Recent ADAPs have celebrated the 60th birthday of the Parkes 64m radio telescope, which a year ago was given the Wiradjuri name Murriyang . Friday’s ADAP showed the birthday cake from Parkes’ 42nd birthday in 2003, which was marked by a visit from the US Ambassador, Tom Schieffer, to launch the Parkes support of NASA’s Mars missions at the time. The proceedings featured an exchange of gifts as illustrated above: a baseball bat was presented to the Observatory and a cricket bat, signed by ATNF staff, was presented to the Ambassador. In his speech Ambassador Schieffer told how he’d been offered the position of ambassador by US President George Bush: after he’d accepted, he said, he and his wife saw “The Dish”, and “that’s when I knew coming to Australia was going to be fun”!