A personal 30 year collection of restored Land Cruisers sit housed in the Gundagai Theatre as part of the Land Cruiser Foundation Museum. The next opening will be Snake Gully Cup weekend.
Earlier in the month the Gundagai Theatre reopened for a weekend, showcasing an extensive range of historical, restored Land Cruisers at the Land Cruiser Foundation Museum.
The Times caught up with Luke Cass who is behind the impressive 30-year collection and has owned Gundagai Theatre for the last 5 years.
“It was a really positive response from the community. There was also the big Land Rover event on that weekend, and they originally rang me and suggested I open as there would be a lot of people around. We were going to open over the long weekend but instead we opened a weekend earlier, which was great. We got the word out and there was a lot of Land Cruiser people attend.”
“Locals loved it, they had an inkling as to what was going on as we have had the theatre for five years now, and the collection is a personal collection from the last 30 years. The museum was empty for a long time and not being utilised, and the building lent itself to doing something like that. It is such a lovely building,” Luke said.
“Land Cruisers are the big features in the museum, there is a lot of passion for them, a lot of farmers and a lot of people love them, everyone has a story about one of them and people were coming in with their stories, and it was really interesting.”
“It was also an opportunity for people to relive some memories; a lot of locals came through telling stories about the Theatre as well when they were kids and how they used to come and watch movies there,” Luke said.
“I think locals are happy to see it being used for something; it is such a magnificent building. We’ve fixed it up a fair bit over the years too and brought it back, so it’s looking good,” Luke said.
The collection has a wide range of historic vehicles but there is one Land Cruiser in Luke’s collection specifically that is very rare and was the showstopper.
“I found it in Tumut and it was used in the Snowy Mountains Scheme. It is a 1968 FJ45V, and there was about 100 of them brought in for the Snowy Mountains executives, so there are probably about 10 of them left in Australia.”
“It has been restored over the past 11 years, and I only got it back from the shop a few days before we opened. Everyone loved it and were really wrapped about it being in the collection as it is rare,” Luke said.
The opening weekend of the museum saw roughly 500 adults and children through the doors across the weekend, with the proceeds from the entry cost being donated to some local charities and contributing to the cost of running the weekend.
Luke is going to try to open the museum once a month, but for now the next opening will be Snake Gully Cup weekend, Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 November from 10am-5pm.
For all updates, visit the Land Cruiser Foundation Museum – Gundagai Facebook page.
– Emily Flint
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