Sunday March 12, 2023 - Invercargill Museums

Museum Day!!. We are in Invercargill for two nights and there are three must see places for us motor heads. Burt Munro's Indian motorcycle, located in a hardware store here in town, The Classic Motorcycle Mecca museum with every kind of motorcycle of every vintage you can image, and the Transport Museum which is full of restored trucks, tractors, cars, and every other kind of thing you can image.

But first, coffee. We drove the 2km downtown and found a coffee shop where we got our usual flat white and chai latte. We had toast and yogurt at the AirBnB so no breakfast required. We then wandered over to the hardware store where the original "Fastest Indian" (see the movie with Anthony Hopkins) resides. A couple of nice young clerks explained that the hardware store was one of the sponsors of Burt Munro and when Burt was hanging up his leather jacket, they made a deal to take all of Burt's bikes and show them in the store and not split them up. Of course when the movie came out in 2005 (Burt died in 1978), Burt was famous and now there is a stream of gear heads like me that come to see the bikes.

We then walked to Queen's Park to see the Burt Munro Statue and the Rose Garden. We split up and I walked to the Classic Motorcycle Mecca museum and Deb walked the gardens. The Classic Motorcycle Museum is a huge collection of vintage bikes from the early 1900's up until the 1980's. I have been to a bunch of these in the U.S. and here the emphasis is on British bikes like Matchless, BSA, Triumph, and all kinds of brands we never see in the states. There are a couple of local heroes highlighted like John Britton and George Begg Bunker. It is an amazing collection of restored motorbikes.

 

The third museum is the Transport Museum which started as a collection of restored trucks by a guy named Bill Richardson. He ran a trucking company as near as I could tell but also collected antique trucks and restored them along the way. Looks like his hobby got away from him and he had a huge collection by the time he died. One of his employees took it over and expanded it even more. There are tractors, semi trucks, Model T's, pickup trucks, straight jobs, busses, VW microbus', a few cars, fire trucks, you name it. There are even antique gas pumps, signs, spark plug testers, mechanic tools, even juke boxes. A lot of time and money went into all of these vehicles.

I got some lunch at the Transport Museum and then went back into the exhibits. This place is huge. While I was checking out the museums, Deb had a nice afternoon walking through town, perusing a local bookstore, and eating lunch at a cafe. 

Late afternoon I headed back to the AirBnB and after a chance to rest from my adventures, Deb and I found a pub (Northern Tavern) for dinner and pints. A nice down day in Invercargill.