In April 1984, he and several CSIRO senior staff members, and a senior engineering manager from BHP, met to discuss a concept paper. On the day before Good Friday, they agreed on the components and who would write them. They all had commitments and agreed it would take six weeks to put a draft together. However, such was their private enthusiasm that each of them worked right through the four-day break, virtually finishing their drafts. In July 1984 the completed work was published as "A Proposal for a Fast Railway between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne". It turned the high-speed train from a broad concept to a tangible proposal, remarkably predicting the main issues that would be involved in the development of an Australian high-speed railway.