Peter Brock museum to close indefinitely

The Queensland floods have claimed an unsuspecting casualty: the museum that holds Australia's biggest collection of Peter Brock's road and race cars will close its doors indefinitely from the end of next month.

Although the collection was not in danger of water damage, access by road and air to Champion's Brock Experience in Yeppoon, near Rockhampton, was cut off during the busiest time for the museum – the summer holiday break – and the number of visitors dropped from hundreds a day to a handful.

The Rockhampton airport is still closed until repairs can be carried out.

"It's the hardest decision we've ever had to make," manager Heather Smith told the Carsales Network last night. "Things were tough towards the end of last year but the floods sealed our fate unfortunately. At a time when we would usually have more than 100 people a day, we were seeing only one or two."

Champion, a semi-retired mining contractor, opened the doors to his car collection in 2007, the year after Brock died in a road rally. It was a dream shared by him and Brock to let the public view more than 40 of Brock's classic and iconic road, race and rally cars. Most recently, Champion added the last car Brock ever raced – the vehicle he was driving when he died – after restoring it over the past four years.

Champion says he never intended to make a profit, but wanted the entry fees to at least cover the cost of maintaining the museum. "I'm just a Brock fan who wants to share his memories, but unfortunately it's just costing way too much to run as a public space."

Champions Brock Experience will close after its VIP "up close and personal" tour scheduled for February 26, which also happens to be Champion's birthday.

In that tour, which can take several hours, guests are walked through the museum by Champion himself who explains the history of each car. The centre will also open on a date in May to honour a previous booking for the VIP tour.

Smith says they are considering moving the collection to the Gold Coast or Melbourne, but that is undecided and in the meantime the company will focus on the HDT road car business.

Capricorn Tourism and Economic Development CEO Mary Carroll said: "We are all deeply saddened that we could be permanently losing one of our region's iconic tourist attractions, but appreciate that this decision has been made with heavy hearts by Peter and Sandy Champion. We sincerely thank them for their … contribution to our local tourism industry over the past three years and hope that their incredible collection can re-open one day.

"Whilst our organisation in partnership with operators such as Champions Brock Experience spent record funds last year on marketing the region to intrastate and interstate markets, consistent inclement weather during 2010, followed by the recent floods has had a major impact on our local tourism industry.

"The financial downturn in trade over our peak tourism time for some businesses has been too much to absorb and we are committed to doing everything we can to turn that around for our destination as quickly as possible."

The region has had three months of severe storms – with more on the way, including several cyclone warnings.