Wheeling Matilda: The Story of Australian Cycling - Softcover

Wheeling Matilda: The Story of Australian Cycling, sweeps across nearly 150 years of bicycle use in Australia. Set in a country which had the largest bicycle path network in the world in the 1890s and was the long distance cycling centre of the world for many years, this is an eye-opening history. Australian soldiers were at the forefront of the first significant wartime use of the bicycle, in the Boer War, and during the international heyday of cycling, Australia held the richest bicycle race in the world. Today Australia is a powerhouse of the cycle racing scene. From Sydney to South Africa, from Melbourne to Madison Square Garden—and in places in between where you would never expect to even see a bicycle—Australians riders have been there.

Jim Fitzpatrick is the premier cycling historian in Australia, and one of the world’s groundbreaking writers in the field. Each of his books has revealed previously unknown facts, and offered fresh and unique perspectives on the machine’s use. They are The Bicycle and the Bush, The Bicycle in Wartime and Major Taylor in Australia.