Best Australian Racing Stories Read online

  Jim Haynes has taught writing, literature, history and drama in schools and universities from outback New South Wales to Britain and back again, attending race meetings whenever and wherever possible. He has two masters degrees in literature, from the University of New England and the University of Wales.

  Jim has written fifteen books and compiled several volumes of Australian rhymed verse. A professional entertainer and writer since 1988, he has released many albums of his own songs, verse and humour. He still tours as an entertainer and has a weekend Australiana segment on Radio 2UE. Jim lives at Moore Park in Sydney with his partner, Robyn, and can walk to Randwick racecourse in ten minutes.

  The Best

  Australian

  Racing Stories

  From Archer to Makybe Diva

  JIM HAYNES

  First published in 2010

  Copyright © Jim Haynes 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74237 090 3

  Set in 12/15 pt Bembo by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

  Front cover images: (top) Gunsynd; (middle, L to R) Bernborough; Bart Cummings

  with Think Big; Phar Lap; (bottom) Birdsville Races, 2009 (all Newspix/News Limited).

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The paper in this book is FSC certified.

  FSC promotes environmentally responsible,

  socially beneficial and economically viable

  management of the world’s forests.

  This book is for Robyn, who allows me

  to indulge my racing obsession and knows

  I really go to Randwick for the steak

  and kidney pie in the Members’.

  Contents

  Part 1 Champions All

  Our first champions: 1810–1924 Jim Haynes

  The ‘Age of Champions’: 1924–26 Jim Haynes

  Phar Lap: Australia’s favourite horse Jim Haynes

  Why we came to love Schillaci Les Carlyon

  Sunline: A freak of nature Jim Haynes

  Firecracker Jim Bendrodt

  Lonhro never liked Moonee Valley Jim Haynes

  Father Riley’s Horse A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  The Bernborough story David Hickie

  Zaimis Jim Bendrodt

  T.J.’s top two: Tulloch and Kingston Town Jim Haynes

  How to look at a horse Les Carlyon

  Part 2 The Humour of the Track

  A lesson in laconic Jim Haynes

  Corn Medicine Harry (‘Breaker’) Morant

  Racetrack reminiscences A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  My racing problems: The punter’s art C.J. Dennis

  Five bob on Sir Blink Crackers Keenan

  The Oil From Old Bill Shane C.J. Dennis

  Mulligan’s Mare A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  The downfall of Mulligan’s A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  Our New Horse A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  My racing problems No. 2: The fatted napes C.J. Dennis

  The Urging of Uncle C.J. Dennis

  The whisperer A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  How Babs Malone Cut Down the Field Barcroft Henry Boake

  Part 3 The Cup is More Than a Horse Race

  The Cup is more than a horse race Les Carlyon

  Myths and legends, poets and dreamers Jim Haynes

  A Dream of the Melbourne Cup A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  How the Melbourne Cup Was Won Henry Kendall

  The Melbourne Cup Lesbia Harford

  Bart: The King of Cups Bruce Montgomerie

  Here’s a stayer: The magic of Peter Pan Jim Haynes

  Cup casualties C.J. Dennis

  The bard of Cup week: C.J. Dennis Jim Haynes

  Sailing Orders C.J. Dennis

  The Listening Week C.J. Dennis

  Galloping Horses C.J. Dennis

  Why a Picnic Jane? C.J. Dennis

  An Anticipatory Picture C.J. Dennis

  Queens of the Cup Jim Haynes

  Part 4 The Good Old Days

  Azzalin the Dazzlin’ Romano David Hickie

  Racing as it was A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  The Day That is Dead Harry (‘Breaker’) Morant

  Racing in Australia circa 1895 Nat Gould

  Jim Bendrodt David Hickie

  A ‘point-to-point’ A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  The Cab Horse’s Story C.J. Dennis

  Randwick trainers circa 1895 Nat Gould

  A day’s racing A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  PART 1

  Champions All

  Our first champions: 1810–1924

  JIM HAYNES

  NO NATION IN THE world has venerated its champion racehorses as Australia has. Every few years we seem to find a new thoroughbred to admire. It is a part of our culture to have a champion to follow as each racing year unfolds. This tradition was established quite early in colonial times.

  Australians have a particular obsession with racing, which is probably due to the importance of horses in the development of the colonies in the 19th century. The horse was the main mode of transport until the industrial age, and without the horse this vast country could not have been settled.

  Apart from the convicts, the first settlers were mostly military men and most of them owned horses—and, when given a chance and a holiday, they enjoyed racing them.

  As settlements spread out into the bush, horses became even more essential. Entertainment was limited and race meetings became the most common way to let one’s hair down after a spell of hard work and socialise after living in isolation for weeks or even months. Along with this came the love of a long weekend or a holiday, the belief that handicapping the more talented performers makes things ‘more interesting’, and the Australian love of gambling.

  General public involvement in racing is far greater in Australia than anywhere else in the world. It is amusing to speculate that the percentage of Australians who actually attended Spring Carnival racing in Melbourne in the 1890s, if translated into similar figures in Britain, would have seen four million people attending the Derby meeting at Epsom!

