The First Signal From the Moon – New South Wales, Australia

The First Signal From the Moon
New South Wales, Australia

I don’t know why it took me so long to write about last weekend, when I finally implemented the idea of making short “day trips” with the motorcycle, absorbing the most in the range of 500 kilometers from Canberra.

But for every kind of trip like this, or everything else in life, you need motivation. And I’m not the most motivational prone person that I know. I am never motivated.

Unless it is by me.

The plan was to go to Sydney to watch “Zatoichi”, Takeshi Kitano’s samurai movie that wasn’t being shown in Canberra. Motivation enough. Maybe even go to a car show to impress friends back home, but that was secondary to the stupid motivation idea that was to drive 350 kilometers (700 kilometers roundtrip) to see a movie.

The Dish

But the plan changed the night before, on Friday, when me and Joris were in front of the TV disagreeing on what to watch: “Superman” or “The Dish”. The first one I’ve seen more times than I can count, but I wanted to watch out of respect for Christopher Reeve, who died that week. “The Dish” is an Australian movie that I saw one time back in Brazil and thought it was so-so, with some cool historic background but that was it. An Australian heartwarmer, glorifying how simple and loving these people can be.

Well, we watched “The Dish” against my will, because I’m such a good boy. But the movie gave me an idea: why not go to the dish, see the actual place where the movie was filmed but, most importantly, where the first images from the men on the moon landed on earth for the very first time.

The next thing I know I’m waking up just before 6 a.m., filling up the motorcycle, buying some Mentos and hitting the road.

The dish is located in Parkes, in North-Western New South Wales, about 300 kilometers from Canberra. Now I have my huge atlas and can go anywhere.

The first thing was to get to Yass, my favourite town near Canberra. Still beautiful. From there I was afraid that I was lost already. But having good reflexes proved important when I found the turn into a tertiary road that lead me to Bowning and Wombat (population: 120), ending up in Young. Beautiful drive on a Saturday morning. Just some trucks on the road, and quaint farms all around.

In Young ,I stopped to look at the map. A good chap that was opening a store started a conversation and asked me where I was heading. After getting past my accent (and the helmet), he taught me an “insider’s path” to Parkes, through the Henry Lawson’s (!!!) Way. Australians in the countryside are the best. I’m glad I’m not spending that much time in the “must see locations” from the travel guides.

Why the “!!!” in the name Henry Lawson? Because he was the definitive motivator (again) of my idea of going “the hard way” through Australia. I highly recommend his short stories (the poems are still beyond me, I don’t know Australia that much yet).

Well, the name was already cool, imagine my surprise, after long straight patches of road in a semi-outback setting, at seeing the words “Henry Lawson’s Birthplace” near the entrance of Grenfeld?! That was too cool to be true! I went there, to the place where he was born, in a tent in a gold field. This son of a Norwegian, that experienced from early life the roughness of Australia, cultivating a bittersweet love for this country.

I drove around the city, even more charming than usual for the extremely charming cities of countryside Australia, and stopped for gas. The attendant of the gas station came out and started chatting. About the weather, about snow, about travelling… much different from the attendants that just stay on the other side of the counter and barely look at your face (but I’m not seeing that many of them anymore).

From there another stretch of road in open fields, tinted green, yellow and…purple! Very weird, but a kind of purple flower covers large portions of these fields. I forgot to ask what they are, if they are something productive like canola, but they’re beautiful, and that’s productive enough for me.

Arriving on a busy Saturday morning in Parkes, I discovered that the dish was 27 kilometers out of the city. There I went.

The first sight of the dish was…heartwarming. Effect of the movie probably, but I suspect that the landscape was opening my heart on my way over there even more than a silly movie script.

As usual, the place is very well organised for tourists, with a visitor centre fully equipped. Yearly visits grew to 120,000 people after the movie was released. The dish is still operational, and I could see it move about 4 times, reading electromagnetic emissions from distant pulsars (I’m not inventing this. The schedule of the scientist team was published in the visitor centre). I couldn’t get inside the building of the dish (or play cricket in it, as the FAQ stated), but got near enough, and ate a sandwich looking at the dish, that in its own turn was looking at the universe.

Walked about a little, took some pictures and returned. Stopped in a dirt road to see the dish from a distance, listening to the sound of an old wind direction indicator (in Portuguese: “biruta”).

My way back was very fast, stopping only for gas and to take pictures of the places that I decided to keep with me from this trip (Henry Lawson’s birthplace, the purple fields, the “wombat eggs” sign, etc…). This because I had to arrive back at 4:30 p.m. for drinks with a Brazilian PhD that lives here in Canberra.