by Helen Thomas
As a teenager, I had developed a passion for racing during three months of enforced bedrest due to a serious bout of pneumonia. While I hardly remember the illness itself, I have vivid recollection of the horses that raced through that time and have kept me enthralled for four decades: the great sprinter Winfreux was the best of them, but there were others, like a little mare called Spell and a stayer known as Padtheway who won my heart, too. I read the stories of racecourse courage in the daily newspapers, clipping tales from The Herald in the afternoons and pasting them into scrapbooks. Along with many good novels, these horses did more than just fill up the long hours of my recuperation. They opened up a magically different world, of human and equine partnership that was as sweepingly romantic as it was breathtakingly competitive.
It was also full of irascible characters who spoke about things I had never encountered in my young life, in a language I had never heard. Even though my family had no connection at all to racing, once I had stumbled upon it, this world seemed to be … everywhere.
The first high school I went to looked over the most picturesque racecourse in Melbourne. Even closer to home, my elderly next-door neighbour remembered going to the races with her late husband and seeing Bernborough, the big horse from the north—the Toowoomba Terror—race at Flemington. She was adamant, too, as we sipped tea from her dainty bone china, that her husband had told her about the time he saw the legendary Phar Lap, before he was shipped to America, where he died in controversial circumstances. Big Red, she called him, like everyone who lived through the Depression did.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought—even as a young teenager—to really be a part of this world, to somehow have a horse good enough not just to win races, but to be written about by legendary racing scribes like Jack Elliot? And loved countrywide?
For a city kid, and a girl at that, it was a funny dream, the kind you just tuck away in your back pocket and hold onto. For one thing, I knew no one who could even lead me to a door marked ‘enter’. Horses weren’t part of our daily routine, and there certainly wasn’t a pony club nearby.
Yet, horses have a funny habit of finding those of us who are drawn to them, whether we are sure of it or not, and suddenly there was a rather unruly mob of them in the grassy green paddock that ran behind our back fence in Ascot Vale, and the other side of the meandering Merri Creek. The adults warned us to stay away from them as they were on their way to the abattoirs or ‘the doggers’.
Having no real idea what that meant, we tried to befriend the few that still yearned for such friendship and learned to ride—bareback with a dog lead and rope for bridle and reins—on a couple of the older mares amongst the gentle hills and weeping willows that eventually gave way to the Tullamarine Freeway.
There were also the monthly race trials held during the day at Moonee Valley Racecourse that actually stopped our school classes every half hour because the race calls were so loud. Looking back, it doesn’t seem at all surprising that horses had a hold of my heart before I had reached my mid-teens.
But racing was obviously a wildly expensive passion to pursue. Even from the sidelines, it was obvious not every horse that went to the races came home a winner, and from the start I understood that trainers and jockeys had to be paid. It was their living, after all. Maintaining this passion only seemed possible from a distance.
So for the next couple of decades, I followed the horses as a (very) small-time punter, which meant keeping a close eye on what was being written about them, but never getting involved. In many ways, it was the perfect love affair: no close ties, no emotional or financial bonds, just a lot of fun with nothing more to do than just follow my favourite horses, and cheer them home.
Still, once bitten, never shy. The lure of the track is impossible to ignore, the call of the turf hard not to hear, and over the years I took small shares in a couple of racehorses with a few friends and my younger, equally enthralled brother. This was hardly demanding. Again, the financial outlay was minimal, the syndicate arrangement so removed from the actual hard work of the stable, not to mention the day-to-day planning that these horses demand, that we could have been investing in anything. Perhaps it was a little eccentric, but nothing really for anyone to get excited about.
In a way, that was precisely the problem. It was almost too little, and nearly too late. As I hit my 40s, I realised I really did want to become more involved and had to make a decision before I got too old and scared to take the plunge. I also had to face the fact that I was starting to bore even my closest friends and family; having talked about buying a racehorse, or trying to breed one we could race together, for such a long time, I either had to stop talking about it or actually do it, full stop.
So I started to go to as many of the regular horse sales in Melbourne and Sydney that I could fit in around my work as a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), in an attempt to get a better understanding of the horses themselves. There were certainly more than enough to choose from, the regular auctions of tried (and often failed) racehorses mixed in with the higher profile sales of yearlings and broodmares. But having some clue about thoroughbred ancestry, not to mention equine conformation, was essential when attending these events if you wanted to properly follow what was happening around you. And I quickly came to see that, despite a lifetime of listening to and going to the races, I had only the barest understanding of both. If I was going to achieve anything at all in this field in this lifetime, I had to keep cramming and learn fast. And at some point I had to jump in and buy a horse.
But it was logical, actually sensible, to keep putting such a major move off. Let’s face it, horses are big and eat a lot and cost even more to care for. It made sense to keep stalling! Clearly I needed a hook, some kind of emotional tie, to kick me over the line on such a life-changing decision. When the thin, green catalogue for the broodmare sale at Scone arrived in the mail early in 2001, I found it.