  Australian racing officially began in the colony of New South Wales in 1810, when the first three-day meeting was held at Hyde Park in Sydney. The winning post was approximately where Market Street meets Elizabeth Street today, and the meeting established the tradition for right-handed racing in New South Wales, that being the most convenient way of going as the sun set to the west.

  Both Arab and thoroughbred horses had been imported into the colony from the time of the first European settlement, and match races had been popular prior to that fir
st meeting in 1810.

  When the 73rd Regiment was transferred to Ceylon in 1814, the colony lost its race committee and racing became uncontrolled and was banned for a time by Governor Macquarie.

  The original Sydney Turf Club* was formed in 1825 and began racing at Captain Piper’s racecourse at Bellevue Hill under the patronage of Governor Brisbane, who had banned unofficial meetings and dangerous races around the now dilapidated course at Hyde Park.

  Colonial politics and a public insult at an STC dinner led to the next governor, Governor Darling, withdrawing his patronage from the STC in 1927. Twenty-nine members resigned in support of the governor and formed the Australian Racing and Jockey Club.

  The STC raced at Camperdown and the ARJC raced at Parramatta, and from 1832 to 1841 racing was conducted on cleared scrubland at Randwick, which was known as ‘The Sandy Track’.

  Racing in Sydney suffered from the poor condition of tracks until 1840, when the Australian Race Committee was formed to set up a decent racetrack at Homebush. This group then decided to form a permanent race club, and the Australian Jockey Club was officially born in 1842. The Homebush track was used until the completion of the ‘new’ Randwick in 1860.

  In Melbourne, racing started at Flemington in 1840. In 1848, 350 acres were officially designated to be a public racecourse, and a committee, which became the Port Phillip Racing Club, was set up to regulate racing. In the 1850s this club disbanded and two new clubs, the Victoria Turf Club and the Victoria Jockey Club, became bitter rivals.

  It was the VTC which instituted the Melbourne Cup in 1861. The third Cup, however, was a disaster: only seven horses started after all intercolonial trainers boycotted the event when the committee refused to accept Archer’s entry on technical grounds. Politics and intercolonial rivalry threatened to ruin the event until the clearer heads of both the VTC and VJC came together to form the Victorian Racing Club in 1864, and Flemington and the Cup became the property of the VRC.

  Australia’s first popular champion racehorse was a gelding called Jorrocks, who raced in the 1840s.

  Jorrocks (foaled 1833)

  Jorrocks was the first horse to attain popularity and champion status in Australia. His sire, Whisker, was by the English Derby winner of the same name and had been the colony’s best racehorse, winning the Governor’s Cup at the very first Randwick meeting in 1833. Jorrocks’ dam, Matilda, had been the colony’s best race mare and the mating between the two contemporary champions produced Jorrocks. Both his parents traced their lineage back to the mighty Eclipse, and his bloodline on his dam side contained a fair dose of Arab as well as English thoroughbred.

  What is odd is that, despite his excellent racing pedigree, Jorrocks didn’t race until he was five. This was probably due to the sale of the property where he was bred at South Creek and his transfer to another farm near Mudgee, where Jorrocks was used as a stock horse until winning a sweepstakes at Coolah at the age of five, when he was sent to be trained at Windsor by noted trainer Joseph Brown.

  His ownership changed hands many times over the years but Richard Rouse, who saw him in Joseph Brown’s stables before his career had properly begun, famously bought him. The price paid by Rouse was eight heifers, valued at £40.

  Jorrocks clearly had strong legs and a steely constitution and became known as the ‘Iron Gelding’. He was the first racehorse in Australia to have his picture in the newspaper and poems written about him. He stood 14.2 hands—tiny by today’s standards—and was a long, low animal with an amazingly deep girth and fine Arab head.

  Jorrocks raced in an era when most events were decided on the best of three heats, often over 2 or 3 miles each. He probably started more than 100 times; the true figure is hard to estimate due to the three-heat system of races. We do know that he won the AJC Australian Plate five times and the Bathurst Town Plate four times. He was also victorious twice in such races as the Homebush Champion Cup, Cumberland Cup, Metropolitan Stakes, Hawkesbury Members’ Purse and Town Plate.

  Jorrocks began racing seriously as an eight-year-old, and at the age of 17 he started eight times for four wins. His last hurrah came at the grand old age of 19.

  The Australian Jockey Club had abandoned Randwick in 1842 for the Homebush course, which became Sydney’s headquarters of racing until the AJC returned to the improved Randwick course in 1860. So it was at Homebush that Jorrocks won his major victories and ran his final race, finishing tailed off last in the Metropolitan Stakes of 1852.

  Jorrocks was finally retired to live out his days on a farm at Richmond, about an hour northwest of Sydney. His grave is marked by a plaque and is situated on what is today the Richmond Airbase. He set the trend for champion racehorses becoming much-loved ‘public figures’ with the Australian press and general population.

