Best Australian Racing Stories (20 page)

The jockey repeated the process at each jump and the horse jumped brilliantly, making up many lengths, but just failing to catch the winner at the post.

On his return to the enclosure, the jockey was confronted by the old trainer who said, ‘You didn't listen to me, did you? You didn't say, “One, two, three—jump” at the first fence.'

‘Yes, I did, Pop,' lied the jockey, ‘but perhaps I didn't say it loudly enough. He didn't hear me, he must be deaf.'

‘He's not deaf, you bloody fool,' replied the old trainer laconically. ‘He's blind.'

The kind of humour displayed in the stories that follow ranges from the mild and gentle wit of realistic anecdotes to the outrageously unrealistic humour of tall stories.

Some of the humour of times gone by seems insensitive and politically incorrect by today's standards, while other stories from the past are based on characters and incidents that we would not be surprised to encounter on a modern-day racetrack.

Many larger-than-life characters have been part of the history of Australian racing, and a source of humour and tall tales. These characters range from great conmen like Robert Standish Sievier to small-time battlers like the mysterious Jimmy Ah Poon.

Sievier, also known as Robert Sutton, was the man who invented the role of the bookmaker as we know it today, being the first bookie to ever carry a bag and spruik his odds on a platform, at Flemington in the 1880s. He was, among other things, a soldier of fortune in the Zulu Wars, stage actor, racehorse owner, flamboyant bookmaker, criminal cardsharp and three times bankrupt.

Jimmy Ah Poon's appearance on Sydney's racetracks coincided with the career of the mighty Poseidon.

No one knows for sure but it seems Jimmy was a Chinese market gardener from Bankstown who had an uncanny knack of only backing one horse, Poseidon, and only when he won.

Poseidon won 18 times from 26 starts as a three- and four-year-old. His wins included two Derbies, two Caulfield Cups, the Melbourne Cup and the AJC and VRC St Legers, and it seems that Jimmy backed him on every occasion that he won but never when he ran second or worse.

Jimmy was known as ‘Louis the Possum' by bookmakers because he could not pronounce the name of the horse which won him an untold fortune. Every time Poseidon was due to win Jimmy would turn up at the track and ask the bookmakers, ‘What price Possumum?'

Jimmy disappears from Australian racetrack history after Poseidon's four-year-old season. Legend has it that he returned to China and lived like a Mandarin for the rest of his days on the estimated £35,000 fortune he acquired due to his uncanny prescience about the future successes of ‘Possumum'.

One of my favourite politically incorrect racetrack stories concerns an old stablehand, the iconic desperate old battler, who was a victim of
alalia syllabaris—
that is, he stuttered.

This character appears in front of a bookmaker who is frantically writing out tickets and taking money hand-over-fist just before a big race.

‘Waddya want, mate?' asks the bookie.

‘I b-b-b-b-b-backed . . .' stammers the stablehand.

‘Come on, mate,' says the bookie, ‘you backed what?'

‘I b-b-b-b-b-backed . . . a f-f-f-f-f-f-f-five t-t-t-t-t-t-t . . . ,' the flustered stablehand manages to get out, his face growing red in the process.

‘Struth, mate,' says the impatient and insensitive bookie, ‘you backed what!?'

‘I b-b-b-b-b-backed . . . a f-f-f-f-f-f-f-five t-t-t-t-t-t-to . . .' comes the slow stuttering reply.

‘Look, mate,' says the bookmaker, ‘I haven't got time to hear your story now. You backed a five-to-one winner and lost your ticket or something . . . Here's $50, I hope that's near enough, now get out of the way will you?'

The old stablehand is walking back to the horse stalls when he meets the trainer he works for. The trainer sees the $50 in his hand and asks, ‘Bloody hell, where did you get $50?'

‘W-w-w-w-w-w-well,' replies the stablehand, ‘I w-w-w-w-went t-t-t-t-to t-t-t-t-tell that b-b-b-b-b-bookie, old M-M-M-Mr S-S-S-S-Smith I b-b-b-b-b-backed . . . your f-f-f-f-f-f-f-five t-t-t-t-t-t-ton h-h-horse float over his M-M-M-Mercedes . . . and he gave me f-f-f-f-f-f-fifty b-b-b-b-bucks!'

