Rochester Sports Museum

Description

Rochester Sports Museum is a nostalgic journey through the recent sporting past. This was an era when athletes were mostly amateur, and a good bloke, like John Forbes, could make a big difference to sport by just being generous and committed. 

John Forbes OAM KStJ, a local Mitiamo man, loved nothing more than a good yarn and making a new mate. He had a diverse career, from being local sheep farmer to being National Promotions Manager at PUMA Australia for 22 years from 1985. 

In his role at PUMA, John amassed a massive sports memorabilia collection which mainly consists of personalised mementoes of his encounters with famous (and not yet so famous) sports people. 

The museum's intriguing collection includes everything from Test cricketer Adam Gilchrist's wicket-keeping gloves and one of golfer Greg "The Shark" Norman's iconic hats, to a tennis dress worn by champion Martina Navratilova at the Australian Open and potato farmer-turned marathon runner Cliff Young's tracksuit. Among the more than 4,000 exhibits are a blazer worn by Herb Elliott at the Cardiff Commonwealth Games which marked the start of a freak run in which he smashed the four-minute mile barrier 17 times, one of Dennis Lillee's controversial aluminium cricket bats, a signed photograph of Mark Taylor from when he scored a world record 334 not out in Pakistan, a tracksuit worn by Soviet Olympian Sergey Bubka who broke the world record for men's pole vault 35 times and hundreds more.

 In our theatrette John shares key stories from his time at PUMA including the one about Merv’s Hughes’ moustache.

Open Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday 10am to 4pm as well as school holidays and public holidays.