The Big Book of Australian Racing Stories

by Jim Haynes

  Entertainment in the bush was limited and race meetings became the most common way to let your hair down after a spell of hard work, a way to socialise after living in isolation for a while. 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.

  After World War II, most large inland and coastal towns in New South Wales had a registered race club which ran thoroughbred meetings under the direction of the Australian Jockey Club (AJC), and in rural Victoria thoroughbred racing was well organised and had always been popular.

  Smaller towns, however, had few if any thoroughbred horses or trainers and still ran meetings more along the lines of the ‘pony racing’ clubs in the cities, and many race meetings outside the metropolitan areas featured non-thoroughbred horses. Until quite recently, race meetings in smaller towns, or ‘bush races’, were a mixture of ‘pony racing’ and ‘grass-fed hacks’, with a sprinkling of thoroughbreds.

  Picnic races are a great Australian pastime and anyone who has never attended such an event is probably poorer for not having enjoyed the experience. There is still a thriving circuit of picnic races in Victoria, where you will find registered thoroughbreds racing at the same meeting as non-registered horses ridden by amateurs. There are also races especially for horses straight from the paddock, ‘grass-fed hacks’, whose owners are trusted to obey the convention of not feeding grain or supplements to their entries for a certain period prior to the meeting. New South Wales towns tend to have annual picnic meetings which are great social occasions. The most famous of these is the Bong Bong Picnics, featuring the Bong Bong Cup, held at Wyeera, near Bowral in the Southern Highlands.

  The event began in 1886 and almost a century later, in 1985, a crowd of 37,000 behaved so badly that the AJC revoked the club’s ‘once a year’ licence. Local MP John Fahey (later to become NSW Premier and Federal Minister for Finance) said that the rioting and public fornication at the meeting was enough to ‘make a Roman orgy look like a Sunday picnic’.

  The licence was reinstated in 1992 under the strict condition that the event be limited to 5000 members and guests, making it, ironically, one of the most desirable and exclusive events of the Sydney social calendar!

  RIDERS IN THE STAND

  A.B. ‘BANJO’ PATERSON

  There’s some that ride the Robbo style, and bump at every stride;

  While others sit a long way back, to get a longer ride.

  There’s some that ride like sailors do, with legs and arms, and teeth;

  And some ride on the horse’s neck, and some ride underneath.

  But all the finest horsemen out, the men to Beat the Band,

  You’ll find amongst the crowd that ride their races in the Stand.

  They’ll say, ‘He had the race in hand, and lost it in the straight.’

  They’ll show how Godby came too soon, and Barden came too late.

  They’ll say Chevalley lost his nerve, and Regan lost his head;

  They’ll tell how one was ‘livened up’ and something else was ‘dead’.

  In fact, the race was never run on sea, or sky, or land,

  But what you’d get it better done by riders in the Stand.

  The rule holds good in everything in life’s uncertain fight;

  You’ll find the winner can’t go wrong, the loser can’t go right.

  You ride a slashing race, and lose, by one and all you’re banned!

  Ride like a bag of flour, and win, they’ll cheer you in the Stand.

  A CUNNING PLAN

  JIM HAYNES

  As well as his amazing record of victories, Phar Lap could probably have also easily won the Caulfield Cup of 1930. The fact that he was left in the field so long and scratched quite late was controversial at the time.

  It was, indeed, part of ‘a cunning plan’.

  Nothing outside the rules of racing took place but some, mostly bookmakers, consider the actions of Harry Telford and fellow Sydney trainer Frank McGrath had a tinge of mischief about them, one might even say ‘skulduggery’.

  Most racing men say it was a stroke of genius.

  I have to interrupt the narrative here to say a few things.

  Firstly, I have the greatest respect for both men. Harry Telford was the astute ‘genius’ who had the vision to pick Phar Lap as a future champion based wholly upon his breeding, and Frank McGrath was one of the greatest trainers of stayers in our racing history. He trained Prince Foote to win the Melbourne Cup in 1909 and Peter Pan to win two more in the 1930s.

  As a punter I applaud their cunning plan to empty the bookies’ bags without any harm being done to man or beast and no interference with the way the races were run.

