Parkes

• Summary
• Weather for Parkes

Country NSW and Australia's demographic centre, Parkes is situated 365km from Sydney, 995km from Brisbane, 1067km from Adelaide and 306km from Canberra. Parkes is a modern town, which has progressed from a gold rush town of last century to become a thriving commercial centre servicing a rich agriculture district.

From 1959-1961 the CSIRO built the first big-dish antenna radio telescope in the southern hemisphere 26km north of Parkes. One of the world's most powerful is has played a vital role in the detection of quasars and pulsars. Most recently the Parkes Radio Telescope was the star of the popular Australian movie 'The Dish.'

The area forms part of the catchment for two main river systems, the Bogan and the Lachlan Rivers, which are major tributaries of the Murray-Darling Basin System. Most watercourses in the Shire are not permanent, being reduced to a series of waterholes for the majority of the year.