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The First Stromlo Up-hill Bicycle Race
An Autobiographical Account
by
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PHOTO: Richard Woolley
in 1943 |
Richard van der Riet Woolley took up his duties on Mount Stromlo as Director
of the then
Commonwealth Solar Observatory early in December
l939. I was his first Vacation Student, having arrived on the mountain on
the same day as Woolley soon after I had completed the third of my four
years of study for the Honours B.Sc. Degree in the University of Sydney.
At the end of February l940, when I should have returned to the University
to resume my studies as Deas Thomson Scholar in the School of Physics,
Woolley persuaded the University Senate to allow me to remain with him as
a Research Assistant to take part in the development of an ionospheric
prediction service for the
war-time emergency, and to work with him on other matters. During that
year, there
were very few social occasions on Mount Stromlo except for a Wood-Chopping
Competition held at the back of the Old Bachelors' Quarters which was won
by Zuriel H. Nowland, the Observatory Groundsman. Woolley took part but,
unfortunately,
someone had accidentally selected a rather knotty log for him, and he eventually gave
up chopping after all the other contestants had finished. This
probably deterred
him from taking part again in any physical contest with the inhabitants
of Mount Stromlo except for tennis in which his height, high-kicking
left-handed service and good reaction time gave him a considerable advantage.
He was seldom beaten at tennis; in fact, it was generally accepted that it
was preferable to give him a hard game but not to beat him. (1)
|
PHOTO: Walter Stibbs in
december 1941 |
At the beginning of l941, when I was supposed to resume my undergraduate
studies, Woolley persuaded Professor Oscar Ulrich Vonwiller, the Professor of
Physics in Sydney, to seek the approval of the Board of Studies of the
Faculty of Science to allow him to supervise my studies for the Fourth
Year of the Honours Course and for me to hold concurrently
a Research Assistantship and my deferred University
Scholarship. As a consequence of that arrangement, I took the Advanced
Course in Theoretical Astrophysics that Woolley used to give in Part 3 of
the Mathematics Tripos at
Cambridge. At the same time, with the increasing
wartime commitments, the Observatory staff complement had grown, and
included a contingent of bachelors living on
the mountain. We were a
happy breed of keen youngsters amongst whom were several good cyclists.
We used to cycle to Canberra often and we kept a log of our times for
cycling from the Prime Minister's Lodge to the apple orchard near the
Director's residence, called Observatory House, where we ate some apples
while recovering from the ride. I suggested to Woolley that
we should hold a bicycle race from the Cotter Road at the foot of the
mountain to the top, with the finishing line in front of the Observatory
Building. It was a gala occasion and a well-organized event held during
office hours, but Woolley did not participate. He regarded me as the best
cyclist, but I knew that Ted Holmes, of the Workshop Staff, was a very-fine
and a very-fit hockey player, and that he was a strong contender.
A sweepstake on the race was organized by
Ted McCarthy, who had been seconded from the Radiophysics Laboratory
in Sydney to take part in the war-time ionospheric work at the Observatory.
He wrote a form guide on each competitor in the race and described me as having
trained hard, and predicted, in the radio-propagation jargon of the day,
that a "fade out" during the race was most unlikely!
Other participants in the Race included Jim Dooley, a graduate from
Melbourne; Ernst Frohlich, a refugee from Vienna who had been rescued by
Woolley from an internment camp in New South Wales; and
Ben
Gascoigne, an immigrant from New Zealand who borrowed a bicycle from
Ted McCarthy for the occasion. (2)
We did not have an official starter for the Race but at an
agreed signal we set off from a culvert some 20 or 30 yards down the
Cotter Road on the Canberra side of the mountain-road T-junction. Soon
after we had pushed off at the start, Gascoigne had to dismount because he
had not properly checked the axle nuts on the rear wheel of his borrowed
bicycle,
and the sudden tension on the chain had pulled the wheel so far out of
alignment that it scraped against the horizontal strut and dislodged the chain,
thereby rendering the bicycle quite useless without any spanners to effect
the necessary adjustments. That was the last we saw of Gascoigne until he
reappeared at the Observatory about an hour later. (3)
[Click here to see Holmes, Stibbs, McCarthy and
Gascoigne in 1941]
![](aerial44.gif) |
PHOTO: Aerial view of Stromlo in the 40s
|
|
Ted Holmes (centre), winner in 1941
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The mountain road was not sealed in those days and it was only occasionally
graded. Consequently, there were often severe corrugations in places. Ted Holmes and
and I set the pace and we stayed together within a bicycle length of one
another for most of the way. At the bend from which there is a fine view
of the mountains to the west through the pine trees, Ted Holmes had trouble with
his pedal straps which appeared to have worked loose. I noticed that he
was making some minor adjustments to them at a part of the bend where the
corrugations were very severe on the inside of the curve whereas he and I
were cycling on the high side where it was smoother. This was the point
in the race where I should have overtaken him but I judged the corrugations
to be too dangerous and followed closely behind. We continued much in
this way until I tried to overtake him just below the present Duffield
Building but, although I drew level, he gained the advantage on the steep
pitch on the left-hand curve to Observatory House, and he won by about 10
yards. There was some spectator support from the staff, and Woolley was
there to greet us at the steps to the Main Building. There was no prize
for the winner nor any champagne to celebrate the occasion.
