were punctuated by extended stays in hospital or convalescing in England. Dolph suffering variously from cystitis, influenza, mumps and lumbago.9 The trenches were havens for illness and disease, even for fit and healthy men. Dolph’s experience of war did not neatly fit into popular understandings of courageous Australia’s fighting and killing for the Empire. It almost certainly did not meet Dolph’s expectations. While he spent just weeks or perhaps several months at the front, he played no lesser part than many others and would have endured much discomfort during his years of service.
Dolph came home to Melbourne to all the pageantry that awaited returning members of the Australian Imperial Force. He resumed his regular life and rarely spoke of the war. During the emotional few weeks following his return he treated Hubert to a day out at the Australian Native’s Association Carnival at the Royal Exhibition Building and Oval, Melbourne’s premier cycling track and stadium. Before the war, Dolph had been a handy racer and was keen to introduce his son to the excitement of track racing. The towering wooden grandstands, the asphalted track, the fast pedalling bunches and the heaving crowd, all left their mark on the teenager. Dolph and Hubert pushed their way down to the fence, so they could watch riders preparing for the start of a race. They were lucky enough to see top cyclist L.C. Bowie Stevens strapping into his pedals, his arm slung over his trainer’s back for support. Opperman stared at his beautiful, athletic form and the way his pronounced quadriceps flexed in readiness for the starter’s pistol. He worried that with his feet strapped in he might fall, unaware that the binding to the cranks was essential for extra speed.
After years of separation, the bond between father and son had been renewed only soon to fade. There was no real talk of Hubert returning to live with his parents and although they stayed in touch, Dolph soon ‘reverted to type’ and drifted away to resume the quest to run his own business.10
But before he left, Dolph made one further contribution to his son’s growing interest in cycling. He brought Hubert his first proper bicycle, a Turner Model 19, which replaced the battered second-hand clunker Herb had given him so he could come home during his two-hour lunch break and avoid using public transport (use of the postal bikes outside of work duties was forbidden and their use closely monitored). The Turner was a sensible bike. Built for comfort and not for speed, it was sturdily constructed, had low gears, raked forks for a softer ride and a tourist saddle. The studded tyres, a slower but more practical choice over Melbourne’s variable road surfaces, sounded like a motorcycle to the young rider. Nevertheless, compared to the PMG bikes, it leapt from the yard, as Hubert saw it, ‘like a greyhound leaving a bulldog’. Bicycles like this were a long-term, practical investment, not an indulgence. And, at over a month’s of Opperman’s wages, he knew the expense (and possible debt) his father had incurred to secure it. Although faster than the postal bikes, it was no racer. Yet it was on this machine that Opperman fronted up to his first competition.
On a grey and wet Saturday morning in September 1919, Opperman lined up with the men of the Oakleigh West Cycling Club for their regular thirty-kilometre handicap of two laps to Dandenong and back. As a newcomer, Opperman was given a handicap of six and a half minutes ahead of the scratch men. He had dropped the handlebars and upgraded to a more streamlined Brooks leather racing saddle for the event, but still drew a mixture of raised eyebrows and quiet sympathy from his rivals. Sick with nerves, he hadn’t slept properly for days. An icy crosswind blasted from Port Phillip Bay. The incessant rain had washed a bed of red clay across the road and made existing potholes deeper and wider. Opperman ‘slithered and swung’ around the cratered surface, avoiding the rivers of slurry and broken edges where he could.11 The robust Turner took the inevitable hits well. He stayed ahead of the fast men for the first lap, but on the second he looked behind to see a dark mass of riders bearing down on him. Opperman put one last effort into the pedals. But it was in vain. The scratch group cruised past, seemingly without effort. Opperman swung in behind them. His face was immediately hit with a spray of road grit and mud spouting from their back wheels. As Opperman gasped to remain in their slipstream, he heard a sound. Aubrey Box, club champion and joker, still had enough spare lung capacity to sing ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’, his wry comment on the moist riding conditions. The pace was too hard. Opperman lost contact with the back of the group and struggled to the finish line alone and exhausted. His hopes for competitive success were crushed. To his dismay, a few men from the winning bunch came to his aid. His fierce rivals, those men who would mercilessly grind a weaker rider off their rear wheels, now laughed warmly even offering support and advice to the newcomer. They talked about the race, the terrible conditions, and how he might improve his chances.
