The Big Book of Australian Racing Stories

by Jim Haynes

  Just then she meets Tin Can’s jockey, Dodger Smith, face to face. A piercing scream rends the atmosphere, as if a thousand school children drew a thousand slate pencils down a thousand slates simultaneously. ‘Me cheild! Me cheild! Me long-lost Algy!’

  It did not take long to convince Algy that he would be better off as son to a wealthy lady than as a jockey subject to the fiendish caprices of Blinky Bill.

  ‘All right, Mother,’ he said. ‘Put all you can raise on Tin Can. I’m going to send Blinky up. It’s time I had a cut on me own, anyway.’

  The horses went to the post. Tons of money were at the last moment hurled onto Tin Can. The books, knowing he was ‘dead’, responded gamely, and wrote his name till their wrists gave out. Blinky Bill had a half-share in all the bookies’ winnings, so he chuckled grimly as he went to the rails to watch the race.

  They’re off. And what is this that flashes to the front, while the howls of the bookies rise like the yelping of fiends in torment? It is Dodger Smith on Tin Can, and from the grandstand there is a shrill feminine yell of triumph as the gallant pony sails past the post.

  The bookies thought that Blinky Bill had sold them, and they discarded him forever. He is now a bottle-oh!

  Algy and his mother were united, and backed horses together happily ever after; and sometimes out in the back yard of their palatial mansion they hand the empty bottles, free of charge, to a poor old broken-down bottle-oh. It is Blinky Bill. Thus has his revenge recoiled upon himself.

  BETTING AND BEER

  J.G. MEDLEY

  Put three or four quid on the horses,

  And a couple of pounds on the trots;

  Ten bob for the dogs in their courses,

  And something or other for spots—

  And if there is anything over

  That hasn’t been got by the cats,

  What ho! for a future in clover

  By way of a ticket in Tatts.

  Oh! Betting and Beer are the basis

  Of the only respectable life.

  Much better to go to the races

  Than moulder at home with the wife.

  I’d much sooner go to the races

  Than take all the kids to the sea.

  My family knows what their place is,

  And that is at home—without me.

  INTRODUCTION—KINGS AND DEADBEATS

  Racing breeds ‘characters’, and characters make great stories.

  Racing has been called ‘the sport of kings . . . and deadbeats’ and the term ‘colourful racing identity’ is used as a euphemism in Australia for a major criminal who, though he is known to be a crook, hasn’t been caught yet.

  In living memory, ‘Hollywood’ George Edser, Perce Galea, Abe Saffron and many others fit into this category and colonial racing had many more.

  Almost everyone I know in racing is a character with a story worth telling, often many stories. Every trainer, from the flamboyant, ever-positive Gai Waterhouse, to the dour and implacable John O’Shea, are ‘characters’ in one way or another.

  Jockeys are certainly characters—every one. It’s an odd profession for a start, and a dangerous one, which attracts men with a certain personality due to their smallness. Cheeky, chirpy types like George Moore and Chris Munce are loved by the media, Tommy Berry is a noted practical joker, Jack Thompson was known to never smile, and Darren Beadman was renowned as a devout Christian, rather an anomaly for a jockey.

  These days there are almost as many female riders as there are men and they have brought a certain glamour and freshness to racing, after battling for decades to gain respect and be accepted—there are some great stories there!

  But it’s often the owners who are the real characters of racing. Owners range from the great men and women on the world stage, such as the Queen, the Aga Khan and Sheik Mohammed, to larger-than-life characters like the Inghams brothers, Tony Santic and John Singleton, and true Aussie battlers such as Joe Janiak, owner-trainer of Takeover Target, and schoolteacher Wendy Green who bought Rogan Josh for $13,000 and won the Melbourne Cup.

  We mustn’t forget the punters, characters like Louis the Possum and the Legal Eagles, a small punting squad masterminded by Don Scott that terrorised bookies in the 1970s and included Clyde Packer, lawyer Clive Evatt and racing aficionado Bob Charley. Then there are the bookies; in the Sydney ring the personalities range from the high-rolling Waterhouses to stony-faced Eric Conlon, who always risks a point or two more than the rest. And who could forget that larger-than-life character, the late Kerry Packer, who once bet a million dollars on a race at Rosehill?