Or how about the trainer who is spotted by a steward slipping a pre-prepared ‘speed ball' to his horse before a race.

‘What did you give that horse?' demands the steward.

The trainer, who has several more of the pills in his pocket, replies, ‘Oh, they're just homemade boiled lollies,' and he pops one into his mouth and goes on, ‘the horse loves them,' he says, ‘I'm having one myself, here, do you wanna try one?'

‘Okay,' says the steward as he takes the pill, looks at it and puts it in his mouth, ‘but I've got my eye on you.'

Minutes later, as the trainer legs him aboard, the stable jockey asks, ‘Are we all set, Boss, everything as planned?'

‘Yes,' the trainer replies, ‘money's on and he'll win. And, if anything passes you, don't worry, it'll just be the chief steward or me.'

Corn Medicine

Harry (‘Breaker') Morant

‘A well-bred horse! but he won't get fat,

Though I've done the best I can;

He keeps as poor as a blessed rat!'

Said the sorrowful stable-man.

‘I've bled and I've blistered him, and to-day

I bought him a monster ball;

But, blow the horse! Let me do what I may,

He won't get fat at all.

‘I've given him medicines galore,

And linseed oil and bran,

And yet the brute looks awfully poor,'

Said the woebegone stable-man.

One glance the intelligent stranger threw

At the ribs of the hollow weed,

Then asked, with an innocent air, ‘Did you

Remember to give him a feed?'

Racetrack reminiscences

A.B. (‘BANJO') PATERSON

A memory of Breaker Morant

A
MATEUR RACING,
for some reason or other, has always had some sort of encouragement from the Rosehill proprietary, and that club is the only metropolitan institution that caters for the ‘lily-whites'. Their annual race at Rosehill is a sort of ‘Custer's last stand'.

They used to also run an amateur steeplechase, and one of these was to some extent memorable, for among the riders was Harry Morant, whose tempestuous career was ended by a firing squad in the South African war.

Plucky to the point of recklessness, he suffered from a theatrical complex which made him pretend to be badly hurt when there was, really, not much up with him.

Morant was breaking in horses and mustering wild cattle somewhere up in the west, and he had been accustomed to ride after hounds in England.

Arriving in Sydney at the time of the amateur steeplechase, he set out to look for a mount.

Mr Pottie, of the veterinary family, had a mare that could both gallop and jump, but she was such an unmanageable brute that none of the local amateurs (and I was one of them) cared to take the mount.

Morant jumped at the chance, but as soon as they started the mare cleared out with him and fell into a drain, rolling her rider out as flat as a flounder.

He was carried in, supposed to be unconscious, and I was taken up to hear his last wishes.

The doctors could get nothing out of him, but after listening to his wanderings for a while I said, very loudly and clearly, ‘What'll you have Morant?' and he said, equally clearly, ‘Brandy and soda.'

Weight was right

Once, years ago, a son of the then Governor of New South Wales secured a ride in a picnic race. Intensely enthusiastic and a very lightweight, this young gentleman turned up, full of hope, to ride his first race.

He got on the scales with his saddle, and it turned out that he was two stone short of making the weight!

Not one of the amateurs had a lead bag to lend him, but no one would dream of leaving the Governor's son out. He was the main attraction of the meeting.

The officials had never been confronted with anything like this, but the caretaker was a man of resource. He shovelled a lot of sand into a sack and strapped it firmly on the pommel of a big saddle; weight was right, and away the field went.

It was an amateur hurdle race and, every time that the horse jumped, a puff of sand flew up, like the miniature spouts blown into the air by killer whales.

Simultaneously jumping and spouting, the vice-regal contender saw the race out, unsuccessfully, it is true; but he got more applause than the winner.

A-maizing escape

The most vivid memory that abides with me of South Coast racing is of a meeting held many years ago in the Shoalhaven district.

The attendance consisted mostly of the local agriculturalists, horny-handed sons of the soil quite formidable in appearance and character. The foreign element was provided by a group of welshers, side-show artists, prize-fighters and acrobats who followed the southern meetings as hawks follow a plague of mice.

