For years, no one has known where the bus used in Stephan Elliott's film went. Not long after the 38-day shoot finished in 1993, Priscilla vanished without a trace.
Now, after three decades in which the bus languished in a tiny Australian village, dodged destruction in 2,000C wildfires and was nearly wrecked by floods, it has been found and a £1m appeal launched to bring it back to its former cinematic glory.
In the 1994 film, Priscilla, a 1976 Hino RC320 bus is home to drag queens Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) and Felicia (Guy Pearce), and transgender woman Bernadette (Terence Stamp), as they drive from Sydney to Alice Springs.
After it disappeared, finding the bus became a quest for curatorial staff at the History Trust of South Australia, who hoped to acquire it for the National Motor Museum in Birdwood. But when a man called Michael Mahon got in touch in 2019 claiming Priscilla was sitting on his property in Ewingar, New South Wales (population: 67), no one really believed him.
"Michael sent a message saying he had the bus and wanted to sell it," said Paul Rees, head of museums at the History Trust and former director of the National Motor Museum. "We were a bit suspicious at first, to be honest. But we soon realised it wasn't a joke, so we started our investigation."
Curators spent months determining if the bus was truly Priscilla. Adam Paterson, manager at the History Trust, said: "A few things really made us confident: it had the right number plates, the distinctive animal print curtains and dashboard cover, and the original name roller."
In the film, the bus is famously painted bright pink partway through- but because the filmmakers could only afford one bus, they painted just half of it pink and left the other side silver so they could shoot out of sequence. Crucially, some old pink paint hadn't been removed from a hinge.
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