  Indeed, I have it on the best authority that Frank McGrath never knowingly did anything detrimental to any of the great horses he trained. He patiently nursed Peter Pan back to health through two serious illnesses, an infection caused by running a nail through his hoof as a two-year-old, and a debilitating form of rheumatism in his shoulders which caused him to miss an entire year of racing.

  In each case patience and kindness prevailed and Peter Pan won two Melbourne Cups, one after each setback.

  McGrath’s patience and love of the horses he trained was evident again with his stayer Denis Boy, who he nursed back to racing fitness after breaking a knee bone. McGrath kept the horse’s leg in a sling until the bone healed. He then trained Denis Boy to win the 1932 AJC Metropolitan Handicap and run fourth behind Peter Pan in the Melbourne Cup.

  In 1940 an attempt was made to shoot McGrath’s Cup favourite, the Cox Plate and Mackinnon Stakes winner Beau Vite. The marksman managed to shoot another of McGrath’s horses, El Golea, by mistake. Beau Vite ran fourth behind Old Rowley in the Cup that year, and McGrath nursed El Golea back to fitness to run third in the Mackinnon in 1941 and third in the Caulfield Cup in 1942.

  Frank McGrath knew horses. He had been a good jockey and was a survivor of the infamous Caulfield Cup race fall of 1885, when sixteen horses fell in a field of 41. One jockey was killed and many injured.

  As a trainer he understood how to condition a horse and how to place horses to best advantage, but more than that, he was a trainer who cared for his horses. A trainer of the old school in many ways, McGrath was also ‘modern’ in the sense that he always put the horse’s welfare first, and his plans were always long-term. His Cups double plan was one of his best.

  McGrath was astute and realistic; he knew his great stayer Amounis was unbeatable in the Caulfield Cup of 1930, if two particular horses were not there. In early markets, however, Amounis was at long odds.

  The cunning plan revolved around three great horses: Amounis, Phar Lap and Nightmarch.

  Nightmarch had defeated Phar Lap in the Melbourne Cup of 1929 but, the following spring, Nightmarch was defeated four times in a row by the ‘Red Terror’ and his owner, Mr A. Louisson, had been heard to say that if Phar Lap contested the Caulfield Cup, he would take Nightmarch back to New Zealand for the New Zealand Cup—rather than run against the champion again in the Caulfield Cup.

  In a conversation with Harry Telford, Frank McGrath suggested that his great stayer Amounis, the only horse to defeat Phar Lap twice, would win the Caulfield Cup if Nightmarch and Phar Lap didn’t start. He suggested that Telford leave Phar Lap in the Caulfield Cup field until Louisson took his horse home. In that time they could get very lucrative odds about their two horses winning the Caulfield–Melbourne Cups double. Then Telford could scratch Phar Lap from the Caulfield Cup and the two trainers would make a fortune betting on the Cups double.

  The plan worked perfectly.

  Seeing that Phar Lap was set to contest the Caulfield Cup, Louisson took Nightmarch home—and he duly won the New Zealand Cup.

  Then Harry Telford scratched Phar Lap, stating that he didn’t want to over-race the champion, and Amounis duly won the Caulfield Cup.

  Phar Lap, of course, famously a
nd easily won the second leg, the Melbourne Cup, and the two trainers sent a battalion of bookies near bankrupt.

  How do I know Frank McGrath was such a kind and patient trainer? Well, I play tennis twice a week with his granddaughter who assures me it’s true.

  She also tells me that her grandfather bought a very expensive imported motorcar . . . sometime late in 1930.

  FIRECRACKER

  JIM BENDRODT

  I turned and looked back. Now, that is something many folk contend should not be done. But I did.

  I’d sat all day at the edge of the sale ring while the thoroughbreds paraded and men paid tens of thousands for them. I’d looked with covetous eyes at horses I’d have given my very soul to own, but this was a place where hard cash talked, and I had no cash, hard or otherwise.

  And so at last I had walked away because the prices were beyond me, and when I’d travelled some 50 yards towards the exit, I heard the auctioneer’s derisive roar upbraiding those whose highest bid was 50 guineas.

