Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  The pylons were criticised in letters to the press as being ‘useless and ugly’. They are certainly useless, as they perform no structural function, but they have become part of the Sydney landscape.

  The opening in 1932 was surrounded by controversy. The Australian bishops objected to the opening ceremony being held during Easter week and Major de Groot, a furniture maker and member of the right wing paramilitary New Guard, objected to Labor Premier Jack Lang opening the bridge. He thought it should be a member of the royal family or the governor, so he famously rode past Lang and slashed the ribbon with his sword—but nothing happened. The cutting of the ribbon did not operate the mechanism for the fireworks and music. A workman watching Lang was to press a button. So the ribbon was re-tied and the ceremony went ahead after de Groot’s arrest.

  The weight of steel in the bridge is 52,800 tonnes and the span itself weighs 39,000 tonnes. The arch may rise or fall 18 centimetres due to heating or cooling.

  Its initial three coats took 272,000 litres of paint and we all know that the painting of the bridge’s 485,000 square metres of steel span never ends; the painters complete the task after three years of painting and 30,000 litres of paint, and they immediately start again.

  The Harbour Bridge was a part of Sydney’s culture from the day construction began. As kids, we had a favourite piece of nonsense verse:

  One fine day, in the middle of the night,

  The Harbour Bridge it caught alight.

  The blind man saw it and was dismayed

  And the dumb man rang the fire brigade.

  One deaf fireman answered the phone,

  Gathered the others and came on his own.

  On the way to the fire he hit a dead cat,

  Killed it again and squashed it flat.

  He got to the bridge before he departed

  And put out the fire before it started.

  JH

  ‘I SAW PHAR LAP’

  The story of Phar Lap has been told many times, but then, it is a great yarn!

  The ‘Red Terror’ is an Australasian icon and revered and adored both in New Zealand and Australia.

  Phar Lap was a disinterested and lazy track worker as a young horse and kept growing until he stood at seventeen hands, so his trainer Harry Telford had him gelded.

  Even so, he ran poorly at eight of his first nine starts as a late two year old and early three year old but finally showed a glimpse of what was to come by winning a Juvenile Maiden at Rosehill at his fifth start, after finishing last at his previous start.

  He went on the first of his great winning jaunts by taking the Rosehill Guineas, AJC Derby, Craven Plate and VRC Derby before being sent out at even money favourite for the Melbourne Cup.

  Phar Lap ran the same time for both derbies and broke Manfred’s record by a quarter of a second. In the Cup, with only 7 stone 6 pounds (47 kilograms), he had to be ridden by lightweight jockey Bobby Lewis.

  It is often mistakenly stated that Lewis took the mount from Phar Lap’s ‘regular jockey’ Jim Pike, who could not make the weight. The truth is that the colt had been ridden in his first fourteen races by eight different jockeys, although Pike had ridden him in both derbies and would become his regular jockey, riding him at every one of his sixteen starts as a four year old—for fourteen wins. Pike rode the great chestnut thirty times in total, for twenty-seven wins and two seconds.

  The ‘Red Terror’ could be a real terror to ride and he refused to settle for Lewis in the 1929 Cup. The jockey said later he just could not get the horse’s head down or stop him reefing and pulling and so reluctantly he let him lead, only to be run down and finish third behind Nightmarch and Pacquito.

  Nightmarch was the first good horse to be sired by Phar Lap’s sire, Night Raid. He was from the ‘outcast’ stallion’s first crop and was a year older than Phar Lap.

  On his return to racing in the St George Stakes in the autumn, Phar Lap ran third behind Frank McGrath’s great stayer Amounis, the only horse to beat him twice.

  In the eighteen-month period starting from March 1930 and ending with his eighth placing, carrying 10 stone 10 pounds (68 kilograms), in the Melbourne Cup of 1931, the ‘wonder horse’ started thirty-two times for thirty wins and two seconds, winning every major race in Sydney and Melbourne from a mile (1.6 kilometres) to 2 miles (3.2 kilometres).

