The Dish presents a sensationalized account of the Parks observatory in Australia during the Apollo 11 Moon landing. It is a charming, and enjoyable movie staring Sam Neil and Patrick Warburton.
The story behind it is, NASA came to Australia looking for Dishes in the southern hemisphere in order to stay in touch with Apollo 11 on its approach to the moon. Parks Observatory was one such dish, it happened to be big enough to receive Television signals and not just still photographs and radio. A goodly portion of the live broadcast of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong's Walk on the moon was received and Decoded by Parks to be shown around the world.
The Movie makes good use of existing footage from real events, and the feeling of anticipation in the small town of Parks Australia to being " Part of the Team " was incredibly endearing. Despite some initial friction between the observatories operators and NASA's man on the ground, Al, played by Warburton.. and an obnoxious lefty daughter of the local official.. the movie was tremendous fun. It presented a relatively unknown facet of NASA's Space Program, at least to me anyway. I certainly don't remember reading about Honeysuckle and Parks Australia in school.
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