The Big Book of Australian Racing Stories

by Jim Haynes

  Big money was available in horseracing by this time, but it was not a game for the faint-hearted. In a match race at Homebush in 1854, Tait’s horse Sportsman defeated Cooramin, owned by pioneer grazier John Eales; the two men bet each other £1000 on the result.

  In 1855 Tait sold his horses and visited England, accompanied by Ashworth, to choose breeding stock. By this time he had made some rich and powerful friends and had formed a partnership with Alfred Cheeke, crown prosecutor and later Supreme Court judge of New South Wales. They imported three British horses, Warwick, New Warrior and Magus, who sired Clove, winner of the first AJC Derby in 1865.

  On his return to Sydney in 1857, Tait set up a stud farm at Mount Druitt, in partnership with Cheeke, and chose his new racing colours of yellow jacket and black cap. Perhaps his old colours, black jacket and red cap, were too close to those of his rival Etienne de Mestre whose horses, including the famous Archer, raced in all black.

  Unlike many other racing men, who saw themselves as ‘sportsmen’, Tait always said he ‘went into racing as a business’. The success of his business depended on winning races and he used scientific methods of feeding and training. He supervised the training and preparation of all the horses in his stables and his horses were always fit, healthy and raced in top condition.

  He owned two triple-derby winners: Fireworks, who won twelve of his sixteen starts including the 1867 AJC Derby and the VRC Derby in 1867 and 1868 (when the race date was changed to 1 January), and Florence who won the AJC Derby, VRC Derby and Queensland Turf Club Derby in 1870–71. The great filly Florence also won the VRC Oaks.

  As well as The Barb, Tait trained three other Melbourne Cup winners: Glencoe (1869) who also won the AJC Derby, The Pearl (1871) and The Quack (1872). He trained Goldsbrough to win the Epsom–Metropolitan double in 1875, and his last win in a big race came when Amendment won the 1877 Metropolitan.

  Between 1865 and 1880 Tait won something like £30,000 in prizemoney alone. That in itself was a fortune at the time and when you remember that added ‘sweepstakes’ and side bets were commonplace back then, you can imagine just how profitable his ‘business’ was!

  John Tait was given his nickname, ‘Honest John’, because he only ever protested once, in the Sydney Cup of 1866. Even then he protested out of a sense of justice, not to gain the race, which was won by Yattendon. Tait’s horse Falcon was blatantly ‘taken out’ when Pitsford crossed and ‘hocked’ him; Thompson, the offending jockey, was disqualified.

  When The Barb weighed in 2 pounds light in the Queen’s Plate of 1868, he offered £100 reward to anyone who could prove foul play. The race was given to Etienne de Mestre’s Tim Whiffler, which had finished second.

  Tait and de Mestre dominated racing in New South Wales for two decades, being the first trainers to bring commercial principles and good management practices to the sport of racing. Between 1861 and 1878 the two great Sydney trainers won half of the Melbourne Cups contested, with de Mestre taking the Cup five times and Tait four times.

  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.

  Tait retired from training in 1880 due to poor health. His wife Janet died that year and this enabled Tait to marry Christian Ann Swannell, a widow who had already borne him six children. This they did on 18 August 1880 while visiting London.

  The couple were known for their hospitality and lived in a fine house called Toddington, on the Boulevard, at Petersham. John had been a justice of the peace from 1879, he also served on the committee of the Animals Protection Society, and represented New South Wales as commissioner at the 1887 Adelaide and 1888 Melbourne exhibitions.

  ‘Honest John’ Tait collapsed and died of heart disease in May 1888 and was buried in Waverley cemetery without religious rites. Survived by his second wife, four of their children, and two sons and a daughter from his first marriage, he left an estate valued at £24,000.

  THE BANJO

  JIM HAYNES

  We all know ‘The Banjo’ as the man who wrote two famous poems and a song! But there are so many other elements to Andrew Barton Paterson’s life apart from him being the author of ‘Clancy’, ‘Snowy River’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’. He was a remarkable man!

