CYCLING

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 153, 26 December 1936, Page 7

CYCLING

GREAT RECORD

3000 MILES IN 19 DAYS

W. Read, a Western Australian cyclist, has performed the remarkable feat of cycling 3007 miles from Fremantle to Sydney in 18 days 18 hours 32 minutes, averaging 160 miles a day over all kinds of country from scorching desert to freezing mountains, says "The Posts Sydney correspondent.

Read lowered all previous records, the previous best by a single cyclist being 26 days 3 hours 7 minutes, by A. V. Waltham, a Western Australian, who rode from Sydney to Fremantle about six years ago; and 31 days 3 hours 15 minutes by Francis Birtles, from Fremantle to Sydney about 25 years ago. Read also beat his own tandem record by 4 days 1 hour 33 minutes. Read's attempt was probably the most completely organised yet made on the Fremantle-Sydney record, which is the longest on the list recognised by the Australian cycling organisations. He was followed throughout by a motor-car in which were representatives of the Australian Federal Cycling Council to check and time tiim officially, a Western Australian journalist, and members of the bicycle firm whose machine he rode. The car carried practically the whole of his equipment, leaving him with, merely the bicycle, a spare tire, and an aluminium bottle containing a drink. He rode the lightest bicycle ever used in Australia on a record of this duration. It was built for him in Perth and fitted with light wooden rims and tubular tires, a deraillcur type of three-speed gear, free wheel, and two powerful rim brakes. He was wearing track racing costume when he arrived in Sydney.

Stretched out for a well-earned rest on the first bed he had experienced since he left Fremantle—he explained that he had become quite accustomed to sleeping under the stars—Read gave a picturesque description of many hardships the journey had entailed. He told of a nightmare journey across the desert plains from Norseman (Western Australia) into the back country of South Australia, almost to Port Augusta, where he and the car of officials who accompanied him had little better than a sandy track to follow. Punctures and spills were frequent. Three days out from Norseman he sustained a bad laceration of the left leg as the result of a spill.

There were stretches of that portion of the trip where the track was almost obliterated, and four months' absence of rain did not help to improve matters. Over the Nullabor Plain and well into South Australia the track was so heavily coated with sand that there were long stretches where it was impossible to ride, and he was forced to get off his machine and push it through the desert. He estimated that over that stretch of the journey from Fremantle to Adelaide he had been forced to carry and push his machine fully 100 miles. From Adelaide the journey was easy to him.