The Big Motorcycle

The museum earns it. It holds more than eight hundred motorcycles along with memorabilia running from 1900 to the present, which makes it one of the most substantial collections of its kind in the country, sitting in a small town on the mid-north coast of New South Wales rather than in a capital city.

That is characteristic of motorcycling as a subculture. The serious collections, rallies and clubs tend to be in country towns, built by people who did the work themselves, and largely invisible to anyone not already involved.

One genuinely useful detail: specialist documentation confirms the motorcycle is an exterior photo stop, so stopping for a picture does not require paying museum admission. That distinction matters more than it sounds, because a great many oversized objects in this catalogue sit behind a ticket gate and the record rarely says so plainly.

Nabiac is just off the Pacific Highway between Taree and Forster, which puts the museum and its motorcycle within easy reach of a very well-travelled road.

Nothing available settles a date, the person responsible and the height.