The Young and The Restless | We moved slowly to MOVE

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I could bang on about this impressive local attraction for ever, describing in detail what’s inside.

But it’s right here in the Goulburn Valley — and very well priced — for you to go and see for yourself.

Displays are constantly on rotation, so what you saw one week might not be there the next.

And if you leave it six months between visits, you might see a vastly different collection to what you saw before.

Now we’ve finally discovered its wonder, we’ll be dropping in far more frequently.

Get your MOVE on!

What: Museum of Vehicle Evolution

Where: Emerald Bank, Kialla

Open: Seven days, 10am to 4pm

Cost: Adults $20; concession $16; kids (five to 16) $12; kids under five are free; family (two adults and up to four kids) $50

To pre-book tickets: https://www.moveshepparton.com.au/tickets (but you can just turn up and buy tickets at the door)