Racing in Victoria, From the Beginning.
Horse racing in Sydney, of course, commenced some years earlier than it
did in the Port Phillip division of the Colony, settlement in the north
there having an advantage of nearly forty years over the south. I find
in a copy of the first Melbourne “Argus” ever printed, on June 2nd,
1846, the entries for a race meeting at Homebush. Amongst these appear
the names of Alice Hawthorn and Gulnare. They are somewhat puzzling at
that date, as Macarthur’s Gulnare was three and twenty years old in ’46,
whilst her daughter, also named Gulnare, was still breeding in ’83, a
fact which apparently puts her also out of court. The name seems to have
been a popular one, for some reason or another. There was also a mob of
Alice Hawthorns, and this particular individual was most probably the
mare by Operator from Lorina (imp.), a bay foaled about 1840.
But it is Victorian racing to which we are for the most part going to
direct our attention at present. In January, 1803, a survey party had
examined the site of the present Melbourne. Collins had formed a convict
settlement during the same year at Sorrento, down close to the Heads,
but had quickly abandoned the enterprise. Hume, as we have seen, had
reached the neighbourhood of Geelong in ’24; Captain Wishart, in his
cutter, “Fairy,” had entered and named Port Fairy after his little craft
in ’27; Dutton, on a sealing expedition, had built a house at Portland
in 1829, and Mr. Henty had made a permanent settlement there in ’34. In
May, ’35, Batman entered Port Phillip Bay in a schooner from Tasmania,
and Fawkner’s schooner “Enterprise” navigated the lower reaches of the
Yarra in August of that year. He was the son of a convict who had been
in Collins’ Sorrento picnic party, and was attracted back by his
favourable recollections of the place.
In 1836 the blacks came down from the Goulburn and committed murder,
somewhere near to the Werribee. In ’37 Messrs. Gellibrand and Hesse,
exploring beyond Geelong, were lost, and killed by the aborigines, and
life was very unsettled and wild. But now mobs of cattle had commenced
to be driven over from Botany Bay to the new settlement, and white men,
with the restlessness and energy of our race, were arriving with
frequency, for reports concerning the place were distinctly good, and in
1838, so numerous were the inhabitants of Port Phillip, that they
decided that the time was ripe in which to inaugurate a race meeting. We
are a strange nation; a peculiar people. March 6th was the great day,
just eighty-three years ago. There were five hundred spectators present,
and four races took place for their edification. Two were won by a mare
named Mountain Maid, and two by a gelding, Postboy. Four starters
constituted the largest field of the day. The course was right handed,
one mile round the she-oak clad Batman’s Hill, a rising ground between
the present Spencer Street Railway Station and the gasworks. The
starting post was at the site of the North Melbourne Railway Station. As
you enter the city from Sydney, you can, if you care to, recall the
scene. The scrub was thick between the hill and the surrounding country.
It was cut by winding, deeply-indented waggon tracks, for the ground was
soft and boggy. Two carts, sheltered from the sun by old sails,
performed the functions of publicans’ booths.
It was a two-days’ meeting, but the second helping, like so many second
helpings of other things than race days, was a failure, or even, indeed,
an utter fiasco. In 1839 there was again a two-days’ gathering on the
slopes of Batman’s Hill. The racing was poor, Postboy and Mountain Maid
again being strongly in evidence, but the attendance was so large that
it was generally agreed that the population must have doubled since the
previous year. But now the turf world fairly began to hum, and Batman’s
Hill was no longer considered suitable for the purposes of racing. The
experienced eye of someone had “spotted” the flats by the Salt Water
River as being made to order for the sport, and on the 3rd of March,
1840, the first race meeting at Flemington was successfully carried
through. It was a three-days’ affair, and for the first time in Port
Phillip the riders sported colours. The quality of the competitors must
have been very poor, for, if you look up the arrivals, in their
chronological order on a previous page, you will see that few, if any,
of their stock can have been taking part in the contests, and,
therefore, most of them must have been nothing better than half-bred
hacks. But the spirit of emulation had now caught fire, and all through
the country owners were making matches one with another, and
metropolitan racing was booming to such an extent that a ruling body
called “The Port Phillip Turf Club” was called into existence. To the
deliberations of this body, and their resulting actions, we owe the fact
that horses in Victoria now take their ages from the first day of August
in each year.
And now the course itself, at Flemington, became firmly and thoroughly
established when, in 1844, plans were submitted to the Town Council, and
that body approving of them, the place was declared to be a reserve for
the purposes of racing. Five trustees were appointed, in whose name the
ground was held, these including the Crown Commissioner of the day, the
Surveyor-in-Charge, Mr. J. C. Riddel, Mr. Dalmahoy Campbell and Mr.
William J. Stawell. Shortly afterwards the Superintendent of Port
Phillip declared this transaction not to be legal, and a new grant was
completed on October 22nd, 1847. The land included those portions of the
Parish of Doutta Galla from 23 to 28 inclusive, beside the Saltwater or
Maribyrnong River, the trustees being Mr. Riddel, Mr. Stawell, Mr.
Dalmahoy Campbell again, and Mr. Colin Campbell. The term of years was
subsequently increased from ten to twenty-one, which, on the latest
renewal of the compact, was finally extended to ninety-nine, at the rent
of one peppercorn per annum. The spot was then known to the inhabitants
as “The Racecourse,” but a little village now began to grow up in the
neighbourhood, and this was soon christened “Flemington,” in honour of a
genial butcher who supplied meat to the hamlet, and whose name was Bob
Fleming. In those early days everyone went to the races, and the route
to and from the course was either by river-steamer or by road. The boats
left the wharves at eleven o’clock and returned at sunset, and you may
be sure there were hot times in the town o’ nights after the races.