|
Walter Stibbs, runner-up
in 1941
|
For many years afterwards, initially when Woolley and I were both living
in the U.K., and later on when he went to South Africa as first Director
of the SAAO,
and eventually retired in Cape Town, I visited him frequently
and we used to reminisce about "the good old days". He usually mentioned
the bicycle race but always referred to me as the winner although I
reminded him from time to time that it was not me but Ted Holmes who was
the worthy winner, but to no avail. On my last visit to Cape Town late in
1984, I stayed at his house, Magnolia Cottage, in Somerset West, and spent
hours talking about our close association over the past 45 years: the
Canberra years, which culminated in the
completion of our book, The Outer
Layers of a Star; my departure for Oxford via South Africa in 1951,
followed later that year by C.W. Allen's departure for
University College
London; his somewhat reluctant departure for the UK in 1956 to take up
the post of Astronomer Royal; the Herstmonceux years during which I saw
him often in my official capacity, initially as a Member of the Admiralty
Board of Visitors and subsequently as a Member of the Science Research
Council Committee for the
Royal Greenwich Observatory; the family holidays that we spent with him
and Lady Woolley at the Castle; his memorable visits to
St Andrews during
the professorial years that I spent there as Director of the University
Observatory; his years at the SAAO and my frequent visits to the Cape as
a Member of the Advisory Committee; the executive discussions that we had
with the President and Vice-President of the South African CSIR in the
Kruger National Park; and the official functions that we attended at the
Sutherland site, particularly when he made a speech in fluent Afrikaans at
the Official Opening of the Observatory by the Prime Minister of the
Government of the Republic in the presence of Mrs Thatcher, then the
Minister for Education and Science, who made a fine speech on behalf of
Her Majesty's Government.
The long and pleasant hours that I spent in
conversation with him were capped by his fond recollections of the early
days on Mount Stromlo. He recalled the bicycle race with pleasure, and
yet again spoke of me as the winner. He was sad when I reminded him that
Ted Holmes had died of leukaemia, but when I told him about eating the
apples in the orchard after cycling back from Canberra, he took his pipe
out of his mouth and, probably with tongue in cheek, said: "You fellows
had no right to eat those apples; they were mine. Gwynneth and I used
them for making jam." I was much amused that, more than 40 years after
the event, he should take to task his erstwhile disciples for having
eaten the few apples that would have reduced the volume of jam produced in
the Woolley kitchen by only a few per cent. The following day, we had a
touching farewell when I was about to leave the house for the Airport to
catch the direct flight from Cape Town to London. Intuitively, I felt
that he wanted to say something special as a fond farewell, but when he
took me by the hand he did not seem to want to let go, and for once he
could not find the words that he wanted, but managed to say: "God bless
you, Walter." He died in his house in Somerset West, Cape Province,
on Christmas Eve 1986, aged 80 years and 8 months.
|
I was privileged to have been so closely associated with Woolley over so
many years, and I am proud to have been the originator and organizer of
the first Stromlo Up-hill Bicycle Race that brought him so much pleasure
at the time and subsequently in recollection. I am gratified that, as the
Tour de Stromlo Classic, it is still celebrated some 55 years later.
I heartily approve of the introduction of runners into
the Race as I later became a runner myself, competing successfully in
17 world-class Marathons, including Paris, London, Edinburgh, Aberdeen,
Berlin, Honolulu, Athens and
Boston, also 13 Half-Marathons, and 7 Runs
in the Sydney City-to-Surf, all of which were memorable occasions like
the first Stromlo Up-hill Bicycle Race.
|
Stibbs, Dooley and
Frohlich at the Tour 96 |
Footnotes
(1) "No account of Astronomer Royal Woolley should
fail to mention his care for the relaxation of his staff. He promoted and
enthusiastically participated in cricket, hockey, lawn tennis (men's
doubles), and country dancing in the splendid setting of the castle
ball-room. He helped the staff to acquire their 'club' building to be used
for social purposes of all sorts. Whenever he took part in any sport he
liked to be given a hard game--but he liked to win. Everybody knew this,
and it is impossible to believe that he did not know that they knew.
Because he had been so much younger in age than his academic contemporaries
he had not been able to join in their sporting activities; then when he was
able to take up such activities he had to do so with people younger than
himself. I think he needed to be continually reassured that he was
'doing all right' by convincing himself that he could in fact beat them."
(Sir William McCrea FRS, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy, University of
Sussex; from Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the
Royal Society, Vol. 34, 1988)
(2) Ted McCarthy, private communication (1996).
(3) Ben Gascoigne's bad luck
continued some 35 years later when he accidentally fell off a catwalk
at the AAT (from what is now called "Gascoigne's leap"). Unlike the
bicycle race, jumping from the AAT didn't catch on as a sporting tradition.
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