Bowral’s Bradman Museum.

Up early on Sunday 23 February, cleaned red dust off the old 55 and a quick spray wax/polish, then headed off to meet the other Buickers at the southern highlands Mittagong Info Center before our 10.45am departure for the Bradman Cricket Museum in Bowral. It was an easy run to Mittagong down the Hume H/way to arrive on time, have a chat and get the run sheet from Geraldine.

Couldn’t be any easier, “ If you get lost just look for the brown Bradman Museum sighs” said Colin Castle! But as it turned out, don’t follow Peter Cook – he took a wrong turn, and lead the last 3 cars, including Colin & myself behind him, the wrong way. Maybe we were lucky Peter had Margarite navigating and we all chucked a U’ee, turning around to see the brown sign – maybe hidden by a tree branch, leading us to our parking spot in Glebe Park adjacent to Bradman Oval and museum opposite Bradman cottage, parking amongst some shady trees.

If you had some morning tea (late) it was time to chow down, but if you didn’t have coffee or tea etc, the museum café wasn’t far away. Whilst settling in we were joined by more local Buickers: Les Rundle from Bundanoon in his 1923 Master 7 seat tourer; Ken & Lorraine Price in their 1936 8/40 black sedan and from further afield Colin & Annette Booth from Kiama Downs in their 1964 Skylark coupe and Phil & Margarite Smith from Canberra in the 1947 Super sedan. A total of 12 buicks & 1 Chev. If your superstitious = 12.5.

Tony G repositioned his 1971 Riv, out of the cars lined-up so we had a larger area for a bigger camp of chairs – discussion group, to over near the cricket nets but decided to move it again later. Wise move. Colin skipped smoko to have a go at tuning the 1923’s carbie with success, as some looked on.

Some of us took the 12noon tour of the “Hall of Fame” inside the museum while other slow pokes settled for a 12.30 tour, at $15pp a concession ticket., good value. Most of the women headed into town shopping. All very interesting for cricket fans, not only Bradman memorabilia; past television interviews with The Don etc; Adam Gilchrest’s donation of all his cricketing caps including a baggy green etc. I later sat and watched the Kerry (Ch9) Packer 1977-79 “ tussle with The Australian Cricket Board over World Series Cricket. “Howzat”. It brought back a lot of memory’s, “C’omn Aussie C’mon”. Let there be light and there was! Night cricket was born! Great stuff.

The clouds came and went, hot then cold, jumpers off then on, as we had our late lunch and the happy women returned from the Bowral shops. We talked of coming Buick events at Molong in March & Tamworth in May etc until it was time to pull up stumps (3.30) and head our separate ways.

The 55 purred all the along the expressway at 70mph on my speedo but it’s out by 5 mph? so I guess I was doing the expressway speed limit of 110kl/h, and still people passing me.  Making it easily home by 4.15 pm in Camden .

Thanks Geraldine & Greg an enjoyable day out!

Gary Ferrett

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