Now, 12 years later, Brady Morton has been reunited with his father's bike after his family tracked it down.
For Brady's dad, Gavin, his pride and joy was his 1998 Harley-Davidson Heritage Classic. But when Gavin died at age 50 from cancer, Brady made the difficult decision to sell the motorcycle to help pay for the funeral, largely in part because he was too young to ride it at the time.
"For the past 12 years, I've said I would love to buy it back and return it to the family. But then I had a family and two kids. Things got busy," he told The Age. But Brady's sister Ashlee, his wife Alisha and a family friend began the arduous task of tracking down the bike.
Despite fears the bike had been written off by its new owners, Ashlee found the number plate details and, when she checked VicRoads, found that it was still registered. But the owner didn't return her calls.
Eventually she tracked the person down on Facebook, and found out they had sold the bike to someone else, but kindly passed the number on.
But then they found out the bike had been sold yet again, this time to a dealership. The Peter Stevens dealership said they would assist Ashlee and Alisha, and eventually let them know a man called Dean would be getting in contact.
"He teared up and said, 'I'm happy to sell it back to you; it's going to bring you a lot more happiness than it does me," Ashlee said.
The bike had been sitting in Dean's garage and hadn't ridden in a few years. Once back in possession of the bike, family friends got to work to get the bike back into riding condition.
And last weekend, Brady was finally reunited with his dad's bike.
"I'm just so grateful for what they've done".