by Jim Haynes
Coming to the final turn, Trei Gnaree had come with another surge. He, Andallah and Bar the Shouting, last year’s winner, could all win. A tight finish was possible. The other two were more seasoned but Andallah was going the easiest. Until he fell. And then there were six, and the plot changed again.
Instead of a tight finish, it was a procession. Commission Red ran past Tacloban near the line for third. King Dollar was half a furlong back imitating Cliff Young. Somewhere behind him was Waldara, last but not dishonoured. He was still on his feet—sort of.
Jump races are different. After the major flat races, the ritual is for the trainer to go for a drink in the committee bar, as though he, rather than the horse, had done all the work. After Saturday’s presentation, Craddock went to head off with Trei Gnaree. He was called back. Didn’t he want a drink?
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’m going with the horse. He’s my horse.’
Note: Trei Gnaree won the VRC Grand National at Flemington on 14 July 1990.
CASTLEBAR
A.B. ‘BANJO’ PATERSON
Biddings good morrow to all our cares,
Riding along with a joyful heart.
Little we reckon of world affairs,
All that we ask is a decent start,
Thought the jumps are big and the distance far
We will get to the finish on Castlebar.
Little Blue Peter goes sailing by,
Little Blue Peter may stand or fall,
For his rider reckons no man can die
Till his day comes round—so he chances all!
And away to the front where the good ones are
Go Little Blue Peter and Castlebar.
Bay and chestnut and brown and black,
I hear in the timber their hoof beats drum,
As I clear the fence on the Prospect track
I turn in the saddle and watch them come
But the chestnut horse with the big white star,
Why isn’t he following Castlebar?
Dear little woman with eyes of blue,
With lissom figure and easy grace,
I turn in the saddle and long for you
As the field sweeps on at a rattling pace.
But I know that away on the heights afar
Your heart is following Castlebar.
ADAM LINDSAY GORDON
JIM HAYNES
The Australian love affair with rhymed verse goes hand in hand with our love of racing. It all began with an ex-patriot Briton who wanted to be taken seriously as a poet, but ended up being remembered for his galloping rhymes and his riding ability.
His disappointment at not having his ‘serious’ poetry taken seriously, along with financial troubles and injuries sustained while steeplechasing, eventually led to his suicide. Yet the very same factors made him the inspiration for our most famous writers and are the reason he is revered today as the father of Australian rhymed verse.
Adam Lindsay Gordon was born in the Azores in 1833 while his parents were staying on his grandfather’s plantation, probably for the sake of his mother’s health. His father was a retired Bengal Cavalry captain who had married his first cousin. The family was an old and famous Scottish one, which had produced many distinguished men.
On their return to England young Gordon was sent to Cheltenham College. He had constant trouble at school and was there for only a year before he was sent to a church school in Gloucestershire.
At the age of fifteen he was sent to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where he was good at sports but undisciplined and not inclined to study. In 1851 his father was asked to withdraw him and, after another spell at Cheltenham College, where, rumour has it, he was finally expelled, he finished his education as a private pupil of the headmaster of the Worcester Royal Grammar School.
Gordon lived with an uncle in Worcester but began to lead a wild and aimless life, contracted debts, and was a great anxiety to his father. He also fell in love with, and proposed to, a young woman at this time, but she refused him. Finally it was decided that he should go to Australia and make a fresh start.
This was a common procedure at the time with ‘respectable’ families. Sons who got into trouble with debt or women were often shipped off to the colonies and sent money at regular intervals to keep them there. Breaker Morant was another of these ‘remittance men’.
Gordon was just over twenty when he arrived at Adelaide in 1853. He immediately obtained a position in the South Australian mounted police and was stationed at Mount Gambier. He was a tall man and handsome in the saddle, but out of the saddle his posture was bad and his eyesight very poor. He was shy, sensitive, and inclined to be moody.
In 1855 he resigned his position and took up horse-breaking in the south-eastern districts of South Australia. An interest in horseracing, which he had developed as a youth in England, continued in Australia. He had developed a reputation for being ‘a good steady lad and a splendid horseman’.
His father died in 1857 and his mother about two years later. He received the then massive amount of £7000 from his mother’s estate towards the end of 1861. In 1862 he married seventeen-year-old Margaret Park and bought a cottage at Port MacDonnell, near Mount Gambier, where they lived for two years. This cottage, which the poet gave the rather twee and poetic name of ‘Dingley Dell’, is preserved to this day.
In 1864 Gordon had his first poetry published and also came third in the Border Watch Handicap Steeplechase, the most famous Mount Gambier horse race. The day after, he made his famous leap on his horse, Red Lancer, over a high fence between Leg of Mutton Lake and the Blue Lake. He landed on a small 1.8-metre ledge with a 60-metre drop into the Blue Lake below. An obelisk, erected in 1887, now marks the spot.
In 1865 he was asked to stand for parliament and was elected by three votes to the South Australian House of Assembly. He spoke several times but had no talent for speaking in public and made a poor politician. He resigned his seat in November 1866.
