Oops – a Plan Change

Mc Feeters Car Museum at Forbes

We had a very relaxing two days in Forbes. It is a lovely town consisting of ‘the old’ and ‘the new’ in terms of buildings and it is also famous for the McFeeters Car Museum. Located on the Newell Highway at Forbes, the museum is a stunning new facility purpose built for displaying a vast collection of meticulously restored motorcars. Cars range from veterans to custom cars, rare, common, hotrods and a few motorcycles. If you are in the area, the museum is worth a look.

We have said this ‘a number’ of times in the past, but we continue to meet some great people on our travels.  It happened again at Forbes. Our travel intentions after our Forbes visit was to meander our way south to Lakes Entrance on the Victoria coast, hopefully arriving there around mid January. However during our two day stopover at Wheogo Park in Forbes, we meet a group of six or so vanners who were heading to the town of Parkes, a 30km drive north of Forbes, to celebrate the birthday of “The King – Elvis Presley”.

While its has been 36 years since Elvis ‘left the building’, 2014 will be the 22nd anniversary of the Parkes Elvis Festival.  The town is expecting 18,000+ Elvis fans to gather in their town, doubling the population to celebrate Elvis’s birthday. The festival features a 5-day program of events including a Miss Priscilla Competition, the Elvis Street Parade, Cars of the Era Show, free main stage entertainment, look-a-like contests, Tribute to Elvis Competition, Elvis Gospel Service, Renewal of Wedding Vows, Busking Competition, Poets Breakfast, displays of Elvis memorabilia, Wall of Fame, and over 150 unique Elvis-style events.

Our new friends informed us that as a result of a cancellation, they had a site available at the Parkes Showground for our motorhome if we were interested in joining them.  They had attended last years’ celebrations and it sounded a bit like Whangamata’s Beach Hop. An unscheduled management meeting was called and after a ‘very brief’ discussion we decided to join our new travelling companions at Parkes.

So here we are, Monday night, tucked up nicely at the Parkes Showground and mentally preparing ourselves for a week of festivities. While the formal programme does not start until Wednesday, because travellers such as ourselves get here early, they have ‘pre programme’ entertainment for the early birds – in addition to the 5 o’clockers of course.

We will put up photographs of our ‘Elvis week’ on the next blog update.

Our plan is to stay in Parkes until next Monday (13^th) then starting heading to Lakes Entrance.