  Those wins included the W.S. Cox Plate twice, two more Craven Plates to add to the one he won at the age of three, the Melbourne Cup with ridiculous ease, carrying 62.5 kilograms and all the other classic races of the spring and autumn carnivals in both cities.

  The great horse won weight-for-age races by twenty lengths and broke the existing records for all distances between a mile and a half (2.4 kilometres) and 2 miles (3.2 kilometres).

  He started at prices like 14 to 1 on, and it is common knowledge that he remains the shortest priced horse to win the Melbourne Cup and the only ever odds-on winner. What people may not know is that he actually shut down the betting ring on no less than twelve occasions, when no bookmakers would field on the races he won. He also travelled to Adelaide and won two classic races there.

  Jim Pike always said his greatest victory was when he took on the sprinters and beat them in the Futurity stakes at Caulfield on a bog track carrying 64.5 kilograms. He missed the start and then took off around the entire field to run down the good sprinter Mystic Peak.

  Drama and sensation were part the great horse’s career. He was shot at before winning the 1930 Melbourne Stakes (MacKinnon) and then hidden away at St Albans near Geelong before winning the Cup three days later. He almost emulated the greats of former eras, like his ancestor Carbine, by winning four major races over eight days, three major races in a week and four major races in a month several times.

  Both his owner, David Davis, and his trainer, Harry Telford, have been accused of over-racing their champion and Davis has been criticised for starting Phar Lap, against Telford’s wishes, in the Melbourne Cup of 1931 with the cruel weight of 68 kilograms and for taking the horse to America.

  Davis, however, seems in retrospect to have been a fair-minded man. He was grateful to Telford for finding the horse and allowed him to remain as part owner for a modest £4000 when the lease expired. It was also Davis who had the great horse’s skin, heart and skeleton returned to Australia after his tragic death. It is also worth remembering that Telford, who leased Phar Lap from Davis for the first three years of his career, had already won a Melbourne Cup with him, while Davis, who actually owned him, had not.

  Myths develop quickly in racing and the truth is often forgotten when fiction and films are created from fact. Telford has been criticised for leaving young Tommy Woodcock in charge of the valuable champion in the USA, but the fact is that Telford’s daughter had just died and he was organising her funeral.

  It is also true that a team of four, which included jockey Bill Elliott and vet Bill Nielsen, travelled to the USA with Woodcock and Phar Lap. His owner, David Davis, who was an American, was also in the USA, managing the campaign.

  It is a mark of Phar Lap’s greatness that the VRC changed the weight-for-age rules in 1931 to include allowances and penalties, in an attempt to bring the great horse ‘back to the field’. They also gave him a massive 10 kilograms over weight-for-age in the 1931 Cup.

  Further testaments to Phar Lap’s greatness are the sensation he caused in the USA and the ease of his win in the invitational Agua Caliente Handicap in Tijuana, Mexico, at his first start on dirt after a long sea journey and a 1300 kilometre road trip. He was also recovering from a bad stone bruise to a heel and raced in bar plates for the first time, and he broke the track record. That win, his only start outside the relatively minor racing arena of Australia, made him the third greatest stakes winning racehorse of all time, in the world.

  Phar Lap’s tragic death and the theories surrounding it have been well documented. The nation mourned and the autopsy showed a severe gastric inflammation from duodenitis-proximal jejunitis, a condition
exacerbated by stress.

  Later studies, as recently as 2008, showed the presence of arsenic in large quantities which has led to all sorts of theories, ranging from Percy Sykes’ statement that all horses at that time had arsenic in their systems to theories of deliberate poisoning. Phar Lap had evidently been fed foliage cut down after being sprayed with arsenic-based insecticide.

  Two things seem certain, the well-documented symptoms the horse suffered are totally consistent with duodenitis-proximal jejunitis, and there was a lot of arsenic in his system. The rest is conjecture.

  Phar Lap’s spectacular career has been continually documented and mythologised in books and films for eighty years, and his tragic end has been analysed and debated again and again.

  Phar Lap was such a towering figure that the history of thoroughbred racing in Australia is divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’ Phar Lap. All champions since him have only ever been ‘the best since Phar Lap’.