  Then there are the coat-tuggers, touts and whisperers who haunted racetracks in ‘the good old days’. And we shouldn’t forget the stablehands, trackwork riders and clockers, and the race-callers and tipsters who become media personalities, like Ken Howard, Bert Bryant, Kenny Callander and a hundred more.

  Enough to fill many books with great stories; here are just a handful.

  THE MAN WHO PREFERRED HORSES TO CHILDREN

  JIM HAYNES

  Etienne de Mestre was one of ten children of a fascinating character in our history, Prosper de Mestre.

  The son of a French officer fleeing the Revolution, Prosper de Mestre was born at sea on a British ship after his father’s death. He was raised and educated in America after his mother remarried and he lived and traded in China, India and Mauritius before arriving in Sydney, where his right to trade as a ‘foreigner’ was challenged and he subsequently became the first person ever to be naturalised as an ‘Australian’, or at least a British subject in Australia!

  Prosper married Mary Anne Black, daughter of the ex-convict Mary Hyde and stepdaughter of the successful ex-convict merchant Simeon Lord, with whom Prosper was in partnership. After Simeon Lord died, Mary Hyde-Lord famously sued the city of Sydney for resuming land and a water supply granted to her husband which prevented her mill at Botany from continuing to operate. She took her case to London and it was upheld by the Privy Council.

  Etienne was the third son from the marriage. He was born in 1832 in George Street, in the house where his mother was born, on land that backed onto the Tank Stream.

  Etienne developed a love of racing while spending school holidays working with thoroughbred horses at Exeter Farm at Jembaicumbene, which was owned by the family of his school friend Thomas Roberts. The two boys remained lifelong friends and the Roberts family actually owned Melbourne Cup winners Archer and Tim Whiffler, though the horses were leased by de Mestre and raced in his famous stable colours of all black.

  Etienne developed into an excellent horseman and won his first race as a jockey in 1847, at the age of fifteen, on one of the Roberts’ horses, Sweetheart. He later leased, trained and rode Nancy, a daughter of Sweetheart, to win several races in the Shoalhaven district.

  When Etienne was seventeen or eighteen, he fathered a child with an Aboriginal girl, Sarah Lamb. Little is known about Sarah but their daughter, Helen, born about 1850, lived into her 80s and died in 1934 at Wallaga Lake Aboriginal settlement. Helen had four sons with her first husband, a tracker named Jacky Bond, and three children with her second husband, Chinese market gardener James Ahoy. Her son Andy Bond, Etienne’s grandson, served in the 33rd Battalion in World War I and her grandson Ted ‘Guboo’ Thomas, Etienne’s great-grandson, was a famous Aboriginal leader and statesman, an elder of the Yuin people, and the last initiated tribal elder on the South Coast of New South Wales. One of Helen de Mestre’s great-grandchildren is renowned Aboriginal artist Lloyd Hornsby.

  Etienne’s oldest brother, also named Prosper, had taken over the family merchant business when their father died in 1843 and, in 1851, Etienne went into partnership with his elder brother Andre and they leased a section of the land their father had been granted at Terara, on the Shoalhaven River, from their mother.

  They built stables and a racetrack where unofficial meetings were held and set up a stud and training business. When their mother died in 1861 they inherited the property
and expanded their operations into the finest training and breeding operation in the colony.

  Etienne became the most successful jockey of his day and then bred and trained many winners of feature races including four AJC Derbies, three VRC Derbies, two Sydney Cups (including the first ever run), eight AJC Queen’s Plates and an Epsom Handicap. He trained Archer to win the first two Melbourne Cups and, with his three other Cup winners, he set a record of five wins in the great race, which lasted for 99 years, until Bart Cummings broke it in 1977.

  In 1857 de Mestre won the Liverpool Members Plate on George Taylor Rowe’s horse Plant and then trained Rowe’s horse Veno to win the first inter-colonial Champion Challenge at Flemington in 1859. Veno defeated the Melbourne mare Alice Hawthorn. The match race, staged in front of 20,000 spectators, was a precursor to the Melbourne Cup, which began two years later.

