Life As I Know It (7 page)

I really liked school but because we were so busy and so tired some things just didn't get done. I always spent time on the big projects but the day-to-day stuff would be left behind. I was always rushing and doing things at the last minute. Sometimes I couldn't help it as my mind was elsewhere.

‘Shit, I forgot to do my Maths Mate homework,' I'd say, waiting for class to start. ‘Liz, can I copy yours?' She never hesitated.

‘We didn't do too good this week, Liz,' I'd say jokingly when we got our marks back.

By Year 9 our group had grown very close. We'd done so much together in such a short time. But they all knew my passion, that I had racing in my heart and that my time at Loreto would be short-lived. Halfway through that year, 2000, I told them I would be leaving at the end of the year. I was also off to apprentice school.

T
HROUGHOUT YEAR
9 I led a split life. Already apprenticed to Dad, I was also enrolled in the Apprentice Jockey Training Program run by Racing Victoria near Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, the track where the Melbourne Cup is run. Then I'd go back to Loreto in Ballarat to write essays and solve quadratic equations.

The apprentice school course commenced with a full week of classes mid year, then we attended one or two days a week. It was a comprehensive introduction to the elements of racing, from riding technique and dealing with stewards to exercise and diet. We learned the basics of balance and general riding skills, and then we'd practise on retired racehorses, ponies and a mechanical horse. We were taught how to conduct ourselves at stewards' enquiries, and the protocols for protests and interference. We also did yoga and spoke with dieticians. Looking back I wish I'd paid more attention to the dietician, it's my one big regret. I got into some bad eating habits early on and I found it difficult to shake them. Relying on energy drinks is no way to live.

The course went for six months then. The only other jockey from my intake of ten young jockeys to make a go of it was Reece Wheeler. The school was very helpful but, really, my dad had been teaching me since I was born. When I signed the papers to become indentured to him in February of that year I was merely formalising my lifelong apprenticeship. I could not have had a better teacher.

Dad is the son of Wilfred and Ellen Payne. My grandparents were both born in 1905, in Inglewood in the Taranaki district of New Zealand's North Island. It is a fertile region, very suitable for farming and for horses. My grandfather was from a family of ten children. A scallywag as a boy, he became known as ‘Buster'. My grandmother Ellen was also one of ten children, of the Breen family. They migrated to New Zealand from Ireland in the 1890s. Both my grandparents grew up on farms and were devout Catholics who never missed Mass.

Buster worked many jobs on the land. He was a horseman, loved horse racing, especially jumps racing, and could ride anything. One year he won the New Zealand steer-riding championship. Buster and Ellen had two children, Margaret and then four years later, in 1936, Dad, called Patrick Gerard. As a child his week involved school, sport, riding and Mass on Sundays. Dad was an excellent rugby player but not such a good cricketer. He tells the story of his school, Opunake Convent, being bowled out for eight by the Opunake State School. He did contribute one to that score.

Buster and Ellen worked and saved hard to buy their farm and send their two children to high school. Dad later became a boarder at St Patrick's in Wellington, a secondary college run by the Marist Fathers. He was captain of the rugby team, playing as a loose forward. Dad would often duck off to see the races just round
the corner at Trentham Racecourse, and then deal with the consequences later. Not an overly dedicated scholar, he missed home, the farm life, and the riding. He left St Pat's when he was fifteen.

Like his father, Dad from a young age just wanted to be around horses, to work with horses, to ride horses and to race horses. He and Buster had a pretty good eye and they started spotting at the sales. They concentrated on jumpers. When my Aunty Margaret wanted a showjumper they found her a beauty at the Waikato sales in Hamilton. That horse, Ronay, turned out to be too good for showjumping so Buster and Dad thought they'd prepare him for jumps racing. They trained him, Dad rode him, and he won eight steeplechase races. They backed him a few times as well.

