I can’t believe that it’s a year since the last AMCA Antique bike show at Bulli Showground. Indeed, I wouldn’t have known about it even being on except for the fact that a couple of my friends mentioned it on Facebook. It’s odd, because, last year, the pre-event publicity went on for months, I was almost getting tired of reading about it.
Anyway, knowing that it was on, I rocked up this morning to have a look. Straight away there was a problem. Parking at the Showground is a nightmare and this year I was forced again to park up in the top car park and stumble down a narrow, rutted path to the show area. To give you some idea of how bad it is, there are signs warning that the path is only to be negotiated with extreme care!
Of course, I only found out as I was leaving that there is disabled parking right on the site, a couple of signs would have been helpful.
Once down on level ground getting around is a lot easier. And I have to say that I was a bit underwhelmed. Over the last few shows the number of displays and the variety of what is on offer has been slowly reducing and this year it was noticeably “thinner” than in previous years. When I was leaving at around 11 a lot of the swap meet stalls were already packing up to go (perhaps they had sold everything yesterday?) and the bike park was considerably less crowded.
Now, variety. That’s what is the best thing about these shows. Well, variety wasn’t much on show, I am afraid. The main pavilion had around the same number of bikes as usual but about 90% of them were Ducatis (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and the number of “antique” bikes was considerably less than usual. Many of the displays were identical to last year’s and the whole thing had a “sameness” about it.
The bike park which has often had the most interesting variety of bikes on show was wall-to-wall Harleys with a few “gems” interspersed. And the “Judging” pavilion where the bikes that had been entered in the main show consisted of about 12 bikes, 11 of which were Harleys.
The entertainment was excellent, a lovely young lady called Polly who had the inestimable good taste to be playing an 18 year old Maton.
I’m not sure what the story is with the show. I know it’s expensive to stage a big show these days what with Public Liability insurance and all, but the show seems to have “levelled off” or diminished a bit which is very disappointing. I was hoping that, having had a year to get over COVID, things would be picking up a bit, but, evidently not.
Something needs to be done, though I can’t say what. Having said all that, I think I got my $10 worth.
