Percy Shepherd’s road race trophy

This silver trophy was awarded to amateur cyclist Percival (Bunny) Shepherd (1887-1949) for winning the Balmain Bicycle Club’s ten mile road race in May 1905.

Shepherd joined the NSW police in 1911, remaining a keen cyclist until a road accident in 1912 curtailed his enjoyment of the sport. He then took up rowing and later joked to a journalist:

I took to rowing. I'm afraid I didn’t persevere with that game, though, and the result was that when I abandoned it altogether I fell into flesh…and I got a lazy man. So I joined the police!

He spent many years working with the traffic police and Sydney’s Sunday Times newspaper once dubbed him a ‘super-traffic manipulator’. He was a popular member of the force, often quoted in the press but his relationship with the media got him into trouble with the Inspector General of Police in 1925 when he was severely reprimanded for allowing himself to be photographed in uniform, passing police information to a journalist and then lying about it to police investigators. He remained in the NSW police until his retirement in 1945.

When Percival (Bunny) Shepherd (1887-1949) won the New South Wales Cycling Union’s road race, the Finlay Mile, in November 1906, he was given this gold watch as a prize. It comes with a little leather pouch and is monogrammed with the initials PS on the engine turned case back.

In 1906 nineteen-year old Bunny was one of the stars of the Balmain Cycling Club. He went on to join the NSW Police in 1911 and was stationed first at Balmain police station, then at Newtown. Tragedy struck the keen cyclist in 1912 when he was knocked from his bike on King Street, Newtown, by a bolting horse. He suffered severe injuries to his head and back. Although he went back to work once he had recovered he was forced to abandon cycling.

He became a popular traffic policeman and was dubbed ‘Sydney’s super-policeman of traffic corners’ by one Sydney newspaper. Many years later he took up cycling again and even managed to ride to Windsor in 1940 to visit to an old acquaintance. Bunny retired from the NSW police in 1945.