Inside Ollies' Garage: Canberra's newest attraction is decidedly car-themed

Ian Oliver names the Australian War Memorial as his favourite Canberra institution but, for a car fanatic, it has a problem.

“There are really only military-related vehicles on display.”

It’s the same story with the National Museum of Australia, where there is really only the Holden Prototype 1, and maybe something else from the collection parked in the foyer if you’re lucky.

Canberra needed something else, he reckoned, and it opened earlier this month.

You might know Ian and his wife Tina best for their giant designer mansion in Red Hill called ‘The Nest’, but they’re now also the faces behind Ollies’ Garage, Canberra’s first “museum-like” car showroom, located in a two-storey block on Gladstone Street in Fyshwick.

Their house includes a ground floor garage and workspace but, as with most garages, “they’re never big enough”.

“This was also to stop people wanting to come through our house all the time,” Ian says.

It’s taken about 12 months to fit out the space and realise the 20-year dream, inspired by other car collections he’s seen overseas.

There’s certainly no missing it – every outside wall is wrapped in sprawling colourful murals by local artist Edward Mowat. There’s a coffee van parked out the front all day every day, so customers and employees from the nearby businesses are coming to know the place too.

Ian is a trustee of the Sir Henry Royce Foundation, formed in 1955 by the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club of Australia “to preserve the heritage of the past in relation to items manufactured by Rolls-Royce and Bentley”.

Rolls-Royce might be owned by BMW now and Bentley by Volkswagen, but the two British stalwarts became effectively one and the same company when Rolls-Royce bought Bentley in 1931. The two only split when BMW bought the rights to the RR name and badging in 1998.

The front door at Ollies’ Garage opens to reveal many items on loan from the foundation, including a supercharged six-cylinder Rolls Royce engine (cut away to show its internal workings), one of the engine heads from the first car to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the 1965 Rolls Royce used by the late Queen on a number of her royal tours of Australia.

Ian was born in England and was only three-years-old when his family emigrated to Canberra as “10-pound Poms”.

His father owned the first business on what’s now a pulsing industrial thoroughfare in Queanbeyan, Yass Road. He ran a service station, located where the John McGrath dealership is now. Ian recalls growing up in a caravan in the service station’s backyard.

“We’re Canberra people through and through,” he says.

For a time, he also owned a Tudor-style manor house near Newcastle which he blames for his love affair with English cars.

“I thought, ‘I’ve got an English (style) house – I need an English car’.”

The car collecting started with a black 1951 Bentley Mark VI, effectively a barn find and in a “shocking” state. After a ground-up restoration, he was driving it to Melbourne for the Australian leg of the Rolls Royce World Centenary Tour in 2004.

It’s on display in the museum today, glimmering just as brightly as the day it emerged from the factory.

But there’s more than the British inside Ollies’ Garage.

There’s an original Ford XY Falcon GTHO Phase III, nicknamed ‘The Saint’, and next to it, an older Falcon, still wearing bruises from its time competing in the 1969 London-Sydney Marathon rally; a Holden FX that had been parked up in a barn for the better part of 50 years; the very first Holden EK with the new car smell still intact; and an original Toyota Corolla from before they were made here.

Ollies’ Garage is open to the public between 9 am and 12 pm on the first Saturday of every month, and then by appointment for groups and clubs at other times. The cars will be rotated so there’ll always be something fresh to see too.

It officially opened on Saturday, 6 July, and Ian says interest has been strong.

“All sorts of people, a very strong proportion from outside Canberra, are phoning me up and asking when they can see it. And we’ve had individual negotiations with car clubs.”

He’s in talks with some of Canberra’s local motorsport names about how the Garage might be able to better represent them, and flags possibly expanding into the upstairs space in the future if demand proves high enough.

“There are plenty of legends in Canberra and that’s something that’s got to be cherished.”

Entry to Ollies’ Garage is by ticket only. Buy online.