proud of, and it is certainly something that NASA is always grateful for." Roy Billing, who portrayed Mayor Bob McIntyre, expressed pride in how the film helped elevate Parkes as a tourist destination. "Even now, people come up to me and say how much they loved the film," he said. "It was just an absolute joy to work on. It was a role any actor would die for." The film was created by Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy, Tom Gleisner, and Santo Cilauro from Working Dog Productions. Sitch admitted he was unaware of Australia’s involvement in the NASA program until Gleisner mentioned it during a brainstorming session. "We thought he was joking and didn't believe him until we researched some old newspapers," Sitch said. John Sarkissian, an operations scientist at the CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory, served as an advisor for the film. He noted that while Australians were aware of the observatory's role during the Apollo 11 mission, the public had largely forgotten about it in the years that followed. "The film was able to reintroduce the CSIRO's role to a new generation of Australians," Sarkissian said. The movie also had a significant impact on tourism. Before its release, approximately 50,000 visitors came to see the telescope, known as Murriyang, each year. This number surged to 138,000 in the years following the film's debut and has since stabilized at around 100,000 annually. Neill remarked, "One of the effects of the film was to make Parkes more of a tourist destination — simply to see the Dish itself. It is the true hero of the film." A memorable scene from the film features scientists playing cricket on the dish, which has since become a popular topic among visitors. Sarkissian shared, "The most common question we get asked now at the observatory by visitors is, 'Did you really play cricket on the dish?' The answer to that is no, unfortunately. The reason they had that in the film was to give the dish scale." Ken Keith, the deputy mayor of Parkes at the time of the film's release, recalled the excitement in the community. "The feeling was electric around town that the radio telescope was finally being recognized," he said. "It was a wonderful movie for the Parkes community … it still brings a tear to my eye every time I watch it." Since its opening in 1961, the Parkes Observatory has focused on astronomy research. Murriyang is one of the largest telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere and is particularly effective in discovering pulsars, which are rapidly spinning neutron stars that enhance our understanding of extreme physics. Sarkissian noted, "This telescope has been responsible for finding more pulsars than all the other radio telescopes in the world combined." In 2024, the observatory continued its legacy by assisting NASA and SpaceX with the Intuitive Machines' robotic spacecraft Moon landing. Sarkissian explained, "It is only a small part of what we do, the space tracking, but they're invariably the most famous things. That is all the public ever hears, so they think that is all we do, but we do far, far more."