by Jim Haynes
It is the period of the independent ARC, 1907–1932, that most people associate with pony racing. The racecourses were much larger and better appointed than the early pony courses; Victoria Park was, for example, over 2000 metres in circumference (many registered racing people and journalists were of the opinion that the AJC should have sought to acquire it for registered racing).
Pony racing in Sydney was extraordinarily popular in this period. Indicators such as journalist’s attendance estimates, photographs published in the press, numbers of tram cars deployed, and betting turnover attest that many racegoers preferred the pony brand to the AJC meetings run on the suburban racecourses (although Randwick meetings remained unchallenged).
Betting turnover on an Ascot meeting might be double that at Canterbury on the same day. In part this ascendancy was due to the ease with which the pony racecourses could be reached compared with the registered suburban courses. However, there was also a genuine fondness for pony racing, as it was a stimulating racing experience. This is, I think, captured nicely in a verse penned by a Sportsman journalist:
On racedays from the city far,
I’d travel with some dear old cronies,
All eager as true sportsmen are,
To win a fortune on the ponies.
My cobbers talked of naught but horse—
Of horse at Redfern, horse at Mascot,
Nor ceased they till we reached the course,
To revel in the joys of Ascot.
Taking these light-hearted lines as a starting point, attending a meeting at Ascot in 1920 may have been something like this: the tram left Botany Road at Lord’s Road just past Mascot and passed over a level crossing with the Botany goods line to a terminus loop adjacent to the Paddock entrance gates. If you were a male, as the great majority of pony racegoers were, it cost 14 shillings to enter the Paddock or 5 shillings to the Leger (as the average wage at that time was around 3 pounds a week, the cost of a day at the races was substantial). These charges matched those at Randwick. A racebook cost 1 shilling.
Ascot racecourse stood on 101 acres. It was an attractive venue on a fine day. An advertisement described it as ‘popular, pure and pretty; fringed with lofty pines, the verdure is refreshing to the eye. In the distance are the limpid waters of Botany Bay’. The course proper was 1 mile and 90 yards in circumference and 90 feet wide. The track had chutes for 1 mile and 4-furlong races. Races at other distances—over 6, 6½, 9 and 12 furlongs—started from the course proper. Each start could accommodate twenty horses.
Ascot’s amenities in 1920 were second only to Victoria Park and far superior to those provided at the Melbourne pony courses. They included: a two-storey timber members’ stand, a brick, twin-gabled paddock stand that accommodated 600 and a similar timber structure for 1500 in the Leger. Drinking was not the essential racecourse activity it became after World War II, but for the thirsty there were bars located under the public stands in both enclosures. There was also a separate open-air bar in the Paddock. There were stand-alone tearooms in either enclosure serving light meals, as well as a snack bar and tobacconist’s kiosk. The Paddock lavatories boasted water closets but Leger inmates had to make do with pans.
There was no trouble in getting a bet on. There were 100 bookmakers in the Paddock and about 150 in the Leger. At Ascot the main Paddock betting ring was on the lawn between the course proper and the public stand. The Ascot club had opened stand-alone totalisators in each enclosure, which incidentally paid different dividends, in 1917. The betting options available were win, place, concession and doubles.
Ascot, 6 miles from the GPO, was the most distant of the Sydney pony racecourses. After the last, one of the 150 tram cars set aside for the inbound return journey would return racegoers to Central Station in about 25 minutes.
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The writers David Hickie and Jack Pollard were in the habit of describing Sydney’s pony racecourses as the haunts of the ‘Needy and the Greedy’ and the ‘Quick and the Dead’. Similarly, some Edwardian journalists who worked on newspapers of the Establishment such as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sydney Mail, and the AJC men, secretary Tom Clibborn and chairman Adrian Knox, spoke of the pony courses as if they were Kasbahs packed with low-lifes, which respectable people entered at their peril.
