Parkes Things to Do

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In Parkes. N.S.W

The Indian Pacific ..A Great Australian Train Journey...actually stops in Parkes . On the way to Perth you have to be up in the middle of the night but as she travels back to Sydney the train stops here so there is a chance to feel the excitement.

"Just talking to friends who travelled from Parkes to Perth in 2009 and they told us the food was superb."You always travel gold" for special service....We are presently in Parkes for the Elvis Festival(2012) and discovered the IP is here for a few hours stopover in the middle of the night on the journey to Perth. Maybe we will be lucky today and see the IP on its return to Sydney"

A special Elvis train travelled from Sydney for the January Festival.

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Parkes, N.S.W

So you visit a medium size town in Australia...you find the pub for a start and places of interest...but you want to see how the people live...where do the 'posh' folk build their homes once they come off the land?

To find the "upmarket" homes of Parkes you find what the locals fondly call the ""Yellow Brick Road"

Besides the homes you can also (If you are lucky) command a striking view ...of the cemetry.

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This was an interesting section of the car-museum, that was not in the ordinary exhibition of vintage-cars, but rather shown in a shed between tracktors and other machineries.
I had asked one of the employees of the museum, if there are any other cars than there in the big hall, and they said NO, thats all ! So they did not considder them as cars, but as trucks.
I am glad I found them anyway on my way through all of the museum.
Interesting to find out, that the body of some of these cars was totally made of wood, like the ones in my main picture, dating back to 1910.

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I have to say I have never seen so many steam-tractors in one place so far as in the Museum of Parkes. They have about 40 of them in all sizes. These machines had been used also as engines to drive other machineries, this is what the large wheel is for: a wide, strong rubberband was going from there to other machineries to make them work.

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This is another quite interesting part of the museum: Right after the exhibitions of Elvis Presley and the vintage cars you will find a great collection of things of every-day-life of yesterday. Take a look at my extra pictures here as well, there are sewing-machines, cameras of the early days, household-utensils, clocks etc.etc.etc.

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Once that you have come to Parkes and are very much interested in vintage-cars, I can only highly recommend to go to Forbes as well for the Mcc Feeters Motormuseum, that was certainly the best collection of Vintage Cars that I saw on my trip around Sydney and NSW. They show luxury cars and cars of the ordinary people as well as trucks and they even have a rare car from Japan, that was used for funerals, see it in the back of my main picture here and in one of my many travelogues in my Forbes-page !
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This museum is open daily from 9am-5pm
Closed only on Christmas Day !
entrancefee is 10,- AUS

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This wonderfull vintage steam-train is standing next to the tourist-information of Parkes and it is a really impressive monument for the early days of transport in Australia.
It is a Locomotive 3075 that was set into service in 1912.
This locomotive is standing on a parkinglot and you can walk around of it and watch the details from a close distance.

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You will find an excellent collection of guitars, photos, suits and othere things that the "king" Elvis Presley had in his posession - most of them were given by his former girlfriend Ginger Alden to this museum.
This Elvis Presley-collection is part of the car-museum and includes also Presley's last Caddillac
See more exhibits of this part of the museum in my travelogues !
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This museum is open:
Monday - Friday 9am - 4pm
Sat/Sun & Public Holidays 10am - 4pm