  I guess most people think Paterson was born and raised in the bush, but he lived there on the family property for just the first decade of his life and left home in 1874, at the age of ten, to live with his literary-minded grandmother in Sydney and attend Sydney Grammar School.

  After leaving school he trained to become a solicitor, and started writing poetry about current affairs, sporting events and tragic bush tales and sending them to The Bulletin. His first published poems were about the Sudan War, the Melbourne Cup and a lost child dying in the bush.

  He was a very ‘sporty’ type and a very good rider. He always said the broken arm he suffered as a child was his secret; his shortened arm gave him a light touch on the reins. His ‘nurse’ was an Aboriginal girl who was too scared to tell the family she’d dropped the baby and the arm had to be treated in several painful operations years later.

  Paterson was known as ‘Barty’ to family and friends, but he used the name of a station racehorse as his nom-de-plume, ‘The Banjo’.

  Even after ‘The Man From Snowy River’ caused a stir in The Bulletin, nobody knew who ‘The Banjo’ was until his first book was released. Later he was so famous that the pen name ‘The Banjo’ was shortened to ‘Banjo’ and added to his name.

  He played in the first New South Wales Polo Team ever assembled and they defeated Victoria 2–0. He won the Polo Challenge Cup, a race for polo ponies, at Rosehill racetrack in 1892, on his horse called The Shifter. His poem ‘How The Favourite Beat Us’ was printed in the racebook for the Rosehill meeting of 9 November 1894.

  Banjo was a member of the Sydney Hunt Club and rode winners at Randwick and Rosehill as an amateur jockey, including the Hunt Club Steeplechase Cup at Rosehill on Black Tracker in May 1896. His racing colours were lilac and yellow quarters with a quartered cap in the same colours. These colours are carried today by horses raced by the Banjo Paterson syndicate, whose horses are mostly named after Paterson’s characters and poems.

  Paterson wrote a long treatise on racing which was never published during his lifetime. More than a hundred pages long, it contains a complete explanation of everything to do with racing, from understanding the stud book, to buying a yearling, training, bookmaking, a history of early racing, punting and even comparing English champions to Australian-bred horses. He also wrote a novel about racing called The Shearer’s Colt.

  The Paterson estate contains many paintings and lithographs and also the trophies that he won, along with photos of his much-loved horses and portraits and photos of Paterson himself in his racing colours.

  A solicitor by trade, he helped Henry Lawson and Breaker Morant with legal matters at times. For six years he was engaged to the daughter of the head of the law firm he worked for, but the marriage never happened and it was many years before he married someone else. He became bored as a solicitor and later worked as a journalist, editor and broadcaster.

  He travelled to distant parts of Australia and the Pacific and wrote articles on pearl fishing, hunting, new colonies, and many other things. In 1899 he travelled with a troopship carrying men
and horses to the Boer War and wrote extensively about the war. As a war correspondent Paterson developed sympathy for the Boers and became opposed to the war.

  He returned home and in 1900 travelled via the Northern Territory to China to report on the Boxer Rebellion, which was over when he arrived. In China he met fellow Australian George ‘Chinese’ Morrison, the hero of the Boxer Rebellion and the man Banjo regarded as the most impressive man he ever met (a big call as he met Cecil Rhodes, Winston Churchill, Conan Doyle, Kipling and others!).

  Paterson then visited France and Britain and, as ever, took every opportunity to visit racecourses and talk to racing men. His approach to different cultures may seem old-fashioned today and very ‘British’ to modern readers, but he was, in fact, open-minded for his time and always looked for the positive in other lifestyles. Here is his summation of the French approach to horseracing, after spending a day observing the natives at a race meeting in Marseilles:

  A day’s racing in France is something to remember. In Australia racing is a business, and everyone who goes out goes with bent brows and an anxious mind, to try and unravel what is to him a serious problem. But with the Frenchman, a day’s racing is a light-hearted holiday. He closes his shop at one o’clock, and goes out with his wife, in a trap drawn by a little pony with jingling bells and harness, and rattles away through the clear crisp air, with the dry aromatic smell of the autumn leaves all round, down the long avenue of sycamores out to the course. The tram-cars, loaded with the happy laughing crowds, go thundering along the streets. Motor cars rush past at a pace that would not be tolerated for an instant in any Australian or English community; on the seat of each motorcar, alongside the driver, sits a large black French poodle, sagely contemplating the moving scene around him.

