Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to relate to the House a great story about how chance and ingenuity combined to help Australia become a cycling superpower. In 1983, Lachlan Thompson was an aerospace engineering student from Bayswater with a desire to break the world human powered speed record. As part of his studies at RMIT, Lachlan was experimenting with wind tunnel testing, which at the time was almost exclusively used in experimental aircraft design.

However, Lachlan needed more than aerodynamics; he needed a powerful engine. The world champion pursuit rider at that time was a Perth man named Steele Bishop. In March 1984 GMH paid to fly Bishop to Victoria and volunteered its test track for five days. The world human powered land speed record had been set in the United States at 94.4 km per hour. The attempt at dawn on 28 March 1984 was not without incident. A freelance journalist named Ray Peace at the track reported:

Due to the banked track. ... forced the tiny wheel against the fibreglass fairing.

Friction turned into heat ...the HPV was on fire!

Despite being on fire, Lachlan Thompson’s HPV achieved a top speed of 78.94 kilometres per hour. While it did not break the world record, it remains the Australian record to this day. Lachlan’s introduction to Steele Bishop meant that by 1988 his disc wheels and helmets were used by the Australian cycling team at the Seoul Olympics.

Then in 1992, Lachlan, now an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering at RMIT, got lucky. A cycling model he had arranged for a photo shoot did not turn up. He walked across Swanston Street and saw a young lady by the name of Kathy Watt. She agreed to a photo shoot on the condition that Thompson put her in the RMIT wind tunnel to check the aerodynamics of her bike and riding position. One thing led to another, and a team was formed and the superbike, a super streamlined bicycle, was born. The superbike rewrote the cycling record books, achieving 23 world championships and three world records in four years. It was ridden at the Commonwealth Games, winning gold medals, in 1994 and 1998, and it had victories at the UCI World Cup and UCI World Championships from 1994 to 1999. Rule changes meant that after 1999 it could no longer be used in international competition.

When Ray Peace, now a member of the Knox Historical Society in my electorate, tracked down the HPV in August 2005 it was languishing in disrepair in Pascoe Vale. Lachlan gladly donated it to the Knox Historical Society. Ray took the bike to Clive Carter, a motorcycle mechanic and fibreglass expert in Ferntree Gully. I am delighted to say that the HPV is now fully restored after hundreds of hours of Clive Carter’s painstaking work. Today it sits proudly on exhibit at the Knox Historical Society, beside its youngest offspring, the superbike. Congratulations to the Knox Historical Society and all those involved.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 9.30 pm, the debate is interrupted.