He was earning himself a reputation as a rider over jumps and often won or was placed in local hurdle races and steeplechases. He was also contributing verse to various magazines. Around this time, he bought several properties, including one in Western Australia which he visited in 1867. But he lost money on all his land purchases.
Next he moved to Ballarat in Victoria, where he rented livery stables and set up a general horse business as a dealer and breaker. However, Gordon had no head for business and the venture was a failure. In March 1868 he had a serious accident when a horse smashed his head against a gatepost.
Later that same year he was bankrupted by a fire in his livery stable and, to add to his misery, his infant daughter died just short of her first birthday, and his wife also left him for some time.
In spite of being short-sighted he was becoming very well known as a gentleman rider, and on 10 October 1868 actually won three steeplechase races in one day at the Melbourne Hunt Club meeting at Flemington. He began riding for money but was not fortunate and had more than one serious fall. He sold his business in 1868 and moved to Brighton, in Melbourne.
In Melbourne Gordon succeeded in straightening his financial affairs, made a little money from race riding and became friendly with literary figures of the day such as Marcus Clarke and Henry Kendall.
In March 1870 Gordon again injured his head in a bad fall while riding in a steeplechase at Flemington and he never completely recovered from the accident.
In June 1870 he learnt that his claim to his family’s ancestral land in Scotland had been rejected on a legal technicality.
His last book, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, was published on 23 June 1870. Gordon had just asked his publishers what he owed them for printing the book, and had realised that he had no money to pay them and no prospects.
That day he bought a package of cartridges for his rifle and went home to his cottage at Brighton. Next morning he rose early, walked into the scrub at Brighton Beach and shot himself.
Gordon wrote volumes and
volumes of ‘serious’ poetry. All through his short adult life he wrote poetry in the very ornate literary style of the old ballads and the romantic poets. Most of his verse seems tedious and old-fashioned today, but then so does most of Tennyson’s poetry.
He was finally recognised as a literary figure of some standing and, in 1934, his bust was placed in Westminster Abbey. He is the only Australian writer to receive that honour, although he was, of course, actually British.
When he is remembered by the Australian public these days it is generally not for his serious poetry or his place in the literary world. Firstly, he is remembered as the poet who originally wrote galloping rhymes, like ‘How We Beat the Favourite’, and sentimental verses like ‘The Sick Stockrider’, and who inspired Paterson, Lawson, Morant, Ogilvie and a host of other verse writers. All four poets mentioned said Gordon was their favourite poet and their inspiration, so it is fair to say that Adam Lindsay Gordon is the father of Australian ‘bush’ verse.
Secondly, many Australians over the years have used a couplet of Gordon’s when writing in their friends’ autograph and remembrance books, without even knowing it was Adam Lindsay Gordon they were citing. The lines so often quoted are a fragment of a very long poem titled Ye Weary Wayfarer:
Life is mostly froth and bubble, two things stand like stone.
Kindness in another’s trouble, courage in your own.
Gordon is also remembered for his daring deeds as a horseman and steeplechase jockey and for his rather romantic and tragic life.
HOW WE BEAT THE FAVOURITE
ADAM LINDSAY GORDON
‘Aye, squire,’ said Stevens, ‘they back him at evens;
The race is all over, bar shouting, they say;
The Clown ought to beat her; Dick Neville is sweeter
Than ever—he swears he can win all the way.
‘But none can outlast her, and few travel faster,
She strides in her work clean away from The Drag;
You hold her and sit her, she couldn’t be fitter,
Whenever you hit her she’ll spring like a stag.
‘And p’rhaps the green jacket, at odds though they back it,
May fall, or there’s no telling what may turn up.
The mare is quite ready, sit still and ride steady,
Keep cool; and I think you may just win the Cup.’
Dark brown and tan muzzle, just stripped for the tussle,
Stood Iseult, arching her neck to the curb,
A lean head and fiery, strong quarters and wiry,
A loin rather light, but a shoulder superb.
‘Keep back on the yellow! Come up on Othello!
Hold hard on the chestnut! Turn round in The Drag!
Keep back there on Spartan! Back you, sir, in tartan!
So, steady there, easy!’ And down went the flag.
We started, and Kerr made a strong run on Mermaid,
Through furrows that led to the first stake-and-bound,
The Crack, half extended, looked bloodlike and splendid,
Held wide on the right where the headland was sound.
I pulled hard to baffle her rush with the snaffle,
Before her two-thirds of the field got away;
All through the wet pasture where floods of the last year
Still loitered, they clotted my crimson with clay.
The fourth fence, a wattle, floored Monk and Bluebottle;
The Drag came to grief at the blackthorn and ditch,
The rails toppled over Redoubt and Red Rover,
The lane stopped Lycurgus and Leicestershire Witch.
She passed like an arrow Kildare and Cock Sparrow
And Mantrap and Mermaid refused the stone wall;
And Giles on The Greyling came down at the paling,
And I was left sailing in front of them all.
