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]

PHOTO: Aerial view of Stromlo in the 40s

Ted Holmes (centre), winner in 1941

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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