  Everyone is laughing, and everyone looks on the racing in a light-hearted way, quite foreign to our idea. They have left dull care behind them for the day, and they will back a horse because they like the look of his tail or the colours of his jockey, and then say it is treachery if they lose their money!

  A dashing young Frenchman, with waxed moustache, tall hat and fur-lined coat, was sitting in the stand near us with a party of three superbly dressed ladies. As the horses started he fixed his glasses on the race and sprang to his feet, his face working with emotion. He had backed a big chestnut horse, which was running well up with the leaders. Every time the chestnut drew to the lead the Frenchman’s face lit up, his chest expanded, and he turned with the air of a conqueror to the females behind him, saying, ‘Il gagne! Il gagne!’

  Round the turn they came. He clutched the rail in front of him, and clenched his teeth, and fairly shook with the strain that was put on him. As the horses flashed past the post, with his chestnut beaten by a neck, he dropped back on the seat with the air of a man whose hopes in life are crushed. He was too heartbroken to speak for a long time. It turned out afterwards that he had five francs (four and tuppence) on the chestnut in the place totalisator, so he had saved his money, but it was the defeat of his judgement that annoyed him.

  That is the right way to go racing, to squirm and yell when your horse gets ahead, and prance about the paddock after a win of one and sixpence. The French do not know much about racing, but they get a lot of fun out of it.

  Banjo was editor of The Sydney Evening News and the Town and Country Journal from 1904 to 1908. Then, after a trip to the United Kingdom, he decided to move with his family to a 40,000-acre property near Yass.

  In 1914 Paterson enlisted, at the age of 51, to fight in World War I and was disappointed when he was made an ambulance driver on the Western Front. He asked to do something more useful and was given command of the 2nd Remount Division, in charge of bringing horses from Australia via India to the war. He became a major, saw service in the Middle East and became quite ill, but continued serving until the end of the war, with his wife Alice who joined the Red Cross and served close to her husband.

  After the war Paterson travelled to Britain and China and then returned home, lived in Sydney, and kept writing and broadcasting until his death in 1941.

  He was never a part of the bohemian group of Sydney writers who owed their fame to The Bulletin, but he met Conan Doyle and was friendly with Rudyard Kipling and developed a friendship with artist Norman Lindsay—they went for weekend rides ‘through the bushland’ . . . at Cremorne, which is now an inner suburb of Sydney!

  A STEEPLECHASE RIDER

  A.B. ‘BANJO’ PATERSON

  He was a small, wiry, hard-featured fellow, the son of a stockman on a big cattle-station, and began life as a horse-breaker; he was naturally a horseman, able and willing to ride anything that could carry him. He left the station to go with cattle on the road, and having picked up a horse that showed pace, amused himself by jumping over fences. Then he went to Wagga, entered the horse in a steeplechase, rode him himself, won handsomely, sold the horse at a good price to a Sydney buyer, and went down to ride it in his Sydney races.

  In Sydney he did very well; he got a name as a fearless and clever rider, and was offered several mounts on fine animals. So he pitched his camp in Sydney, and became a fully enrolled member of the worst profession in the world. I had known him in the old days on the road, and when I met him on the course one day I inquired how he liked the new life.

  ‘Well, it’s a livin’,’ he said, ‘but it’s no great shakes. They don’t give steeplechase riders a chance in Sydney. There’s very few races, and the big sweepstakes keep horses out of the game.’