While Hickie and Pollard’s calumnies may have been true of the Great Depression years when pony racing was in its terminal decline (and even then only in part), and the earlier comments refer to the ‘roaring days’ before the Associated Race Clubs brought good governance, nevertheless they have given the reputation of the sport a somewhat unwarranted black eye.
However, it is certainly true that the pony racecourses were interesting and fascinating places where things tended to happen. This second article on Sydney pony racing selects just a few of the events and aspects of its culture that warrant inclusion in the broader memory of horseracing.
A dangerous profession
In the early days of pony racing the deaths of jockeys were regularly reported in the newspapers, though they hardly made the headlines. A small paragraph announcing funeral arrangements or a whip-around on behalf of dependants at the end of the racing column was the usual practice. Not that there was a lot of public sympathy wasted on the deceased; jockeys in general were held in low esteem, and pony jockeys were regarded as little better than street hoodlums in fancy dress.
There were a number of factors that contributed to the carnage. The unregistered pony racecourses of the late-Victorian and early Edwardian period like the first Rosebery Park and Lillie Bridge were inherently dangerous places to ride. Although an imaginative journalist once described Rosebery as ‘Flemington in reverse’, it was little more than 4 furlongs in circumference and featured sharp bends. Lillie Bridge was even smaller, and its turn out of the home straight so severe that riders strapped padding to their left legs to protect themselves from contact with the running rail as they cut the corner.
Collisions with rails, made of unforgiving hardwood, were a major cause of death and injury. Other contributors to a death rate that today would be considered monstrous were a lack of protective clothing (skull caps were not made compulsory until 1914 and skull fractures were the most common cause of death), the absence of stewards’ observation towers around the track to discourage foul riding, a laissez faire approach to the licensing of jockeys, the uneven and largely unimproved surface of some courses, and primitive first aid facilities.
The number of names on the role of those known to have lost their lives between 1890 and 1906 is not inconsiderable. The first Rosebery, which had a reputation as a place of death that rivalled that of the Maroubra speedway a generation later, contributed the most: J. Elliot and G. Fewings at the inaugural meeting in 1895, G. Clayton (1896), T. Rooke (1897), P. Maughlin (1899), J. Allen and W. Cohn (1901), and T.W. Adams (1905). Deaths also occurred at other pony courses. John Driscoll Jr, whose father won the 1867 Melbourne Cup on Tim Whiffler, was killed at the Driving Park in 1890, W. Cartwright at Forest Lodge in 1902, T. Gardiner (1897) and E. Julius (1906) at Kensington.
Eventually the frequency of fatalities at the proprietary courses (Canterbury’s record was as bad as the ponies) troubled even the phlegmatic members of the New South Wales parliament. One demanded more stringent government regulation of racecourses, citing the example of Lillie Bridge, which he said was not big enough to allow a game of cricket or the proverbial swinging of a cat.
No immediate action was taken, but the 1906 Gaming and Betting Act, which caused the creation of the Associated Race Clubs with its painstaking stewardship of racing, as well as the construction of the larger and better maintained second-generation pony racecourses, proved a godsend. Over the next 25 years jockey mortality at the pony tracks was markedly lower than in AJC racing.
The pony racecourses were sometimes dangerous places off the track as well. There were the occasional robberies and assaults, although the ARC racecourse detective, Mr Jackson, was a vigilant and respected
man well equipped for throwing louts off the course. Such occurrences were unusual but not unprecedented perils of the type that racegoers at all tracks were more or less prepared for. However, a stand collapsing beneath your feet was rather a different matter.
This was what happened at the second Rosebery racecourse on 5 May 1928. The Rosebery cup meeting was in progress. It was a rather unpleasant day, on which an important meeting was also in progress at Rosehill. Despite this a very large attendance was at Rosebery and up to the running of the Trial Stakes well-backed horses had been faring well. Consequently few people had left the course.
A large squadron of young men had momentarily gathered in the Leger betting ring on the lawn in front of the stand to watch the race. The less peripatetic females and elderly racegoers had secured sheltered positions in the stand—a rather rickety wooden structure that had been transported from the old Rosebery racecourse and was more than 30 years old. Witnesses later testified it was already near, if not beyond, its safe capacity.