Dad was an amateur jumps rider. In the early 1950s in New Zealand a professional jumps racing program attracted good fields and plenty of punters. Amateurs were able to ride their own horses. However, when other trainers started to engage the amateurs, the pros weren't impressed. Trying to cobble together a living from riding, the pros didn't like missing out on the prize money—if an amateur won, that prize money went to no one.

One day, when Dad was seventeen, a couple of the professionals threatened him before a race—maybe to scare him off, maybe with the intention of putting him into the running rail—but Dad outrode them and it was one older professional who found himself forced by Dad to ease his horse out of the race.

It seemed the best thing to do was for Dad to turn professional. Concerned that, at 63 kilograms as a seventeen-year-old, he was already heavy, he suspected he didn't have many years left in the saddle. He had to make the most of his time.

Apart from any money Dad made from riding, he and Buster thought they could make a go of the racing game. They continued to trade and train horses. They bought another jumper, Count D'Azure—despite inadvertently bidding against each other
at the sale—and it went on to win a number of races and good prize money. No doubt they backed him too.

Keen to further his riding prospects Dad made two trips to England, wanting to break into jumps riding there, but he didn't get the rides he'd hoped for and, on return to Hawera from his second trip, he took up training. Apparently he was a pretty astute punter before he settled down, willing to wait for the right moment to back one of their horses, when it was set to run a big race.

Dad's friends say he was always full of fun, always enjoying himself, always full of possibility. He loved people, and still does. He's so interested in others—who they are and what they do and what they're like. He'll talk to anyone. His Kiwi friends—he is still close to many of them—say he was always warm and friendly and had a bit of the ratbag in him as well. I think he might have been grateful for the Catholic Sacrament of Confession.

After retiring from riding he became friendly with a beautiful young woman with a European accent, Rosa Maria Buhler, my mother. She was never called Rosa. When they went off to the local school, the nuns insisted on calling her Mary and that was how she was known in her new country, just as her sister Berto became known as Bertha.

Mum was one of ten children. Her parents, Robert and Maria Buhler, had emigrated with their children from Switzerland, attracted to New Zealand by the hope of a life better than the hand-to-mouth existence they'd known in Europe. Other Swiss immigrants had settled in the Taranaki district after the Second World War and the Buhlers followed in the mid 1950s. They had a modest dairy farm where they milked their herd. My mum and her sisters and brothers worked other jobs as well. The Buhlers pooled their resources and were able to purchase other land. Their smart investments were soon paying off. Mum was very capable and eventually she ran one of the family's small farms herself.

Pat and Mary met at a local dance and fell in love. Dad was a good-looking young chap in that 1950s way, and Mary was a striking woman. Quite the couple! They were married at St Joseph's in Hawera in 1968. Sadly, Buster had died of a heart attack just months before the wedding. He was only sixty-three. At that time, Dad was offered his father's job as a cattle buyer for Imlay Freezing Works, which would have given him a reliable income. Just after they were married, though, Mum and Dad bought a dairy farm with a hundred milkers on it.

Life was good. They worked, went to the races and to Mass every Sunday. They had many friends in the Taranaki region—in the parish, in the community and in racing. And children came quickly. Brigid was born in 1969, and over the next ten years they had seven more children—Therese, Maree, Bernadette, Patrick, Margie, Michael and Andrew. As devout Catholics they didn't believe in contraception so they used the rhythm method, but Dad used to say they were out of rhythm.

Dad loved the land and farming life and continued to buy and train horses. He was particularly fond of the Waikato sales. In 1978 he purchased a yearling by Blarney Kiss out of Grecian Jade, a Hermes mare. Dad liked the Hermes breed. He thought they were tough and made good jumpers. Blarney Kiss had won derbies in the United States and was to go on to sire two Melbourne Cup winners—Kiwi, who won in 1983 for Snowy Lupton with a young J.A. Cassidy on board; and Kensei, ridden by Larry Olsen and trained by Les Bridge, winning in 1987.