  Etienne built his reputation as a trainer from 1857 to 1860 with horses like the Tom Roberts-bred colts Mariner and Sailor, and soon owners throughout the Shoalhaven and Sydney districts sent him their best horses to train. Although he bred many horses himself, he also trained others such as Archer, Tim Whiffler, Sailor and Mariner for the Roberts family, Plant and Veno for the Rowe family, and Yattendon and Chester for noted Sydney sportsman James White.

  Archer and two other de Mestre horses were sent to contest the first Melbourne Cup and Archer famously won the first and second Cups and was then infamously prevented from starting in the third by the machinations of the Victoria Turf Club who used a technicality to refuse the entry. All the interstate entrants pulled out in protest and only seven local horses ran in what is considered the weakest Cup in history. This was a wake-up call to the VTC and the club merged with old rivals the Victoria Jockey Club (VJC) to form the Victoria Racing Club (VRC) in 1863 and get the Cup back to its original standing.

  Although de Mestre had claimed he would never enter the Cup again, he returned for the 1867 Cup and set a record by winning for a third time with another horse he leased from the Roberts family, Tim Whiffler.

  In 1872 de Mestre’s rival ‘Honest’ John Tait beat his record by winning his fourth Cup. Etienne tried hard to catch Tait with Cup wins and was certain he had the horse to do it in 1876. That horse was Robin Hood, the best horse he ever trained, according to Etienne, but Robin Hood and ten other horses were lost at sea when the steamer City Of Melbourne encountered a ferocious storm on the voyage to Melbourne and it was not until 1877 that de Mestre was able to match the record, by winning the Cup with James White’s horse Chester.

  In 1878 he won again with his own horse Calamia and set a record of five wins, which would last for 99 years.

  De Mestre encountered many financial and health problems in the early 1880s. He had invested heavily in Queensland property and then severe drought in Queensland, and also on the Shoalhaven, broke him financially and his health began to fail. At the age of 51, in 1883, his property at Terara was auctioned off to pay his debts, and the all-black livery of the Terara stable disappeared from the colonial racing world.

  Friends organised a successful benefit race meeting for him and the proceeds enabled him to live quietly yet comfortably with his large family on the family dairy farm, Garryowen, at Moss Vale.

  In 1873 Etienne, aged 41, had married Clara Eliza Rowe, known as Eliza. She was the 21-year-old daughter of his friend George Taylor Rowe and sister of George W.S. Rowe, secretary of the Rosehill Racing Club. Eliza bore ten children, of whom nine survived infancy. The younger children were born and grew up on the dairy farm at Moss Vale and, according to descendant Jeanne de Mestre, all of Etienne’s children ‘had to make their own way in life while he concentrated on his horses’.

  The eldest child, Etienne George, became a trainer in England and the third son, Hurtle Edwin, went to the Boer War and later managed a stud farm in South Africa. The youngest child, Leroy Leveson Laurent Joseph de Mestre, was a sickly pampered child who became a gifted artist and musician and played viola with the Sydney Orchestra. He changed his name to Roy De Maistre and became one of Australia’s greatest painters and a legendary figure in the world of post-impressionist art. Knighted in 1962, Roy was a close friend of Patrick White and the painter Roland Wakelin and, in spite of joining the army three times in World War I and being discharged due to physical weakness from congenital tuberculosis, he lived to be 73 and died in London in 1968. His famous Stations of the Cross series hangs in Westminster Cathedral.

  Etienne de Mestre died at Moss Vale on 22 October 1916 at the age of 84, and was buried in the Church of England cemetery at Bong Bong. He was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in September 1992.

  TOM HALES

  NAT GOULD

  Tom Hales, one of the ten children of a blacksmith, was born in Portland, Western Victoria, and grew up in Penola, South Australia. Forbidden to be a jockey by his father, he ran away from home at twelve and found work on Edward Stockdale’s station, Lake Hawden, and met Adam Lindsay Gordon, who was working as a horse-breaker. Later, when Gordon was a police trooper, he arrested Hales for throwing stones at cattle in the Penola stockyard, but released the offender when he realised who he was.

  Hales rode his first winner at thirteen and went on to win three Sydney Cups, six AJC Derbies, seven AJC St Legers, seven Victoria Derbies and ten St Legers, six Australasian Champion Cups and the Melbourne Cup on Grand Flaneur. Between 1872 and 1894 he rode 1678 times for 496 wins, 332 seconds and 195 thirds. In an age of corrupt racing he was renowned as an honest and incorruptible jockey. He died aged 54 in 1901.