Her name was Poetic Waters, and she was a 10-year-old bay mare sired by an American stallion called Yeats, renowned as a getter of good sorts, both on the track and at stud. Even more importantly, for me at least, the mare’s maternal family was of special interest. She was a cousin of Excited Angel, an outstanding race mare that a very old friend had part-owned a decade ago. Here, at last, was the irresistible connection I couldn’t ignore, the key ingredient I’d been waiting for. The sign! Poetic Waters would open that door into a world of horses.
As I leafed through the sales catalogue, I marvelled again at what an enthralling document it was, a series of ancestral charts that seemed straightforward at initial glance—father, mother, siblings and race records—but on closer inspection revealed the deep mysteries of blue-blooded histories.
At least it did for anyone who could read these genetic maps; beginners like me could only marvel at the obvious strengths on both sides of the families involved. I still had to learn the deeper ambiguities.
But I did know this much: with these particular mysteries came responsibilities. These equine families had been nurtured for centuries and weren’t to be taken lightly. If I bought this mare, what course should I take in terms of planning the matings for her foals? Her particular pedigree lent itself to both sprinting and running a solid mile. It stood to reason that, given the right sire, her offspring might even run further than that, perhaps might even be coaxed towards Australia’s classic Cups distances of 2400 and 3200 metres.
In a way these were the easy questions. The more imponderable scenarios involved the proportion of genetic potencies that deter-mined a great stayer, the combination that shaped a sizzling sprinter. But the only way any of this was going to be revealed, for it to make proper practical sense, was to get involved on the ground. Learn the language on the run. And the bay mare with the sire named after the great Welsh poet Yeats, her dam the equally lyrical Gallic Waters, looked a likely interpreter.
The mere prospect of buying her also threw me into this game at the practical end, because befor
e I actually went ahead and did it, I had to find a place to keep her, just in case I became the successful bidder. And so the never-ending conversation about the care of horses began and, on my second phone call, my luck really kicked in.
I had seen an advertisement in one of the thoroughbred magazines for Timor Creek, a farm of rolling hills and lush grass in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales specialising in agistment—caring for horses, young and old, in a paddock environment. Naturally this care came at a price, but the $5 daily fee was reasonable and when I rang the owner and manager of the farm to explain my situation, she even offered to help inspect the mare with me on sale day. At no extra charge.
Knowing enough about this business to know just how much more I had still to learn, I took Jenny up on her offer and met her at White Park, the old Scone sale complex, in front of the mare’s stall. Practically born on a horse, Jenny had the easy confidence of a horsewoman who had been around them all her life. She knew them and they knew her—I saw that in an instant. Even so, it quickly became apparent that our task, which seemed simple enough, wasn’t going to be easy.
Our vantage point, for a start, was hardly auspicious. Unlike the other horses at the sale, Poetic Waters was not standing with her head over the stable door in picture postcard perfection. Her bottom was facing outward, her head to the back right-hand corner of the stall. And she was downright annoyed with the whole proceedings, not happy being part of the sale and disdainful of anyone who tried to view her.
No matter what we said to coax her our way, or how hard we tried to get her to turn around to face us and the door, she was stead-fast in her refusal, preferring to let her hindquarters do the talking. We had no idea how many other prospective buyers had inspected her. Yet, for whatever reason, she was heartily sick of being prodded and poked, tired of the whole ordeal.
Jenny, the tiny, wiry expert, who was also selling another mare for another client that day, didn’t entirely disagree with the mare’s perspective and quietly went about her inspection, starting at the back of the stall and moving forwards. She liked the pedigree and was trying to make sure there was nothing physically wrong before Poetic Waters was taken into the sale ring.
‘She’s a lovely strong mare,’ she said, reassuringly. ‘You should have no worries about buying her.’
As the auctioneer’s call to action rang out—‘Sale-o, Sale-o!’—around White Park, Jenny even interrogated the mare’s vet, who assured us there was really no negative reason for the sale of the horse, beyond her owners wanting to downsize their stock.
‘They’re keeping her most recent foal, he’s a very nice colt,’ he added, apparently a reassuring indication of continuing faith in her immediate family. Now I could only pray the auctioneer didn’t overplay the positive aspects of her pedigree page and push her price up beyond what I could afford.
I needn’t have worried. When Poetic Waters entered the sale ring as Lot 5, her mood had failed to improve; if anything, her annoyance had intensified to irritation in the hour or so since we had been with her in her stall, which meant she slouched around the ring, head down, ears back, walking like a crab, unimpressed and unimpressive. She looked smaller, and sour. But this was good for me as it prevented those around me from noticing her fine, pretty head and long, athletic body.
Bidding started at $350 and the only serious competition, according to my new, informal adviser, wanted to breed the mare to a stockhorse, which made me even more determined to buy her. There was no way a branch of this family tree was going to be lost to the Aussie racetrack. Not if I could help it.
‘$700,’ the auctioneer called. I went to $800, my rival upping the ante to $1000, small change even at this country auction house. I nodded and went up to $1250. And just as he lifted the hammer to end the ordeal, a second auctioneer—exasperated by his colleague’s lack of sales pitch—leant forward on the dais to point out the star of this family his colleague had failed to mention.