  I said I turned and looked back, and in the distance I saw a tall black horse, and once again I heard the auctioneer roar, ‘What, 50 guineas? Surely, gentlemen, you haven’t looked at this one!’

  I started walking back, and I heard someone call 52 and a half and then, after a bit, 55, and the auctioneer shouted, ‘I’ve got 57 and a half just over here.’

  I said, ‘You’ve got 60, mister.’ And then his hammer smashed onto the rostrum.

  That’s how I bought Firecracker, by Cistercian out of Persian Nan. And the folk who knew Persian Nan said the mare was mad.

  Well, maybe so, I didn’t know his mother, so I couldn’t tell you, but I do know that her son was equine dynamite. I’ve had so many horses but, among them all, I’ve never owned a horse like him.

  I paid my 60 guineas at the auctioneer’s desk, and I remember that the balance in my wallet wasn’t much. Then I found the number of his stall, and went to see him. I found the man who cared for him and seven other yearlings. I gave him a little money, and then I said, ‘Well, let’s have a look at him.’

  ‘So you bought the blighter, did you?’ the man asked, and added, ‘Well, you’ve got a handful.’ He pulled the top and bottom bolts of the heavy door and opened it. ‘You be careful,’ he said, ‘this coot is mad. I come from the station he was bred on, and it took five of us three days to catch him in the paddock where he’s been running wild for months.’

  He sidled cautiously towards the colt’s near side. He had tied the horse’s head to a strong ringbolt with a heavy length of rope, a thing no horseman worthy of his salt would do. ‘Get over, you!’ he roared, and smashed the horse in the soft underbelly with his clenched fist, and the colt struck at him with the speed of light . . . and so did I.

  My right hand took his shoulder and whirled him round so that he looked at me in blank astonishment. ‘Take it easy, lad,’ I said, and looked at him for a little time. ‘Now get out,’ I ordered, ‘and stay out.’ He left the stall without another word, and did not come back.

  We got the black colt home eventually to the humble stable that I rented for him, and began to break him in. I say ‘began’ because that about describes it. We couldn’t break him in, and we never did, to the degree that is desirable. He was a queer horse, lean and hard and streamlined, with a lovely fine-drawn head and a remorseless wicked eye.

  They are usually so gentle, so easily handled, these baby horses from the famous studs. A little touchy maybe, a trifle nervous, perhaps more difficult than a pleasant-natured dog, but not much trouble as a general rule. But Firecracker! Well, why go into it in detail? By an imported English stallion from the black mare Persian Nan, and knowing folk said Persian Nan was mad!

  Well, her son was surely crazy in his first four months with us, and then he settled down and, up to a point, but not beyond it, would do as he was told, but it was always the horse that drew the line as I remember it, though we tried to.

  It was in the midst of the Depression years when I bought Firecracker, and 60 guineas was a lot of money then. You may know the Palais Royal, or you may have heard of it, no doubt. The giant dance hall I owned was staggering through the lean hard times with every sail set to catch its hard-won silver pieces. We didn’t get 6000 people back then, as we did in better times.

  We got Firecracker ready and entered him at Menangle in a race of 5½ furlongs, just enough for Firecracker. He won at 6 furlongs eventually, but ‘only just’, as the horsemen put it; but that was later. At three years old he moved over 5½ furlongs like a swift machine, and then he’d stop. He wouldn’t go another yard, except at a canter.

  On Monday night when the show was all over, I called my Palais Royal staff together.

  ‘Boys,’ I said, and then I bowed a trifle towards the grinning girls, ‘and ladies, I think the time has come to have a little talk. Now let’s see, there are about 125 of you and I’ve been having quite a time taking care of you in this damn Depression. I think I’m right when I say most of you have been with me for years. I know you all have a faith and trust in me.’

  A somewhat raucous bellow from the background interrupted me at this point. I paused and then continued, ‘Well, we’re going to have a gamble. Your wages for your work this week are in the bank for payment on Friday, about £600, I think. I’ve got the change the cashiers use, and I’ve hocked everything I own, which isn’t much, and tomorrow I’m going to put the proceeds on a horse.

  ‘If he wins, he’ll save the Palais Royal. If he gets licked, well—that’s the end of us, and I’m afraid you’ll have to go to work at last. Now how about it? Two to one is the price you’ll get, no matter what the price is that he starts at, and the rest is to go to keep this old show open.’

