The Dish is a 2000 Australian historical comedy-drama film that tells the story of the Parkes Observatory's role in relaying live television of humanity's first steps on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

Requesting that the man leave immediately, the technician encourages him to visit the observatory's nearby visitor centre and take the tour, as the dish has seen some amazing times.

When the mains power returns, the station's tracking computers have been wiped of all their programming, and the dish can no longer locate Command Module Columbia's signal in space.

Fearing that NASA may demote the team’s role in the Moon landing if it learns of the mistake, Cliff falsely responds that the dish is receiving a clear signal from the spacecraft.

After several hours and mishaps, they are able to lock on to the spacecraft's signal with minutes to spare before their scheduled shift as Apollo 11's main receiver begins, thus ensuring their mistake has gone undiscovered.

Regulations state that if the wind reaches 30 knots, the dish must be "stowed", meaning it can not be pointed at the Moon, and thus will not be able to receive Eagle's video broadcasts.

Events conspire such that the Parkes dish becomes the only antenna on Earth capable of receiving the historic video footage of Armstrong's first steps upon the Moon.

A title card explains that the dish withstood winds of over 60 mph (52 knots) to deliver the video footage of man walking on the Moon.

Some of the "props" were in fact original NASA equipment used during the Apollo 11 landing, left behind in Australia as they were too heavy (i.e. too expensive) to ship back to the U.S.[2] Staff from that era expressed amazement at seeing the set; they said it was like stepping through a time warp.

[3][4] Apart from the radio telescope scenes, the majority of the movie was actually filmed in the small town of Forbes, 33 km (21 mi) south of Parkes because of its old historic buildings, and also in Old Parliament House in Canberra, and Crawford Studios in Melbourne.

[5] They did, however, operate in very high winds gusting to 110 km/h (68 mph) (59 knots) at 60 degrees inclination, risking damage to the dish and even injury to themselves to keep the antenna pointed at the Moon during the moonwalk.