By NOEL MURPHY
VELOCIPEDES, penny farthings, high-wheelers, tricycles, roadsters – think of any type of old bicycle and it’s a fair bet Rod Charles knows it inside out.
He’s across almost everything about cycling’s history: how early cyclists had jousting contests, trick-riding on penny farthings, endurance events, “wary wobblers” on lofty conveyances and much more.
After decades of research, Mr Charles is the last word on Geelong’s love story with cycling. His forthcoming book, A Whirr of Many Wheels, the first of three volumes on cycling in Geelong, starts out in May 1869, just a couple of months after the first velocipedes surfaced in France.
Mr Charles plots cycling’s growth through to the start of World War I in 1914. The two volumes yet to come will detail cycling to the present.
His work shows how cycling has mirrored Geelong’s growth.
“Even in the 1860s, cycling led to calls for better roads, better clothing, better health,” said Mr Charles, a former Geelong West mayor.
“For decades women weren’t considered able to ride, it was thought to be unhealthy, but by the 1890s they were starting to race.
“We can look at the suffragettes but bicycling was breaking the boundaries for women.”
Mr Charles has drawn together an extraordinary collection of images and details from hundreds of sources to catalogue a litany of cycling stories.
“In March 1909, when an illegal two-up school in an old quarry beyond Swanston Street was raided by police, about 15 players scampered off in the direction of Breakwater with the police in pursuit on their bicycles,” he writes.
“The school crossed a paddock in the direction of the river and rushed at a high barbed-wire fence. Some were hung up and others escaped, leaving pieces of their garments behind.
“The raid was said to have been highly amusing and provided endless fun for those who witnessed it.”