Dad paid $1300 for the young colt in 1978 and then sold a half share to his mate Peter Moran. He'd taken Patrick, still a toddler, with him to the sales that day and when they got home Patrick kept asking everyone to come and look at his horse. So, given the Irish connection in the sire's name, Dad suggested his new purchase be named Paddy Boy.

Their new horse didn't do much in his first couple of race starts as a two-year-old but then, when favourite in a 1600-metre maiden at Waverley, he won by three and a half lengths. Dad then put him in the Group 3 Champagne Stakes at Ellerslie. In the small field, Dad figured he was a chance to nab the prize money for fifth place. A young Greg Childs, who went on to ride the great New Zealand mare Sunline, settled him at the back of the field but he stormed home to win by three-and-a-half lengths. They thought they had a good one. When he dead-heated in first place with the classy Yir Tiz in the Sires Produce they knew they did.

It was exciting times. Paddy Boy was a champion in the making. Dad had his eye on the rich prize money in Australia. It was Winter Carnival time in Brisbane so Dad nominated him for the 1600-metre two-year-old race then called the Marlboro at Eagle Farm in June 1980. The whole family, Paddy Boy, and a second horse, Paddy Boy's companion Gentle Joker, travelled across the Tasman.

Peter Moran was to organise everything but when they got to Sydney there was no car, no float and no booked accommodation. Dad was not impressed. He sorted it out as quickly as he could and the Paynes became the proud owners of a second-hand Kingswood station wagon and a float carrying their talented young horse, which had been renamed as Our Paddy Boy.

I can imagine that adventure, with Dad and Mum and seven kids crammed in the car, driving up the Pacific Highway. There were times when the car and its cargo of people pulling two thoroughbred racehorses, one worth a considerable amount of money, would not make it up a hill. Some of the kids had to bail out and get back in at the top of the rise.

The delay in Sydney meant Our Paddy Boy missed a gallop in his training program and that was to cost him. He ran a brave second in the Marlboro. The family then decided to stay and have a holiday at Surfers Paradise, which the kids loved, before driving
south to Melbourne where Dad could prepare Our Paddy Boy for the three-year-old races over the Spring Carnival.

On the way south they'd stop every now and then to let their two horses pick on the grass on the side of the road. At Berrigan in southern New South Wales, Our Paddy Boy got away and disappeared into the scrub. Mum and Dad searched for two hours while trying not to lose any of the kids in the process. Just when they were giving up hope, Our Paddy Boy wandered out of the bush of his own accord.

Dad stabled the horses with Ballarat trainer Robert Smerdon, who they'd met in Brisbane. He became a really good friend of Mum and Dad's. He had suggested that the country feel of Ballarat would suit New Zealanders and offered his facilities. The kids had a ball.

Our Paddy Boy was becoming something of a people's horse. He was a bay and had a great name. People loved the down-onthe-farm tale of Mum and Dad and the kids. Our Paddy Boy was also very, very good.

Dad took Our Paddy Boy to Victoria Park where he won the Adelaide Guineas, Dad's first Group 1 winner, and then to Melbourne for the Moonee Valley Stakes. By that time, Our Paddy Boy was a valuable horse. He had class, he was a competitor, he was tough, and he was bred to stay. He looked like being one of the top three-year-olds of the season, a genuine derby horse. Then, if he stayed sound, he'd be a Melbourne Cup contender the following Spring.

All owners dream of winning a Melbourne Cup, whether they're battlers who spread the cost across large syndicates, or sirs and ladies with plenty to splash around. Some will buy a yearling bred to run two miles and patiently nurture it over the years until it's ready for a crack as a mature horse at the Melbourne Cup. Given the Cup is contested once a year by a field of twenty-four horses, and
given the delicate nature of a horse and all of the things that can go wrong, and given the horse has to have ability, the chances of getting into the race are miniscule. To win is nearly impossible. But that doesn't stop people from trying. If anything, those odds are its appeal. That's why the Cup has been so sought after by those who love horseracing. To win it is to defy the odds, and to feel for once, just once, the gods have chosen you.