Club members soon found their young protégé a real racing bike, an Ixion. He scrounged as much money as he could, traded the heavy roadster, and rejoiced at the lighter more nimble feel of the racing bike. Made in St Kilda and ridden by the stars of the time, the Ixion’s short-wheel base and low handlebars promised speed and agility. Naming the bicycle after a Greek god, Ixion, who was punished by being bound to a whirling and burning wheel, promised something else that the ambitious rider would have to become accustomed to: suffering. The pain and fatigue of ultra endurance riding was still unknown to Opperman and, for now, he enjoyed the intensity of short-format racing.
Opperman’s life now revolved around work, training and racing. Most days he would ride home after work, sit briefly for a hurried meal, and then head out for extra miles of training at the local velodrome or on local roads. Saturdays were the highlight of the week: race day. In the morning he cleared letter boxes, made deliveries and sorted mail. In the afternoon, he rode the eight kilometres from Malvern to Moorabbin to compete in the weekly thirty-kilometre handicap then returned to complete the ‘goodnight round’. His flair was not immediately apparent. In the 1920s, Melbourne’s cycling clubs, although depleted of many strong men due to the war, were full of talented and motivated riders. With cycling a routine mode of transport for many, many people’s general fitness level was already very high. It took time for Opperman to stand out. The handicap system (which would later impede Opperman’s chances of winning) initially helped him into lower placings. But throughout his first year of competition he did not win a single race. He was placed fourth at the Senior Cadet Championships, but struggled against older, stronger and more experienced riders. The physical nature of his job, while improving his fitness and strength, also made him tired. It was nearly impossible to arrive rested and relaxed on the start line when he had pedalled all week as well as on the morning of the event. And, like most novice racers, he overtrained. Certainly others in the club faced similar difficulties, but a postman’s lot was undoubtedly a demanding one.
Opperman fared better when he teamed up with stronger club mates. In a ‘burst of promotional enthusiasm’, the Oakleigh West Cycling Club arranged a special race day on an earth track around a local football ground. To call it an outdoor velodrome would be an overstatement, but it gave the young rider a chance to experience team racing and the loose, unpredictable and dangerous surfaces track cyclists routinely raced over. Opperman was paired with local powerhouse, Jack Beasley, a popular rider from Victoria’s western districts and a winner with the fastest time in the blue ribbon in the Warrnambool to Melbourne Classic. The contrast between the two men could not have been more pronounced, in both experience and physical presence. When the unknown Opperman lined his sixty kilogram frame alongside the 100 kilogram Beasley, he heard his partner ask for more lights so that he might see his diminutive partner in the changeovers after each lap. The genial Beasley was as surprised as everyone else at the meet when the pair won. ‘You’ll do me, mate, when we have another one of these,’ he said. Opperman basked in the validation.12
In May 1921, Opperman finally broke through. Now riding for the newly formed Malvern Cycling Club, a race against twenty-three of his club mates turned out to be a shambolic scramble for the line. In his desperation to succeed, he hit another rider’s back wheel and crashed onto the side of the road. Uninjured and with sufficient poise to quickly remount his bicycle, he sprinted furiously to regain the group, finally overhauling them in the closing kilometre.13 He won by twenty-one seconds, covering the sixteen kilometres at over thirty-five kilometres per hour.14 Although it wasn’t the graceful performance that he had hoped for, it established his reputation in the club and his confidence soared.
The biggest boost to Opperman’s speed came when he was transferred from the Malvern Post Office to the Navigation Department in town. The