  ‘Do you get a fair share of the riding?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, I get as much as anybody. But there’s a lot of ’em got a notion I won’t take hold of a horse when I’m told (that is, pull him to prevent him winning). Some of these days I’ll take hold of a horse when they don’t expect it.’

  I smiled as I thought there was probably a sorry day in store for some backer when the jockey ‘took hold’ unexpectedly.

  ‘Do you have to pull horses, then, to get employment?’

  ‘Oh, well, it’s this way,’ he said, rather apologetically, ‘if an owner is badly treated by the handicapper, and is just giving his horse a run to get weight off, then it’s right enough to catch hold a bit. But when a horse is favourite and the public are backing him it isn’t right to take hold of him then. I would not do it.’

  This was his whole code of morals, not to pull a favourite; and he felt himself very superior to the scoundrel who would pull favourites or outsiders indiscriminately.

  ‘What do you get for riding?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, looking about uneasily, ‘we’re supposed to get a fiver for a losing mount and ten pounds if we win, but a lot of the steeplechase owners are what I call “battlers”, men who have no money and get along by owing everybody. They promise us all sorts of money if we win, but they don’t pay if we lose. I only got two pounds for that last steeplechase.’

  ‘Two pounds!’ I made a rapid calculation. He had ridden over eighteen fences for two pounds, had chanced his life eighteen times at less than half a crown a time.

  ‘Good Heavens!’ I said. ‘That’s a poor game. Wouldn’t you be better back on the station?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, sometimes we get laid a bit to nothing, and do well out of a race. And then, you know, a steeplechase rider is somebody, not like an ordinary fellow that is just working.’

  I realised that I was an ‘ordinary fellow who was just working’, and felt small accordingly.

  ‘I’m just off to weigh now,’ he said. ‘I’m riding Contractor, and he’ll run well, but he always seems to fall at those logs. Still, I ought to have luck today. I met a hearse as I was coming out. I’ll get him over the fences, somehow.’

  ‘Do you think it lucky, then, to meet a hearse?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘if you meet it. You mustn’t overtake it, that’s unlucky. So is a cross-eyed man unlucky. Cross-eyed men ought to be kept off racecourses.’

  He reappeared clad in his racing rig, a
nd we set off to see the horse saddled. We found the owner in a great state of excitement. It seemed he had no money, absolutely none whatever, but had borrowed enough to pay the sweepstakes, and stood to make something if the horse won and lose nothing if he lost, as he had nothing to lose.

  My friend insisted on being paid two pounds before he would mount, and the owner nearly had a fit in his efforts to persuade him to ride on credit. At last a backer of the horse agreed to pay two pounds ten shillings, win or lose, and the rider was to get twenty-five pounds out of the prize if he won.

  So up he got; and as he and the others walked the big muscular horses round the ring, nodding gaily to friends in the crowd, I thought of the gladiators going out to fight in the arena with the cry of ‘Hail, Caesar, those about to die salute thee!’

  The story of the race is soon told. My friend went to the front at the start and led nearly all the way, and ‘Contractor!’ was on everyone’s lips as the big horse sailed along in front of his field. He came at the log fence full of running, and it looked certain that he would get over. But at the last stride he seemed to falter, then plunged right into the fence, striking it with his chest, and, turning right over, landed on his unfortunate rider.

  A crowd clustered round and hid horse and rider from view, and I ran down to the casualty room to meet him when the ambulance came in. The limp form was carefully taken out and laid on a stretcher while a doctor examined the crushed ribs, the broken arm, and all the havoc that the horse’s huge weight had wrought.

  There was no hope from the first. My poor friend, who had so often faced Death for two pounds, lay very still awhile. Then he began to talk, wandering in his mind, ‘Where are the cattle?’ his mind evidently going back to the old days on the road. Then, quickly, ‘Look out there, give me room!’ and again, ‘Five-and-twenty pounds, Mary, and a sure thing if he don’t fall at the logs.’