Just prior to the advertised race time a squall of unusually heavy rain swept into the faces of the men on the lawn. They quickly retreated onto the walkways and lower ramparts of the stand, forcing the incumbents to concentrate in the centre. Following immediately on a loud crack, the lower-centre decks of the stand collapsed several feet into the tearoom below and a large hole appeared.
As a result people were thrown from their feet and some seriously injured. Many of the men last in from the rain quickly evacuated the sinking stand, even if this meant stomping on the injured. A number were not content upon reaching the apparent safe haven of the lawn, but jumped the fence onto the course proper to avoid any crush. Perhaps they thought there had been an earthquake.
The stand’s collapse was front-page news the following Monday. The papers criticised the stampeders for displaying less than Anzac standards of bravery, and for the lack of concern they showed injured females and elderly. The disaster did ultimately bring benefits for racegoers though. Rather than simply construct a new stand, the Rosebery club virtually rebuilt the entire racecourse and lengthened and widened the course proper, to such good effect that both Bill Cook and Edgar Britt named it among the best tracks in Sydney.
The ‘Mackers’
We now know much less about the equine competitors in pony racing than its human participants. This is not surprising, as it had no absolute standouts to provide a pantheon of legendary champions as Carbine, Phar Lap, Bernborough and Tulloch have for registered racing. The truth was that for the most part they were either pygmies that never graduated from restricted class racing (if ‘restricted heights’ races can be thought of in this way) or ‘all heights’ that had either failed to measure up in registered racing, were past their prime, or had been judged so unpromising they were consigned immediately to pony trainers.
Nevertheless in their own time the best ponies had large followings. The most admired were those ponies that had the ability to overcome massive weights and concede several stones to low weighted rivals, and to win races outside their own heights category. Most celebrated of all were those who were able to beat their bigger registered cousins on their own turf.
Thus when the 14.1 hand Sydney pony Jack Marsh was able to beat a ‘particularly smart’ field in the Truganinni Handicap at the registered Williamstown racecourse, Melbourne, in 1920 at 50 to 1, it was reported as a lead story in The Argus next day and a major talking point around the haunts of ‘sportsmen’, such as hotels and clubs. Jack Marsh won more than 40 races. Other ponies that proved very competitive on registered racecourses included:
• Cinderellen, a galloway that won the 1896 Kensington Cup carrying 10 st 13 lb. It ran unplaced in a Toorak Handicap, but second in a £200 race on Caulfield Cup day and also a Hobart Cup. Later Cinderellen won the 10-furlong Maribyrnong Cup at that registered Melbourne racecourse.
• Djin Djin, which won the 1898 Epsom Handicap.
• Fitzroy, which Adrian Knox admitted to admiring, ran second in a Hobart Cup and fifth in an Australian Cup.
• Other ponies and galloways that achieved fame within their milieu included Precious Dust, Adam Bede, Bruce, Currawong, Lady Liddell, Marabeau, Moorefield Lass, Pearl Powder, Scarpa Flow, Prince Bruce, Scooter, Silver Grist, Silver Rose and Woy Woy.
Pony humour
If the Depression brought problems for pony racing that ultimately proved fatal for it, it also generated a great deal of grim humour. These stories are largely to blame for the ‘needy and greedy’ label referred to earlier and were hardly representative of the total culture of the sport. That being said, they are certainly worth recounting.
Bert Lillye told a delightful story about an unlicensed bookmaker who set up business on the ‘outer’ above Kensington racecourse. Defaulting bookmakers were not unknown at that venue so punters viewed with favour the disabled man, his leg in a plaster cast, who obviously could not out-run a pursuit. Consequently business was very good; in fact disconcertingly good for the bookie, as favourite after favourite won. He knew if the next was successful he would be unable to pay. Sure enough it charged away to the cheers of the outer crowd, who then turned to line up for payment. To their chagrin they saw their man rapidly receding into the distance. Before them lay the discarded cast. It had been a ‘falsie’.
