The Young and The Restless | We moved slowly to MOVE

By Bree Harding

Jun 21, 2024

I’m ashamed to admit I’d never taken my kids — including my car-obsessed 16-year-old — to the Museum of Vehicle Evolution until earlier this month.

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Now that I have, I’m mourning for what we might’ve missed in our unintentional avoidance the past few years.

If you’ve never stepped foot inside the place either, here’s a spoiler: it’s a world-class facility.

Even the old cars at MOVE look brand new. Photo by Bree Harding

It is as good as any I’ve seen in my travels and the (ever-changing) collection is well worth the modest entry fee.

Quite often my boys and I go to museums or tourist attractions and I part with an unreasonable amount of money for something that keeps us entertained for only a few minutes.

The largest collection of Furphy Foundry history is housed in its own museum within the museum. Photo by Bree Harding

We walk out half an hour after walking in — after often a lengthy drive there — scratching our heads to come up with something else cheap to do in the area because Mum spent the lion’s share of the day’s budget on that anticlimactic experience.

Not at MOVE.

The boys battle for glory on the old 1995 Sega Rally Championship arcade game. Photo by Bree Harding

Even with a young and restless 13-year-old who would rather have been plane-spotting at an airport, we still managed to spend a couple of hours in the building and that was without reading half of the display signs, because, you know, how many teenagers have time to stop for that when there’s big shiny machines in their peripheral vision calling them over for a closer look?

One of the displays is a vintage BP garage. Photo by Bree Harding

If there’s one kind of sign they don’t miss though, it’s the ones telling them to come and try something.

So, they sat on a penny farthing among the Farren bicycle collection, got behind the wheel of a truck with a VR view out the windscreen down the Avenue of Legends and competed for glory in a 1995 Sega Rally Championship arcade game.

There are some curious oddities inside the Loel Thomson Costume Collection room, including this elephant foot planter, ram horn inkwell and tiger skin floor rug. Photo by Bree Harding

In the historic communications section, they dialled their Gran and Pop’s old landline agonisingly slowly on an old rotary phone, completely confused about which holes they needed to place their fingers in to select a particular number, while I watched in bewilderment as I realised just how old I’d grown to see my own kids fumble so alien-like with an object foreign to them that was so familiar to me from my childhood.

The boys took to the wheel of a truck in front of a virtual reality screen. Photo by Bree Harding

There are museums within the museum, including the biggest collection of Furphy Foundry history anywhere and the Loel Thomson Costume Collection displaying 200 years of clothing and accessories from around the world.

If you’re into curious oddities, there’s even something for you; you’ll find controversial accessories from a bygone era in the costume collection that have been fashioned from elephant feet, tiger claws and zebra skins.

Textiles and wares collected over 200 years are on regular rotation in the Loel Thomson Costume Collection. Photo by Bree Harding

Of course, the word museum often conjures visions of historic wares, or art, and while MOVE has its fair share of displays from the past and motor enthusiasts view vehicles as works of art, not everything inside is old.

MOVE is located at Emerald Bank in Kialla. Photo by Bree Harding

And the only things that look old about the vehicles that are actually old are their designs; otherwise they are in mint condition, as though straight off the original dealership’s showroom floor.

A Thunderbird that once belonged to late Aussie singer Johnny O’Keefe. Photo by Bree Harding

There are rotating floor sections, stylish downlights illuminating displays from above, with modern industrial, highly polished concrete floors below.

The roof is high, to allow for a mezzanine section in one area and tall trucks in another.

A vintage tour bus at the back of the museum is pleasing to the eye. Photo by Bree Harding

There are famous cars, cars owned by famous people, a championship-winning motorcycle, an extensive Harley-Davidson collection, trucks, buses and vintage work vans.