  Comparing horses of different eras is silly, but people keep doing it. The exercise was described as ‘folly’ by the US Blood-Horse Magazine, which nevertheless in 1999 ranked the top hundred horses ever to race in America. The panel placed Phar Lap, on the strength of one start in Mexico, twenty-second.

  When the findings were published, one of the panel recalled a conversation with Francis Dunne, who had been a placings judge at Agua Caliente and later a senior racing administrator in New York State. Dunne was asked, after Secretariat’s Triple Crown win in 1973, whether Man O’ War or Secretariat was the greatest horse of them all. He replied, ‘Neither, I saw Phar Lap.’

  JH

  PHAR LAP

  ANONYMOUS

  How you thrilled the racing public with your matchless strength and grace;

  With your peerless staying power and your dazzling burst of pace.

  You toyed with your opponents with a confidence so rare,

  Flashing past the winning post with lengths and lengths to spare.

  No distance ever proved too great, no horse or handicap,

  Could stop you winning races like a champion—Phar Lap.

  With a minimum of effort you would simply bowl along

  With a stride so devastating and an action smooth and strong.

  And you vied with the immortals when, on Flemington’s green track,

  You won the Melbourne Cup with nine-stone-twelve upon your back.

  How the hearts of thousands quickened as you cantered back old chap,

  With your grand head proudly nodding to the crowd that yelled, ‘Phar Lap’.

  Who that saw it could forget it—how you won the Craven Plate?

  When a mighty son of Rosedale, whom we’d justly labelled ‘great’,

  Clapped the pace on from the start in a middle-distance race,

  Just to test you to the limit of endurance, grit and pace.

  He was galloping so strongly that the stands began to clap,

  For it seemed as though your lustre would be dimmed at last, Phar Lap.

  But you trailed him like a bloodhound till your nostrils touched his rump

  Then your jockey asked the question and, with one tremendous jump,

  Something like a chestnut meteor hurtled past a blur of black

  And, before the crowd stopped gasping, you were halfway down the track,

  And, the further that you travelled, ever wider grew the gap,

  And you broke another record—one you’d set yourself, Phar Lap.

  The hopes of all Australians travelled with you overseas,

  Wishing to inspire you to further victories.

  And at Agua Caliente you proved you were the best,

  Then your great heart stopped beating—so they brought it home to rest.

  And Australians won’t forget you while the roots of life hold sap;

  For the greatest racehorse that was ever foaled was you, Phar Lap.

  CHESTY BOND

  The Cartoon Hero with the Premier’s Jaw

  Aussie cartoons have been very successful—and Aussie cartoonists were pioneers of both the single frame and strip cartoon.

  Great artists like Nicholas Chevalier and Norman and Lionel Lindsay drew cartoons for magazines like Melbourne Punch and The Bulletin in order to make a living early in their careers and Norman Lindsay continued as a cartoonist until the demise of The Bulletin in the 1940s.

  Felix the Cat, the world’s first international cartoon superstar, was the brainchild of New York based Australian filmmaker and entrepreneur Pat Sullivan, although he was drawn by artist Otto Mesmer.

  Ginger Meggs, Fatty Finn, Wally and the Major, The Potts, Bluey and Curly and Uncle’s Joe’s Horse Radish were all ground-breaking Aussie cartoon strips.

  But there was another Aussie first in cartooning—we had the world’s first advertising cartoon strip—Chesty Bond.

  It all began in 1915 when American immigrant George Bond started importing underwear from the USA. After World War I, import shortages forced him to begin making clothing locally, in the inner city Sydney suburb of Camperdown.

  All went well for George until the economic crash of 1929 sent him broke and he lost the company. The brand survived, however, and Bonds Industries began 1930 as a public company.

  Having survived the Depression, the company needed a boost and they turned to J. Walter Thompson Advertising for help and ideas in 1938. The idea for the Chesty Bond character came from Ted Moloney and Syd Millar was commissioned to draw the iconic bronzed Aussie who was never seen without his Bond’s singlet.