I held my breath and watched as, hammer still in mid-air, he glanced back down at the page and saw the name of the horse he had failed to spruik, the one his colleague was pointing to, her name written in bold black type on the pedigree page—Excited Angel.
But it was too late to mention her now: ‘Sold—$1250!’ My heart raced, my eyes filled with tears. This was one of those pivotal moments when you know that something intrinsic in your life has shifted, its course somehow altered.
I had bought my first horse, entered the breeding business, and learnt just a little about auctions and auctioneers. The most important lesson seemed to be that often what is not said during a public horse sale is just as important as what is, sometimes probably even more so. Because the auctioneer hadn’t mentioned Excited Angel, the bidding didn’t jump as high as it could and probably should have, and I was able to afford the good race mare’s cousin.
It was a terrific result, although I felt for the vendor as their horse had sold under value. Surely this young broodmare, already the mother of two sons to race, one a winner—with another promising yearling in a prominent Newcastle trainer’s yard—was worth double what I had just paid? No matter. All I had to do was plot her next mating, and who knew what lay ahead? I didn’t even know enough at this stage to understand how complicated things could get. Which they did, very quickly.
Whether this is a business or a hobby, the bottom line is there is no way of knowing where any horse will take you. It’s that simple. There is no way of guessing how good they will or won’t be, no way of predicting how the best laid plans will unfold or unravel, no way of knowing what will happen along the way. Their breeding plays a significant part of the journey, of course, not to mention their physical conformation and mental makeup. Yet, whimsy comes into it too. And luck. And focus. Three factors that should never be taken lightly.
The only sure thing that day at Scone was that the world as I knew it changed, quietly and without fanfare, but irreversibly.
Life without horses was over.
Chapter 2
Early lessons
Like any great romance, a little heartbreak and much frustration lay ahead. After a month or so getting over the sale yard experience in the hills of Timor Creek Farm near Murrurundi, Poetic Waters travelled west to be mated with Sky Chase, once an outstanding racehorse trained by Bart Cummings and now a stallion at the relatively cheap end of the breeding market, despite having sired the mighty WS Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup winner, Saintly.
It was not a blessed union. Eleven months later, safe again at Timor Creek, my mare gave birth to two dead twins, a traumatic event for her, as well as the staff on the farm.
Fortunately Poetic Waters was hardy and well enough within several weeks to travel even further north, across the border, for an appointment with Mr Innocent, another excellent racehorse-turned-stallion, only to return dry, that is, officially not in foal. Two major disappointments but at least the mare was fine.
‘Tough break, kid,’ Jenny told me. Not one to beat around the bush, my chief adviser had seen it all before.
‘You’re getting a crash course in all that can go wrong with horses. And does.’
By now, a year into this journey, I had also realised the only way to afford this onslaught was to have a small property of my own that this mare, and hopefully one or two others, could call home. To pull this off involved nothing less than 12 months spent looking at properties within the golden three-hour radius of Sydney—from the Hunter Valley (too pricey) to Canberra (too dry) and eventually, the southern tablelands, where I found a beautiful 100-acre block just outside the small town of Braidwood.
Some of these small acreages had houses on them, some did not. This one was really nothing more than one long, undulating paddock. Yet it was ideal, originally part of an old thoroughbred stud that had been set up more than 30 years ago, a tract of pasture that ran up a hill and rolled down to the meandering Shoalhaven River, weather-worn post-and-rail fences along the little property’s borders. The boundary fences had been b
uilt to look imposing and withstand the elements, and even an inexperienced eye could see the paddocks still prospered. Tall, slender poplars soldiered along the fence lines at the front of the property, deep green in spring and a lush hue of falling gold through autumn.
Looking back down from the top of the hill, the overall effect was that of a postcard of a farm in Kentucky. Even the location was perfect, this parcel of land not too far from the Hume Highway, nor far from the south coast. The only drawback was the lack of accommodation. But an old caravan would no doubt hold me in good stead over many a weekend, I reasoned. And as hard as it was to decide to sell out of such a hot real estate market, not to mention my small but comfortable house in Redfern, it was the only way for me to be able to pursue this particular dream.
‘You’ve just locked yourself out of Sydney,’ a close friend warned. ‘You’ll never be able to afford to return.’
Not unless one of the horses I breed can actually run, I thought, with beginner’s optimism.
There was another side to the ledger. Even my seriously cred-entialled and conservative financial adviser had approved the business plan I was forced to draw up, pointing out that the little block of vacant land I was buying had two great assets: it was part of what had been a fine working stud for more than two decades—home of two stallions Zephyr Zip and Vasiliev and their annual courts of broodmares—and so boasted pastures that had been professionally sown and maintained. Even better, it bordered the Shoalhaven.
Water was liquid gold, destined to increase in value as Australia’s droughts continued into this new century. The property was too good to pass up as it was also going to be a sound investment.
Exactly why the owner, a would-be cattle baron, was willing to shave off a tiny sliver of his beautiful 800-acre farm for an eager city slicker to buy was unclear, especially as it sat at the front of the property, literally at his front gate. This remained a talking point in town for a couple of years, but it hardly mattered.
