The 14th National Historical Machinery Association Rally rolled into Mudgee’s AREC site on the weekend and thousands of people were there to take in the sights, smells and sounds of yesteryear.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The event brought together many items of machinery, tractors, steam traction engines, stationary machinery, farming implements, and displays.
Cudgegong Valley Antique Machinery Club President Brian Jones said that he was pleased at how it came together.
“We’re very relieved, it was four years of hard work that went into this,” he said.
“We’ve had a big crowd here and they seem happy with what they’ve seen, which is good because they’ve got value for money.”
Mr Jones said that in the planning stages of the event he’d seen the list of what was coming to the rally but it was not until he walked around the site among the exhibits that he got the true feeling of the event.
“The list just doesn’t do it justice,” he said. “When you walk around, you see the machinery moving, hear the noise, smell the fumes and see them performing the job they were built for, like pumping water.”
At the official opening of the event, Member for Orange Andrew Gee welcomed the visitors to the event “from across Australia and the world”.
He also said “this area is a bit of a hotbed for antique machinery” and that events such as this “preserve the history of Australia, and tell the Australian story and how we got where we are today”.
Mid-Western Regional Council Mayor, Cr Des Kennedy, said the rally was just as much about the passion that the exhibitors bring, “the people that have so much passion for preserving the history of this great nation”.
Following the official opening some 80 historic machines formed the grand parade, one of three held throughout the weekend.
At the NHMA annual general meeting on Friday night it was decided that the next national rally would be held in Tasmania in 2015.