Tales from the Shed: going down a VB rabbit hole
When we left last month, I had the Vincent dismantled and was feeling quite pleased with myself. If you recall I was washing a few profanities away with a couple of frosty cans of Victoria Bitter.
In my communique I also touched upon the second industrial revolution whilst heading down an internal combustion rabbit hole. Speaking of VB, rabbits and the industrial revolution, it’s timely we paid homage to the Louis Pasteur and his contribution the manufacture of Australian beers. As it turns out, Pasteur was responsible for allowing Australia’s largest brewery to export beer to the world thus the entire population could share in the aroma of subtle fruitiness complimented by sweet maltiness with a slight bitterness to finish (someone out there has just spat a mouthful of Corona over their screen).
So, what has all this got to do with classic British motorcycles? Nothing really, it’s just quite interesting.
Rabbits arrived in this country with the first fleet in 1788 but it wasn’t until 1859 that they became a problem. According to history, a British-born farmer, who wasn’t fond of the Australian fauna released two dozen rabbits, dozens of partridges and a half a dozen hares onto his land in Geelong, Victoria. By 1887 the rabbits hard spread out of control, North to Queensland and West to South Australia, prompting the NSW government to offer a reward of some £25,000 (or, $10M todays’ money) to anyone who could eradicate rabbits from Australia.
Apparently, Louis had been ill and was in need of a few francs so his wife suggested they have a crack at the prize. Louis reckoned he had just the thing, a virulent virus that would wipe out every rabbit on our island continent, but he was both too ill and too busy with things back in Paris so he sent his protégé, nephew Adrien Loir. Their intention was to use chicken cholera bacillus as the infectious agent to kill the rabbits. That’s right, they planned to eradicate rabbits with bird-flu.
Upon arrival in NSW, Dr Loir up the Australian Pasteur Institute on Rodd Island on the Paramatta River in Sydney. The experimentation was carried out under the watchful eyes of the judging committee and was expected to run for twelve months. This came as a bit of a surprise to Dr Loir who only had enough funds for he and his wife to spend a few weeks in Australia so he had to do some urgent fundraising.
Down in Victoria, emerging brewers at Carlsberg Brewery were experimenting with fermentation and sterilisation. One can imagine their excitement when they learned the father of microbiology was establishing an institute in Australia. Dr Loir was invited to Victoria where he was paid handsomely to teach the Australian brewers how to improve their product – right now some readers will be arguing the product has not advanced since 1887. Aside from refining the fermentation process, Dr Loir also taught the brewers advanced sterilisation processes which enabled the beer to be exported to the world in glass bottles.
As it turned out, Pasteur and Loir’s answer to the rabbit problem would not be released. It was thought the disease may harm the domestic avian population. Their idea also came up against opposition by wire manufactures who asserted they could stop the spread of the rodents with their rabbit-proof fences. The NSW government went with that idea but the reward was never paid out as it proved ineffective.
So there you have it, the machinery of the Busted Knuckle Garage is lubricated by the fruits of French scientists Professor Louis Pasteur and Dr Andrien Loir.
Now, back to work, that Vincent is not going to put itself together.
Cheers