  I could see Bill Swift. I could see him grin as I talked to them. Bill was the lad they’d follow in a case like this, so I talked to him, and he grinned back at me derisively, and once he interrupted with his deep rich Irish voice, ‘Sure, boss, and it’s a generous little soul you always were, so help me, and it’s round your little finger that you’ll be twisting us poor stupid goats as usual.’

  ‘Bill,’ I said, ‘how well you know that, night and day, only one thought moves me, and that’s your blasted welfare, else how could it be that you are my staff manager at your luscious salary, when half the world is starving?’

  ‘Sure and it’s three-quarters of my luscious salary that you’ve been borrowing from me to feed your crackpot horse, who would otherwise be starving like the rest of them, and now it’s the lot you’ll take to bet on the feckless loon tomorrow, and that’ll be the end of it, so it will, or me mother’s name was Rachel.’

  The delighted treble of the girls’ laughter fought with the rumble of the male voices when he answered me. He was a natural salesman, this Bill Swift.

  He was so many other things to me. Years before I’d advertised for a fighting man. I ran a show in those days, a fine big rink in a hard tough section near the waterfront, and I needed help because respectability was its slogan, and its patrons needed guidance in the civilised amenities as ordained by me. And so I had to have a ‘man of his hands’ to help me in my inroads on my precious patrons’ natural inclinations.

  So many likely fellows came in answer to the advertisement, and when one stood before me I would say, ‘And now, my lad, do you think you could whip me in a dust-up?’ and, because of policy or some other reason, they all said ‘No’, until Bill came.

  A great tall lad about my own age, from a wind-jammer in the harbour, thick in the middle even then, with a caveman’s torso and lethal hands. With bright blue eyes under thick red brows, and a torrid head of hair. And when I said, ‘Well, Bill, do you think you could whip me?’ he said without an instant’s hesitation, ‘My flaming oath!’

  So I took him to the rink’s high roof where my small gym was, and we pulled the gloves on. He was a rough-and-tumble fighter, whose equal I knew but once before, but he was a child in the tricks of Mr Queensberry. I doubt if he’d ever seen a pair
of boxing gloves. It was the rapier against the blundering broadsword, but I knew this was my man right from the start and ever since he’d been with me through tumultuous years of triumphs and disasters.

  I think the things I liked best about Bill were his Irish sense of humour and his loyalty. With him, loyalty went to far extremes, and this little yarn will tell you just how far it did go.

  Some years before we had rocketed out of Melbourne in my Marmon Speedster, Bill Swift, Steve and Bill Romaine, and I. We climbed the Gippsland mountains over the yellow slippery highway, and a summer cyclone kept us company. The narrow road was greasy, un-tarred, unpaved, and, at a point where the mountain was a wall on one side, my back tyres slipped, and the Marmon skidded sideways.

  When she stopped, the car’s rear wheels rested a bare 3 inches from the outer edge of a gentle slope that skirted the road itself, and beyond the edge of that slope where the wheels rested there was nothing. Two thousand feet below, the treetops growing in the valley looked like children’s toys. The bonnet of the car thrust upwards at an angle to the road itself.

  You know those old cars. You held the foot-brake on with sheer strength. The handbrake was nearly always useless. You didn’t have hydraulic power in braking systems back then.

  I knew I’d hold the foot-brake down for quite a long time, and I knew that when I got tired, as I must eventually, my leg would lose the power that kept the pedal level with the floor. I knew then that we’d go tumbling down to where the treetops waved so far below. I told Steve and Bill Romaine to get out quickly, but I said to do it quietly and with care. I didn’t want to shake the car. Along the running-board and over the bonnet, and then onto the road. That was the way they reached safety.

  And then I said to Bill Swift, ‘Now, Bill, get going. I can’t keep this pressure on forever.’

  Bill looked at me and growled, ‘No, boss.’

  ‘But Bill, why two of us?’ I asked. ‘There’s nothing you can do, that’s obvious. You get out.’ I looked at him and his heavy face was hard as granite, so I tried again in a different way: ‘Please, Bill.’