WHEN Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, some 600 million people watched him take his historic lunar walk.

But it's a little known fact that those gripping TV pictures were beamed from the middle of a sheep paddock in Australia.

The Dish tells how the tiny Australian town of Parkes was responsible for his first steps on the moon being broadcast to the world.

The town, in New South Wales, had a satellite station which ensured the first television pictures of the ground-breaking Apollo X1 Mission went out live - thanks to the engineers who put their lives and sanity on the line to make the broadcast.

Threaded with gentle, earthy humour, The Dish has already been a smash hit Down Under - and Sam Neill, Kevin Harrington and Tom Long are endearing as the laid-back techies who made history.

For an actor fascinated by space travel, Sam Neill must have thought he'd landed a dream role in The Dish.

Neill, who plays the pipe-smoking boss of the station, says the role brought back golden memories of that historic era.

"It was a wonderful period. I really don't think we live in such heroic times now as we did then. It's such an unlikely thing to do, to put a man on the moon, for no good reason.

"They didn't bring any particular knowledge back that they didn't have already. But what a wild and crazy thing to do."

The 53-year old star, who was a student at the time of the momentous event, says he would be first in the queue to buy a ticket to the moon.

"I'd love to go. I think it would be a completely brilliant thing to do. But I'm not entirely sure what I'd do when I got there," he says.

"I've always been fascinated by space travel. The mission that electrified me was Apollo 8. They were the first people to see the other side of the moon, to me that was absolutely fantastic. But I guess it's Apollo 11 that really got it."