The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Parkes Radio Telescope, Australia, has been in operation since 1961. It is a 64-metre parabolic antenna, with receiver systems capable of observing from 700-MHz to 26 GHz with bandwidths up to 3 GHz, and it is part of the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF). Parkes has continued to be at the forefront of radio astronomy and technology research, having had many improvements, which enabled unprecedented surveys of atomic hydrogen in the Southern sky, and helped discover approximately half the known population of pulsars, as well as discovering Fast Radio Bursts. Parkes was recognised as a Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Pathfinder in 2016, on the basis of Phased Array and Wideband Feed technology development. I will present a summary of the current status of the capabilities, and its science yield, in the context of the developments of SKA oriented technology. This includes the ultra-wideband low frequency receiver, a high frequency counterpart, and a cyrogenically cooled phased array feed.
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