Newcastle Club display
KEN TAYLOR from Newcastle Vintage Motor Cycle Club writes:
As a continuance of our fiftieth anniversary commemoration we have just concluded a two-week display in the Newcastle Museum running from April 21st to May 3rd. We stole the idea from a story you ran last year of the similar but much grander Dunedin Museum featuring the glass encased Britten. Their exhibition attracted sixty or was it eighty thousand viewers over three months, ours, a more modest 5,533 over a much shorter period. Our effort was as much as anything, to make the Newcastle public more aware of our activities and it worked quite well at doing just that. We were supported by fourteen of our club members who supplied the bikes, ranging from a 1912 BSA 500 to a 1984 700 Honda. While we could not boast any what some would say exotic machines, the display had a balance and there were some outstanding bikes on show. We were robbed of a few viewing days because of our monster weather event at the beginning of the first week. That left us with six no-shows reducing our full complement of bikes to thirty two instead of our promised thirty eight.
If there was a prize for the ‘punters choice’, it would have gone to the 1923 Waratah which was restored to a point where it could be described as simply elegant. Apart from the little Aussie battler, there was a Rudge Multi of regal appearance beside the one hundred and three years old BSA. Some wonderful Dougies, a lovely BSA Sloper, a magnificent 38 MSS Velo, a very nice 1956 ES2 Norton, a superb Suzuki Hustler and an outstanding 750 Suzuki “Water Bottle” and an equally outstanding R90S BMW. In their own way, each and every bike did not look at all out of place in the grand old museum building. Our next major event will be our 50th Jubilee Rally statring on Friday 21st and finishing on Sunday 23rd of August. For further info email... newcastlevintagemcc@yahoo.com.au For a video walk through at the Newcastle Museum go to www.youtube.com/watch?v= JcBJjWLRurY&feature=youtu.be