Francis Birtles

Francis Edwin Birtles (7 November 1881 in Fitzroy, Victoria – 1 July 1941 in Croydon, New South Wales) was an Australian adventurer, photographer, cyclist, and filmmaker, who set many long-distance cycling and driving records, including becoming in 1927 the first man to drive a car from England to Australia. Birtles had set a speed record driving from Darwin to Melbourne the previous year.

Birtles was the third child of David Edwin Birtles, an English bootmaker, and Sarah Jane Bartlett. At the age of 15, Birtles joined the merchant navy as an apprentice, but after the outbreak of the Second Boer War, he jumped ship at Cape Town, South Africa in 1899, in an attempt to enlist with Australian militia. However, he was attached to the Field Intelligence Department as part of a troop of irregular mounted infantry until May 1902. After a brief period back in Australia, Birtles joined the constabulary in the a mounted police officer in the Transvaal, until his police service ended when he contracted blackwater fever.

Birtles returned to Fremantle, Western Australia, and on 26 December 1905 left to cycle to Melbourne, an achievement which attracted widespread attention as it was the first west to east bicycle crossing of the country. After a short stretch as a lithographic artist, in 1907-08, he cycled to Sydney and then, via Brisbane, Normanton, Darwin, Alice Springs and Adelaide back to Sydney, where he based himself. In 1909 he published the story of his feat, "Lonely Lands", which he illustrated with his own photographs. That year he also set a new cycling record for the Fremantle to Sydney continental crossing. In 1910-11 rode around Australia. In 1911 he was accompanied from Sydney to Darwin by R. Primmer, cameraman for the Gaumont Company. The resulting film "Across Australia" was released the next year. Birtles had continued on to Broome and Perth, then broke his previous records by riding from Fremantle to Sydney in thirty-one days. By 1912 he had cycled around Australia twice and had crossed the continent seven times.

In 1912 he became one of the first people to make a west to east crossing by car from Fremantle to Sydney in a Brush Runabout with driver Syd Ferguson.

...
Wikipedia