Forbes and Parkes

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Saturday 9th July
Left Hay planning on stopping at West Wyalong but the weather was cold so we decided that the car was the best place to be so we carried on to Forbes and found the most delightful caravan park right on the Lachalan River, paid an extra $3 per night for a riverfront position right in front of the water fall. ($30 pn less TT disc $3 - $27pn) Just beautiful, it was a pity that that is was too cold to sit outside to watch the water fall.
Sunday we went for a drive to Parkes to see the Telescope which featured in the movie "The Dish" which was about the people involved in tracking the Apollo 11 Mission to the moon in 1969.
The telescope was built in Parkes because it was considered the most suitable place because of the least wind speed, unfortunatly the highest wind recorded at Parks in the first decade of operation was just minutes before the Apollo 11 moonwalk began.
When we were heading back to the caravan we noticed that there was an Elvis Museum and I remembered that Parkes has a Elvis feastival and much to John's disgust we turned back to check it out. The museum held part of the Elvis collection owned by Greg Page (the yellow Wiggle). It was amazing, we were both very impressed (yes even John). They also had a vintage car collection which had 2 cars owned by Elvis including the Cadillac Seville which was the car he drove 2 days before he died. Outside of the museum there were huge sheds with all kinds of old machinery and old cars - very interesting.
When we called into Woolworths in Forbes they had Tom Jones singing over the PA - Elvis and Tom and the same day - I was in my glory. You just never know what you find when you travel. We asked at the museum where we could have lunch and was told to check out the Parkes Services Club, we had a great roast lunch for $9 each (bargain)

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