Foiled by the big wet
Our first National long distance record ride didn’t cross the Nullarbor.
The Secretary and Captain of the Queensland Motor Cycle Club met with little difficulty in convincing Constable Will Peverill that planning to ride his motorcycle from Brisbane to the Gulf of Carpentaria was an utterly unsound notion. It was nearing the end of summer 1912, temperatures north of Capricorn would be above 100°F. The humidity was impossible, the creeks were flooded, the tracks impassable. And after ‘the wet’ homesteads will have no spare petrol. Then came the clincher; ‘remember what happened to Burke and Wills’.
Peverill contemplated his position. He’d intended to be the first motorcyclist to make a transcontinental crossing of Australia electing to ride from Melbourne to Normanton. The alternate, a ride between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, was inconceivable in 1912. Peverill’s choice of motorcycle, a push-start, belt-driven Peerless powered by 3.5hp German-built Fafnir was undoubtedly sponsorship- driven, and the journey north from Melbourne to Brisbane had taken its toll. Peverill knew his return journey would take more than a week but no one was willing to hazard a guess as to how long it might take to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria; let alone return. Far better to head home to the bosom of his family and rightfully claim the Australasian long-distance motorcycling record. His was already a ground breaking effort for, at that time, no motorised vehicle had ever completed the journey between Sydney and Brisbane. There was no need to compound the risks involved by pushing further north. You can imagine the immense crowd to witness Peverill being flagged away from Brisbane GPO mid afternoon on March 20. You’ll also have to imagine that, without pedals, the effort required to fire up the belt-driven Fafnir – a mo without the ped. But despite the heat, Peverill motored easily west to Grandchester before sunset. That was the effortless section. Then, even though Peverill rode along the moderate gradients of the Toowoomba rail line, it took an entire day for the underpowered machine to reach the Garden City; where he was dismayed to discover late summer rains had turned the fertile Darling Downs into a forbidding expanse of glutinous black muck. Muck that clogged the wheels and mudguards rendering the Fafnir’s leather beltdrive totally ineffective. Peverill persevered but torrential rain caught him out and, after pushing his machine for two hours back to the rail line, he set off along the tracks for Warwick. It appears the railway officials took exception to this practice, taking a real set against the Victorian. Peverill’s diary notes that a “wordy encounter” ensued. Rain continued to slow progress, though by linking sandy farm tracks and cattle pads where, on occasion the cattle took exception to his presence, Peverill eventually made it to Murrurundi after overnighting at Warwick, Tenterfield and Uralla. Now, almost a month after leaving home, the novelty was wearing thin. Peverill decided to make a big push for Sydney; almost 400 kilometres distant. Leaving at dawn he made good time and, like the legions of motorcyclists who would follow, was thoroughly enjoying the magnificent scenery along the Putty Road; this despite the Fafnir having but a single rear friction-block brake. It was here he suffered his first puncture. He’d purchased a spare valve but on opening the tin found he’d been shafted. In Peverill’s words the replacement “must have been a family heirloom and utterly useless except as a provoker of bad language”. He did however manage to bush engineer a repair and, now in pouring rain, passed through Sydney to overnight in Liverpool. From there the route to Melbourne was well established though the actual ‘road’ was little more than a sequence of muddy farm tracks or, dependent on the weather, bulldust holes linked by rocky creek crossings. South from Wangaratta, Victoria was in the grip of a late summer drought, the roads a foot deep bulldust hole for miles on end, conditions which Peverill described as the “vilest” roads he’d encountered. He arrived in Melbourne before sunset, his journey later certified by Mr B. Glass as the first motorcyclist to ride between Brisbane and Melbourne. The 3,600 mile ‘round trip’ also set an Australasian record for a single motorcycle ride. Clearly there was no need for Peverill to regret his decision not to breach the Tropic of Capricorn. Keen to maximise on the publicity Peerless provided Peverill with a new machine with which to join the seemingly never-ending queue of riders out to capture the 24 hour distance record. Peverill obliged by lifting the record from 517 miles to 522 miles; an insignificant rise resulting in a significant advertising spend. Only months later another Peerless appeared on Peverill’s porch; this to contest the 1915 Melbourne to Sydney Trial. Unfortunately