Years before Lake Burley Griffin was inaugurated in 1964, Umberto Benassi arrived with his family in Canberra with a dream to hire paddle boats and a novelty floating trike on the new waterway in the middle of the city.
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The trike was an idea he first attempted in his home town Finale Emilia's river in 1947. Townsfolk came down to the banks to watch. In World War II's aftermath materials were costly and scarce and that's as far as the inventor's dream went.
Mr Benassi had earlier learned how to bend and shape timber while an apprentice coffin maker, skills that he brought to Canberra for miniature boat-building.
His daughter-in-law, Jennifer, remembers a gentle, shy man who people loved. "He was an inventor and a dreamer. The aquabike wasn't a money-making venture, it was a father-and-son's magnificent obsession."
Worried about poor job prospects for their son and four daughters, Umberto and Pierina Benassi immigrated to Melbourne in 1959 and then moved to Canberra in 1961.
But instead of a hire business, he was forced to sell most of his paddle boats to Dobel Boat Hire who won a government contract for pleasure craft on the lake.
His son, Sergio, says Umberto hired paddle boats up and down the east coast until returning to Canberra to work on a fibreglass aquabike.
Resembling a giant children's toy, the bike won a weekly award on television's What Will They Think Of Next? in 1981, which helped their acceptance interstate.
They paddled one across Sydney Harbour, narrowly escaping being swamped by a ferry, and finished third in an international investors' competition in Geneva. The following year Newsweek featured the aquabike in a new products column.
"Fortunately for us it was such a colourful product," says Sergio Benassi, who was responsible for marketing. "I always took a yellow one which stands out on any background."
Their first export order to California for 12 bikes came as interest in the quirky bike gathered in Europe and Japan.
Exporting to the other side of the world was expensive, so they streamlined production from fibreglass to plastic.
"All the frames, Papa and I worked on making everything nice and collapsible. It cost us $1500 to produce it, $1200 for transport costs, we had to be careful not to make it too expensive," Mr Benassi said.
Yet former treasurer Paul Keating's 1983 decision to float the Australian dollar and high interest rates still sunk the manufacturing venture in Fyshwick.
"It was a lot of fun. Initially we made money, but at the end of the day, just when we were getting going, and we had the best moulds and products, rotational moulding for parts and seats and stuff, everything [against us] happened," Mr Benassi said.
Lake Burley Griffin paddle-boat operator Jim Seears wore out his last Benassi paddle boat about six years ago. Before that he sold his last aquabike to a farmer at Gundaroo for its aluminium. In 1947 aluminium's scarcity had steered Umberto back to timber paddle boats.
When he died aged 96 several years ago he was still working on a perpetual motion machine, his son happy to see a much loved father with his hands full of springs and counter balances and ambition.