  Syd Miller was told to draw Chesty as ‘a kind, loveable, good-looking Aussie—strong but not the lumpy weight lifting type’.

  After a few intermittent appearances, the strip was soon running three days a week from 1940 and was the world’s first advertising comic strip, eventually running for over twenty years. Chesty, with his characteristically powerful jutting jaw and impressive physique, became a superhero when he pulled on his trusty Chesty Bond athletic vest.

  As a result of the successful campaign, Chesty Bond became the archetypal Australian hero synonymous with Australian masculinity and an icon that was recognised Australia wide.

  Chesty was so successful, appearing several times a week in syndicated newspapers across the land, that Syd Miller was commissioned to draw another ‘advercartoon’ for Scotch Tape in 1950. It was a cartoon bear who did amazing things with ‘Bear Tape’ and even had a slogan—‘a little bear will fix it’.

  Chesty made a comeback of sorts in the 1990s when Paul Mercurio danced with him in a television ad and Trevor Barnabas gave him a new degree of fame in the form of a very successful 18 footer yacht.

  Although there are many who claim otherwise, Syd Miller always said that Chesty’s famous jaw was the only part of the character modelled on a real person.

  Whose chin was it?

  Chesty’s chin was modelled on that of the ‘Big Fella’—controversial New South Wales Premier Jack Lang.

  JH

  SLIM DUSTY

  Slim Dusty made 107 albums, won 37 Golden Guitar Awards and was an Aussie icon. He also had some great yarns about touring in the early days.

  Slim was the most enthusiastic and energetic person I ever toured with. When we had shows in country towns, he was always first up and, as he knew I didn’t party on after a show like some of the others, he’d sometimes tap on my motel room door and say, ‘Come and I’ll show you where we used to put up the tent in the old days.’

  Slim would sit backstage and yarn until it was time for one of us to go on. He always saw the show in terms of a set structure with a female singer, comic, bush balladeer, maybe even a sight act in the old days, like a knife thrower or whip cracker or acrobats.

  Once on tour I recall that he was so rapt in the story he was telling me that he forgot that I was there as part of the show. Slim and I knew each other in another context, as board members of the Country Music Association and, as we sat yarning backstage, Slim asked, ‘Who’s on now, the comic?’

/>   I had to reply, ‘Errr, no Slim —I’m the comic!’

  Photographer John Elliott, who travelled more miles with Slim than most of the artists on the show in the last few years of Slim’s career, has written some of the best stories about those days.

  Slim’s first tour was in 1954, from Sydney to Toowoomba and back. The show consisted of four people. The ‘stars’ were Slim and his wife Joy McKean, who was much more famous than Slim at that stage. Joy and her sister Heather, as The McKean Sisters, had their own radio show and magazine in the early 1950s.

  The other two in the first touring show were guitarist Barry Thornton and whip cracker Larry Mason, who doubled as the other musician on bass. The tours were all about multi-tasking: setting up, selling tickets; there were no roadies then.

  Slim and Joy had a 1938 Ford and a caravan. ‘The caravan took four of us to lift,’ Slim said, ‘and we’d put it on the back of that poor old Ford and she’d just about lift off the ground.’

  Usually, they just camped outside the halls where they performed, with some of the crew bunking down in the dressing rooms or in swags.

  Now and then there was trouble with drunks and someone had to be the bouncer or ‘chucker-outer’. Joy’s Auntie Una was part of the show for many years and had a fearsome reputation. She joined the show to take care of front of house and look after the kids as the show got bigger.

  Slim called Auntie Una ‘the Best Bloody Bouncer in the Business’ but the story I was told was that Auntie Una’s reputation was achieved partly by mistake.

  One night in a country hall, a bloke was being a nuisance. Auntie Una had chucked him out several times but he’d run around to another door to get back in again. When she ejected him on the third or fourth occasion, she ran to the other door and closed it from the inside. What she didn’t know was that he was racing towards the door on the other side and, as she slammed the door shut, she flattened the poor bloke and broke his nose and knocked out a few teeth.