  ***

  When I first went to Australia Tom Hales was at the height of his fame as a jockey, but of late years he has almost given up riding and is rarely seen in the saddle. His record stands alone, and he has ridden more winners than any other jockey in the colonies. He has won nearly every race of importance on the Australian turf, and his classic wins are too numerous to mention.

  As a rider of two-year-olds Hales may be placed on a par with that master of the art, Tom Cannon. Hales has a wonderful sympathy with the horse he rides, and he and his mount appear to understand each other thoroughly. In such races as the Derby, Hales’s judgement stands him in good stead, and his knowledge of pace was never better displayed than when he beat Carbine on Ensign in the Derby of 1888.

  It was in this type of race for the late James White that Hales scored his biggest wins, and he rode scores of winners for the Newmarket stable.

  Tom Hales, in my humble opinion, is one of the best men I ever saw ride a racehorse. He has marvellous hands, a clear, cool head, and is a wonderful judge of pace, a great finisher, and has a good seat. Above all, he is as honest as the day, and there has never been a whisper of suspicion against him during his long career in the saddle.

  I have known Hales a long time, and his modest and unassuming manner and thorough straightforwardness have always favourably impressed me. Many happy hours have I spent with him, both on the turf and off, more especially in his beautiful home, Acmeville, at Moonee Ponds, near Melbourne.

  Acmeville is a charming residence, luxurious without being ostentatious. Tom Hales at home is the hospitable host and Mrs Hales, a daughter of South Australia’s most successful breeder of horses, is a model wife.

  Unfortunately Tom Hales is a great sufferer from asthma and is anything but strong. His love of riding, however, is as keen as ever. The last time I was at Acmeville he returned with me to Melbourne in order to go on that night to Caulfield to ride one of his own horses at work next morning.

  ‘I never consider any trouble or inconvenience it may cause me, when there is work to be done,’ he said, when I asked him why he left his comfortable home to go out to Caulfield. ‘I have always made it a practice through life to be on the spot when I’m wanted. I have done this for the owners I have ridden for, now I am doing it for myself.’

  Tom Hales is a wealthy man, and has acquired his money in an honest manner, and has worked very hard for it, I’m afraid to the detriment of hi
s health.

  He has a fine stud farm at Halesville, near Albury, in lovely country near the banks of the Murray, and there he is devoting much of his time to the breeding of bloodstock.

  ‘HONEST JOHN’

  JIM HAYNES

  John Tait was born in 1813 at Melrose near Edinburgh. The son of Robert Tait, a jeweller and engraver, he trained as a jeweller before deciding on a new life in Tasmania and emigrating in 1837, at the age of 24, with his young wife Janet and their daughter.

  They arrived in Hobart aboard the Hindo in November 1837 and ran several businesses successfully. The adventurous and enterprising Tait found Hobart rather slow, however, and moved to New South Wales in 1843, where he became the licensee of the Albion Inn at Hartley. He began training horses and racing them in the district and, like many publicans, held race meetings at his pub at Hartley, and later at the Black Bull Inn at Bathurst, which he took over in 1847. His skill in the art of boxing and his sense of fair play helped him to run pubs successfully and deal with troublesome drinkers.

  The enterprising Scotsman was approaching 40 when he moved to Sydney in 1851 to train horses and become licensee of the Commercial Hotel on Castlereagh Street.

  In 1847 he won his first St Leger at Homebush with a horse named Whalebone and was soon training and managing racehorses for some very important Bathurst district owners and horse breeders, men such as pastoralist George Lee and Thomas Icely, a landowner famous as a breeder and importer of cattle, sheep and horses who exported cavalry remounts to India and developed the merino sheep breed.

  Tait’s racing business grew quickly and he hired Noah Beale as a trainer and James Ashworth as his stable jockey. From 1851 to 1854 he won races with prizemoney totalling about £2500 at Bathurst, Parramatta, Homebush and Penrith, including two more St Legers with Cossack and Surplice and three Queen’s Plates with Cossack (twice) and Sportsman.