town, east-central New South Wales, Australia, in the Lachlan River valley. Originally known as Bushman's, it was founded in 1862 as a reef- and alluvial-gold centre. It was renamed for Sir Henry Parkes, a state premier, in 1873, and was proclaimed a municipality in 1883. Parkes is a commercial centre for a sheep-, grain-, fruit-, pig-, and poultry-farming area of the Western Slopes region. It is also a rail junction on the Newell Highway, with air connections to Sydney (185 miles 【298 km】 southeast). The city's industries include iron foundries, steel fabrication works, sawmills, joineries, rail workshops, and agricultural machinery plants. One of the world's largest (210 feet 【64 metres】) bowl-shaped radio telescopes, operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, is at Alectown (15 miles north). Pop. (2006) local government area, 14,281.