Help needed on historical research - Velocipedes in Sydney

[marc2131]

I have written a research article which I aim to get published in a academic journal in the coming year or so. The research is based on the early use of velocipedes (very early iron and wood bicycles) before 1850 in Australia.

I have found one incident where a velocipede rider rode his contraption from the ‘Bald Headed Stag Hotel’ (345 Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt), westward along Parramatta Rd and ending somewhere at the corner of Parramatta Rd and Sloane St, Summer Hill/Haberfield. This event took place in 1845.

As anyone would know, this route is rather hilly, a rider needing to transverse over Taverner’s Hill, but this will not be directly obvious to anyone not vaguely familiar with the lay of the land. Many of the reviewers of my article will be cycle historians from Europe and the US.

Does anyone have the gradients of the route? Basically the percentage of the hill climbs and descents. I tried looking for this on Google maps but was not able to locate this. If someone could provide a graph showing the climbs and descents that would be great too.

Regards
marc

[jcaley]

A quick ride with a gps device should give you that. There are contours (very lightly drawn) on sixmaps https://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/ which might help. Better still, plot the route on map my ride http://www.mapmyride.com/. That gives you a nice elevation profile

[marc2131]

Thanks to JohnC and Lizanne for their help.