Mark Roberts #21 Slide 20 Parkes Radio Telescope

Parkes Radio Telescope: 2 Sonnets

This image shows my mother laughing

as she pours something out of a pot.

She is standing next to our old car

a two tone grey Holden FC parked

next to the radio telescope at Parks.

I can’t remember this trip and I was

told that I had just used the potty

after a long drive from Orange -

hence my mother’s obvious delight

at the successful progress of toilet training.

I am not in this picture, either I am in the back seat

or behind the car with Mill and Ida. Tom

is standing at the front of the car

with his back towards my mother.

I remember a later trip to the radio telescope

In the days before visitors centres and public

relations. We drove up a dirt track, over a few

cattle grids and parked at the base of the telescope.

There was a sign with some basic information,

but in the years before Apollo 11 and a feature

film there was little interest in cutting edge science.
I had read the How and Why Wonder Book of Astronomy

and explained to a captive audience what a Quasar was 

and how you could listen to it with a radio telescope. 

Back then you could only call the farm from Sydney

between 6 and 9pm when someone staffed

the Lidster exchange so the concept of listening

to a dying star seemed like a giant waste of resources.