Lillye told another story of a desperate trainer who hid in a bush near the 5-furlong start at the back of the Kensington racecourse. Just as the barrier was raised the trainer leapt from his hide and gave his horse a resounding smack on the backside with a stockwhip. Not surprisingly the horse sped off down the track and duly won the race.
Clive Inglis, the auctioneer, also had some neat stories. The jockeys Alby Callinan and Ernie Henry were close mates and suspected by the public of being in cahoots in planning races. One day a horse to be ridden by Henry blew ominously in the market. The stewards smelt a rat and substituted Callinan—to the disgust of one punter, who informed them: ‘You mugs, you take off Ned Kelly and put on his brother Dan.’
Callinan’s mount ran an ‘unlucky’ second. As the jockey returned to scale, the same humourist was in position on the rail with his head bowed and hat over his heart. Callinan could not resist asking what it meant. ‘I always show my respect for the dead,’ he responded (I have heard this ‘respect’ story told against a number of jockeys but Callinan was the earliest of them and I suspect this is the origin of the yarn).
Inglis also told of an incident that occurred soon after the stewards’ observations towers were first used. The pony jockey Alf Stanton had evidently forgotten about them, for soon after, as he passed one riding a horse that was pulling double, he shouted to a colleague, ‘How far will this win by when we let it go next time?’ His reward was a lengthy suspension.
I hope this gives an impressionist view of the phenomenon that was pony racing in Sydney. If you would like to read a deeper analysis of it, I would refer you to my book Sydney’s Pony Racecourses: An Alternative Racing History.
A RULE OF THE A.J.C.
A.B. ‘BANJO’ PATERSON
Come all ye bold trainers attend to my song,
It’s a rule of the A.J.C.
You mustn’t train ponies, for that’s very wrong
By the rules of the A.J.C.
You have to wear winkers when crossing the street,
For fear that a pony you’d happen to meet
If you hear one about, you must beat a retreat,
That’s a rule of the A.J.C.
And all ye bold owners will find without fail
By the rules of the A.J.C.
The jockey boys’ fees you must pay at the scale,
It’s a rule of the A.J.C.
When your horse wins a fiver, you’ll laugh, I’ll be bound,
But you won’t laugh so much by the time that you’ve found
That the fee to the boy is exactly ten pound!
That’s a rule of the A.J.C.
And all ye bold ‘Books’ who are keeping a shop,
There’s a new regulation that says you must stop!
That’s a rule of the A.J.C.
You must give up your shop with its pipes and cigars
To an unlicensed man who is thanking his stars,
While you go and bet in the threepenny bars,
That’s a rule of the A.J.C.
And all ye small jockeys who ride in a race,
In the rules of the A.J.C.
If owners’ instructions are ‘Don’t get a place’,
By the rules of the A.J.C.,
You must ride the horse out, though, of course, if you do
You will get no more mounts, it’s starvation to you.
But, bless you, you’ll always find plenty to chew
In the rules of the A.J.C.
PASSELLA, BY PASSING BY—SWEET ELLA
JIM BENDRODT
You wouldn’t have known when the police came in, but I did.
To you the giant dance hall would have seemed about as usual. But your big-time dance-hall operator always knows. Sometimes I’ve wondered if there isn’t some affinity between a showman and a wild forest creature. Neither of them needs much warning when unusual things occur.
I took a golden cigarette case from the pocket of a coat my tailor said was faultless. I opened it and chose a cigarette, and my men came past and didn’t stop, but whispered as they passed me from the corners of their mouths, ‘It’s the cops, boss,’ and I answered softly, ‘Sure, I know.’
I lit my cigarette, and looked out over the dance floor where undulating thousands moved to the music of a waltz. I shifted my gaze casually to the shadows near the doorways and watched the big men take position. I knew the phones were covered and the exits and the stairs. I knew that in the avenue outside the patrol cars and the wagons would be waiting. The stage was set.