The centre of the course consisted of a field of maize fully ten feet high and when one bookmaker decided to ‘take a sherry with the dook and guy-a-whack
'
(a slang expression meaning to abscond without paying), he melted into the maize and took cover like a wounded black duck.

The hefty agriculturalists went in after him like South African natives after a lion in the jungle. For a time nothing could be seen but the waving of the maize and nothing could be heard but the shouts of the ‘beaters' when they thought they caught sound or scent of their prey.

After a time all and sundry took a hand in the hunt; so the ‘wanted man' simply slipped off his coat and joined in the search for himself, shouting and waving his arms just as vigorously as anybody else.

When the searchers got tired of the business and started to straggle out of the maize he straggled out too, on the far side, and kept putting one foot in front of the other till he struck the coach road to Sydney.

Flash Jack's last race

It was at the hamlet of Jugiong that an event occurred, which is perhaps unique in turf history.

It was a publican's meeting, which means that the promoter was less concerned with gate money than with the sale of strong liquor.

The unfenced course was laid out alongside the Murrumbidgee River and one of the Osborne family, graziers in the district, had entered a mare which was fed and looked after on the other side of the river.

Off they went, and the mare made straight for home, jumping into the river and nearly drowning the jockey who was rescued by a young Aboriginal boy.

Meanwhile Mr Osborne, under a pardonable mistake, was cheering on another runner in the belief that it was his mare.

Then there came a splashing sound at the back of the waggon-ette and Mr Osborne, looking around, was astonished to see his jockey.

‘ Well, I'll be damned,' he said.‘What are you doing here? Where's the mare?'

‘She's home by now,' said the boy, a bush youngster known locally as ‘Flash Jack from Gundagai'.

‘And I'm going home too,' he added, ‘I've had enough of it. In the last race my moke fell in front of the field and there was me lying on the track with nothing but horses' heels going over my head for half an hour and this time I was nearly drowned. I'd sunk four times when that black boy came in after me.

‘I'd like a job, Mr Osborne, picking up fleeces in the shed if you ain't full up; but Flash Jack has rode his last race.'

Ask the horse

Another old-time trainer was William Kelso, father of the present trainer. The original Bill Kelso was like his son, a very direct-spoken man and if you didn't like what he said you could leave it.

I was doing some amateur riding and falling about over steeplechase fences and, like a lot of other young fellows, I began to fancy myself as a judge of racing. So, one day I asked old Kelso, ‘Mr Kelso, what will win this race?'

‘Well,' he said, ‘I'll tell you something. Do you know what I was before I went in for training?'

I said, ‘No.'

He said, ‘I was working for a pound a week and I'd be working for a pound a week still, only for young fools like you that will go betting. You leave it alone or get somebody to sew your pockets up before you come to the races.'

Well, it wasn't very polite but it was good advice.

The committee had him in once to explain the running of the race, before the days of stipendiary stewards. It took them a lot of trouble to get the committee together and they sat down, prepared for a good long explanation.

‘Mr Kelso,' said the chairman, ‘can you tell us why your horse ran so badly today?'

‘No, I'm afraid I can't,' he said, ‘you'll have to ask the horse. He's the only one that knows.'

Rough justice

Before the rules about registration of meetings and registrations of horses became so strict some weird things were done, or attempted, in connection with the definition of a hack.

At an unregistered amateur meeting at Rouse Hill, no admission charged, there was a race for hacks, the definition being ‘any horse habitually used and ridden as a hack'.

One competitor bobbed up with a well-known racehorse which had won a lot of welter races at Randwick and elsewhere. The horse had developed some sort of temporary leg trouble and, for the time being, was ridden every day by its trainer as a hack.

It came within the letter but not the spirit of the definition.

No one liked to take the responsibility of barring the animal; but the starter, the late Edward Terry, one-time member of parliament for Ryde, was equal to the occasion.

‘Let him start,' he said, ‘I'll fix him.'

Waiting till this dangerous competitor was walking the wrong way, he addressed the other riders.

‘Go on, boys,' he said. ‘Off!'