  Racing during Jorrocks’ time was a very different affair to the racing we know today. Races were started by a man on a pony whose job it was to attempt to muster the contestants into a reasonably straight line before dropping a large white flag. Races were most commonly run over the best of three heats and the winner was the horse with the best overall result. There was a large pole situated on each racecourse, sometimes about a furlong from the winning post or near the turn. This was known as the ‘distance’ and horses that did not ‘make the distance’ in a heat were ‘out of the running’ and could not compete in the subsequent heats.

  If the judges considered a finish too close to call, the heat was declared ‘dead’ and the horses that figured in the close finish would ‘run off ’ over the same distance again to decide the winner. So, in those days, a ‘dead heat’ was not a result, but a ‘non result’ which required another heat to be run.

  There were no saddlecloth numbers until the 1870s and official colours were not compulsory for jockeys until the AJC introduced that rule in 1842. After each race the contestants would line up in front of the judges’ box. The judges then looked at each horse and rider and checked the horses’ looks and jockeys’ colours against the ‘official entries’ list. The judges then announced the place-getters, who returned to scale to be weighed-in.

  By the 1860s a new era of racing had dawned. Racing clubs had begun to regulate racing in the colonies, with the AJC taking the lead, and the famous Admiral Rous had standardised the rules of racing in Britain and established the weight-for-age system where horses of each sex carry a set weight at a certain age over certain distances. His close personal friend, Captain Standish, had left England following a rather disastrous betting plunge in the Derby, to become Chief Commissioner of Police in the colony of Victoria.

  Standish has two claims to fame in Australian history. He led the rather inept hunt for the Kelly gang and, as chairman of the Victoria Turf Club, he is credited as being the man who ‘invented’ the Melbourne Cup.

  The Cup began in 1861, the same year that the AJC introduced the Australian Derby, and a new era of racing developed around it.

  The rival clubs of Victoria put aside their differences and merged into the VRC in 1864. Meanwhile, in Sydney, the AJC, having returned to a new and improved Randwick in 1860, soon attempted to emulate the success of their Melbourne counterparts.

  In 1866 the AJC introduced four new races, the Metropolitan Handicap, the first official Sydney Cup, the Champagne Stakes and the Doncaster Handicap. And along with the new races came a new champion.

  The Barb (foaled 1863)

  The Barb was a small jet-black horse who became known in the press as ‘The Black Demon’. Bred by the pioneering Lee family at Bathurst, he was famously stolen by bushrangers as a foal at foot.

  A large group of valuable horses was taken by the bushrangers from the Lees’ farm and driven south. One of the family, Henry Lee, followed the bushrangers to Monaro, where police apprehended them and all the horses except one were recovered.

  The missing horse was a black colt foal that the kindly, horse-loving bushrangers had left with a farmer at Caloola when it went lame and could not travel. The loss was reported in the press
and the farmer returned the foal to its rightful owners a few weeks later. The foal grew up to be The Barb.

  The year that the new races were introduced at Randwick, 1866, saw The Barb winning the AJC Derby. His sire, Sir Hercules, also sired the winner of the first Sydney Cup, the mighty Yattendon, and Bylong, who won the first Metropolitan Handicap.

  In the true spirit of intercolonial rivalry the Victorian colt, Fishhook, was purchased for a record sum at the dispersal of Hurtle Fisher’s Maribyrnong Stud by his brother, C.B. Fisher, and sent to Sydney to win the Derby.

  Fishhook was from the last crop of the great English sire Fisherman, imported into Victoria to ensure that colony’s superiority in the racing game. He finished a poor third to The Barb, giving the colonial-bred New South Wales champion sire, Sir Hercules, a major victory over Victoria’s imported bloodlines.

  Having accounted for the Victorian colt in the Derby,The Barb’s trainer, ‘Honest’ John Tait, decided to take him to Melbourne and rub salt into the wounds by winning the Melbourne Cup.

  The Barb would go on to win the Sydney Cup twice, as well as the AJC St Leger, the AJC Queen’s Plate and the other ‘new classic’ race, the AJC Metropolitan Handicap. He travelled successfully to win the Melbourne Cup aged three, and took out the VRC Port Phillip Stakes and the Launceston Town Plate in Tasmania as a four-year-old.

  The Barb’s Melbourne Cup victory, as a three-year-old, in 1866 was the first of Tait’s four Cup victories. It was a controversial Cup. There were two horses named Falcon engaged. One of them, also trained by Tait, finished third behind The Barb but the judge would not declare a third place, as the colours carried by the ‘Sydney Falcon’— yellow jacket and red cap—did not match any of the entries given to the judges on the official race card.

  Tait had substituted a red cap on his second runner to differentiate the colours from those carried by The Barb, but evidently he didn’t notify the judge officially. The following day at 4 p.m. the stewards declared ‘Sydney Falcon’ had been placed third, but many bookmakers refused to pay out on the horse, arguing that only the judge had the power to ‘place’ horses officially.