Bands and Christy minstrels enlivened the voyage by water. Passengers on
the trip home not infrequently toppled overboard, and one or two were
actually drowned. Accidents by road were common. At one meeting alone
three men were killed, two being run over by vehicles, and one by a
runaway horse. Assaults were common, and fighting very popular. Mr.
O’Shanassy—who afterwards became Sir John—was attacked whilst taking a
meditative canter round the course, and struck over the head very
viciously by a ruffian armed with a heavy hunting crop. It was proved to
have been a premeditated crime. Not being disabled by his injuries, and
being a man of much determination and courage, O’Shanassy turned upon
his assailant, pursued and captured him, and had the satisfaction of
seeing him receive a sentence of six months’ imprisonment.
The winning post stood alongside the river bank somewhere between the
present mile and seven furlong barriers. It was a handy spot at which
the steamers could tie up to gum trees on the banks, and could disembark
their passengers, but it had the disadvantage of being a considerable
distance from the top of the steep, rising ground which soon became
known as Picnic Hill. It was not, however, until the sport had been in
existence for some twenty years that it was found advisable to change
the winning post to its present site, thus converting the Hill into a
permanent, convenient and commodious stand. By the year 1846 racing had
taken a very firm hold of the light-hearted community, and already a
public idol had been discovered and worshipped, spoken about and written
about, much in the same way as the public and the press magnify our
idols the Carbines, the Poitrels, the Artillerymen, and the Eurythmics
of our own times. This golden image which the folk had set up on the
Flemington Flats was a dark chestnut horse called Petrel. The reports
concerning his paternity and his adventures before he became a racehorse
varied considerably. By some he was considered to be by Rous’ Emigrant,
whilst a sporting writer of the period maintained that he was “by
Operator or Theorem from a Steeltrap mare.” The most authentic story
concerning his origin seems to have been that, in 1841, an overlander
between Sydney and Adelaide arrived at a station near the Grampians,
bringing along with him two well-bred looking mares. Both were heavy in
foal, and it was believed that they had been stolen. The overlander
found employment on the station of a Mr. Riley, and here the foals, both
of them colts, were dropped. One of these was Petrel.
At two years old the colts were sold to the overseer of a Dr. Martin for
thirty-six pounds the pair, and the future champion commenced his
education as a stock horse. Mr. Colin Campbell soon heard that Petrel
had shown wonderful speed after cattle and emus, and you may be pretty
sure that the stockmen had also discovered on their homeward way of an
evening, that “the big chestnut beggar could gallop like fun.” Mr.
Campbell swopped a mare worth twenty pounds for him, and his racing
career then began. He was the undoubted champion of Victoria, and was
then despatched, per sailing ship, to Botany Bay, to “take the
Sydney-siders down.” But the voyage over was long and rough, he had no
time before the races in which to recover himself, and he was very well
beaten. The excitement in Sydney was tremendous, and the description of
the event reminds one somewhat of a latter day happening when the
Victorian, Artilleryman, was unexpectedly defeated by the New South
Wales representative, Millieme, in the St. Leger.
It is pleasant to know that the old champion ultimately fell into the
hands of Mr. James Austin, in whose possession he lived a life of ease,
“roaming the flats by the homestead creek,” until, at the ripe age of
twenty-five, he passed in his checks.
And during the Petrel fever days, one is glad to notice that at length
the winners in the metropolitan areas were beginning to come from horses
which were eligible for, and ultimately were entered in the Stud Books
of Australia, and were now repaying their enterprising owners for their
extensive outlay and boldness. Thus, when Petrel was carrying off the
champion prizes at Flemington, Garryowen, the second living son of our
old friend Nora Creina, was winning Town Plates and Publicans’ Purses,
whilst Paul Jones, a colonial-bred colt, foaled in ’41, by imported
Besborough out of imported Octavia, threw down his Van Diemonian
gauntlet to Petrel, and on one occasion, to the wild delight of the
Tasmanians present, actually finished ahead of him in a heat. But while
these exciting happenings were taking place in the centres of
population, racing was also catching a hold on the dwellers in the wild
bush. Thus you will find, if you read the works of the late Revd. John
Dunmore Lang, that in 1846 this distinguished divine made the overland
journey from Sydney to Port Phillip, during which he kept an extensive
diary of events.
On his arrival at Albury, he relates how he discovered the inhabitants
of the town and neighbourhood, “on the Christian Sabbath Day,” indulging
in the excitement of their annual races. So shocked was the minister
that he broke into the Latin tongue:
“Quadrupedente patrem sonitu quatit ungula campum,”
which, in the words of “Young Lochinvar,” he aptly and freely translates
as:
“There was racing and chasing on Albury Lea.”
“The respectable publican of the place, one Brown, told me that he was,
with great reluctance, compelled to serve out rum in pailfuls to his
customers who were attending the races.” And all over the huge colony of
New South Wales we find at this time, and during the succeeding few
years, that racing was becoming the favourite pastime of the people.
There was a meeting at Maitland in ’46, where Jorrocks beat Emerald, and
the event was considered so important that it is immortalised in the
calendar for 1867 printed in the first Australasian Turf Register. There
was a two day gathering at Yass in ’47, a Geelong Steeplechase in ’45, a
Colac Hurdle in ’46, a Launceston Derby and Town Plate in ’43, a Mount
Gambier Town Plate in ’48, a Brighton Derby and St. Kilda Cup in ’49,
and a meeting even at far-off Portland in ’48. Yes! We are a peculiar, a
very peculiar, people!