Send flowers to Parkes, home of the Dish and the Elvis Festival

Parkes is a town of 9,832 people (2021 census) on Wiradjuri country in the New South Wales Central West, 355 km west of Sydney, 100 km west of Orange and 33 km up the road from Forbes. Most Australians know it for two things: the 64-metre radio telescope 20 km north of town that carried the Apollo 11 pictures to the world and now also goes by its Wiradjuri name, Murriyang, and the Elvis Festival that fills the main street with jumpsuits every January. Between those headlines it is a working farming and freight town, and a florist here delivers to all of it.

Where a Parkes florist delivers

The whole town is covered, from the shops along Clarinda Street to the newest streets on the edges, plus rural properties on the roads out towards Alectown, Goonumbla and Bogan Gate. For a farm, give the property name as well as the road number, a mobile number for the driver and a note on where to leave the flowers if nobody is home. Forbes, 33 km to the south-west, is normally a separate run, so an order for Forbes placed early in the day has the best chance of arriving the same afternoon. Someone working at the Northparkes copper and gold mine 27 km north of town is best reached at home or at the family's address in town rather than at the mine gate, where a delivery driver has no access.

The Parkes cut-off, and what it is on your clock

Order before 2pm Monday to Friday or before 10am on Saturday, Parkes time, and the flowers leave that day. Nothing is delivered on Sundays, so for a Sunday birthday choose the Saturday. Parkes keeps New South Wales time, including daylight saving from October to April, which matters if you are ordering from interstate: from Brisbane, Cairns or the Gold Coast in summer the 2pm cut-off arrives at 1pm on your clock and the Saturday cut-off at 9am. From Perth it is 11am in summer and noon in winter; from Adelaide it is 1.30pm all year. Miss the cut-off and the order simply moves to the next working day, or to any later date you pick.

Flowers to Parkes Hospital

Parkes Hospital is at 2 Morrissey Way. Ring the ward before you order: intensive care and some wards take no fresh flowers, and the nurses can tell you whether a patient is about to be transferred to Orange or Dubbo for specialist care, in which case the bouquet should follow them or wait for the homecoming. Give the patient's full name and the ward on the order, and add the family's home as a fallback address if discharge is close.

Elvis week and the other dates that sell out

The Parkes Elvis Festival runs from Wednesday 6 to Sunday 10 January 2027, its 34th year, held as always in the second week of January around Elvis Presley's birthday on 8 January. It began as a one-night event for a couple of hundred people and now draws more than 25,000 fans, a good share of them arriving on the Elvis Express train from Sydney. Accommodation and florists are both stretched that week, so order flowers for a January birthday a few days early. Valentine's Day on 14 February follows a month later in the hottest part of the Parkes year, when roses should go to an address where someone can get them into water straight away. Mother's Day is Sunday 9 May 2027; flowers are delivered on Saturday 8 May with a 10am cut-off. Anzac Day on 25 April is marked with rosemary and wreaths rather than bouquets, and Father's Day falls on 5 September 2027, early in the Central West spring.

Frosts, heat and what is in season

Parkes sits 324 metres above sea level with a mean maximum of 23.4 degrees and a mean minimum of 10.9, but the extremes are wide: the record runs from minus 4.2 to 45.5 degrees, and about 588 mm of rain falls in a year. Winter frosts mean cool-climate flowers hold up well from June to August: ranunculus, tulips, iris, hellebores and chrysanthemums. Spring brings sweet pea, lisianthus, lilac and, for a few weeks in October and November, peonies. Summer bouquets lean on gerberas, gladioli, dahlias, snapdragons and native stems that shrug off a 40-degree afternoon, and autumn is the season of proteas, leucadendron, tulips and chrysanthemums, which is why they turn up in so many Mother's Day bouquets. A seasonal bouquet lets the florist use whatever came in freshest that morning.

Cemetery, chapels and sympathy flowers in Parkes

Parkes Cemetery is on Want Street. Wreaths, casket sprays and sheaves for a service are ordered two or three days ahead through the funeral director or a florist in town; delivery to the service itself is never guaranteed, so give the family's home as a second address. A sympathy bouquet sent to the house can arrive the day you hear the news or a few weeks later, once the visitors have thinned out.

What flowers to Parkes cost

A hand-tied bouquet to Parkes starts at AUD 75, with the delivery fee shown and added at checkout; the card message costs nothing extra.

Did you know? Did you know? The 64-metre Parkes radio telescope, 20 km north of town, carried the television pictures of the Apollo 11 moonwalk to the world in 1969 and was given the Wiradjuri name Murriyang in 2020.