I took them a burster, nor eased her nor nursed her,
Her dark chest all dappled with flakes of white foam,
Her flanks mud bespattered, a weak rail she shattered,
We landed on turf with our heads turned for home.
We crashed a low binder, and then, close behind her,
The ground to the hoofs of the favourite shook,
His rush roused her mettle, yet ever so little,
She shortened her stride as we raced at the brook.
She rose when I hit her, I saw the stream glitter,
A wide scarlet nostril flashed close to my knee,
Between sky and water The Clown came and caught her,
The space that he cleared was a caution to see.
And forcing the running, discarding all cunning,
A length to the front went the rider in green;
A long strip of stubble, and then the quick double,
Two stiff flights of rails with a quickset between.
She came to his quarter, and on still I brought her,
And up to his girth, to his breastplate she drew,
A short prayer from Neville just reached me, ‘The Devil!’
He muttered . . . locked level the hurdles we flew.
A hum of hoarse cheering, a dense crowd careering,
All sights seen obscurely, all shouts vaguely heard;
‘The green wins!’ ‘The crimson!’ The multitude swims on,
And figures are blended and features are blurred.
‘The Clown is her master!’ ‘The green forges past her!’
‘The Clown will outlast her!’ ‘The Clown wins!’ ‘The Clown!’
The white railing races with all the white faces,
The chestnut outpaces, outstretches the brown.
On still past the gateway she strains in the straightway,
Still struggles, ‘The Clown by a short neck at most!’
He swerves, the green scourges, the stand rocks and surges,
And flashes, and verges, and flits the white post.
Aye! So ends the tussle, I knew the tan muzzle
Was first, though the ring men were yelling, ‘Dead heat!’
A nose I could swear by, but Clarke said, ‘The mare by
A short head.’ And that’s how the favourite was beat.
AINTREE
JIM HAYNES
I was at Aintree in 1984 for the Grand National.
It was my only first-hand experience of the famous English Grand National, a race I’d watched every year from childhood on the newsreels and television, ever since I saw Elizabeth Taylor ride the winner in the movie National Velvet, at the old Empire Picture Palace.
Being there is always worth the trip, and the crowd and the excitement of the day itself make such experiences worthwhile, even though you don’t see much in a huge crowd at an event like the Grand National or the Melbourne Cup. But at least you can say you’ve been there.
Here’s a strange quirk of memory: I remember the winner of the first steeplechase on the program that day, because I backed it due to its name, Little Bay. It was probably a simple descriptive name, but to me it was the name of a Sydney beach I knew well, and it was my only winner all day.
I watched the Grand National from a position at the top of the straight, just down from the elbow, which really marks the start of the run in, and opposite The Chair. The Chair is the fifteenth of 30 jumps and the tallest and broadest fence on the course, at 5 feet 2 inches. It also has a 6-foot-wide ditch on the take-off side.
You get good value watching a Grand National at Aintree. You actually get to see two very different ‘battles down the straight’.
On the first circuit of the 2¼-mile course the horses jump The Chair and the Water Jump in the straight. On the second circuit these two fences are not jumped and the horses take the last fence just before the elbow and then face an almost 500-yard run to the line.
You can’t really understand the incredible rush that comes from seeing and hearing a field of 40 horses take a jump like The Chair unless you have experienced it. The sound of the horses landing and galloping on from the fence
is unforgettable.
The sense of impending chaos and the absolute craziness of what is being attempted, and the courage of the men and horses attempting it, brings a lump to the throat and an adrenalin rush to the spectator that verges on the primeval.
On the second circuit a bunch of some half-a-dozen horses were still in it as they passed my vantage point. It was a relatively incident-free race in 1984 so there were still many chances on the run in, and that bunch of brave jumpers, still going hard down the straight after 4 miles, was a stirring sight.
The leading bunch fighting it out down the straight included the previous year’s winner, Corbiere, and the runner-up from the previous year, and favourite at 9 to 1, Greasepaint.
Greasepaint tired on the run in and was eventually beaten by 4 lengths that day by Hallo Dandy, ridden by Neale Doughty and trained by the great Gordon Richards. Corbiere was third.
Greasepaint was to be unlucky in the Grand National. He started favourite the following year also, and finished a brave fourth behind Last Suspect, Mr Snugfit and Corbiere, who added another third to his win in 1983 and his third in 1984.
Greasepaint was owned by an Irishman named Michael Smurfit and trained by another Irishman named Dermot Weld. I’d never heard of either of them until 1984, and most Aussies hadn’t heard of either of them until nine years later, when Vintage Crop, owned and trained by the same two men, won the Melbourne Cup carrying the same colours that Greasepaint carried that winter day at Aintree.
There’s really nothing like Aintree on Grand National Day. It’s one of those special sporting events like the FA Cup, or the Melbourne Cup, or the Kentucky Derby, or Wimbledon, or the AFL Grand Final: unique events where the actual experience is more important than the result.
OUT OF SIGHT
A.B. ‘BANJO’ PATERSON
They held a polo meeting at a little country town,