Taglioni, the “favourite mare,” although with no given pedigree, has rendered herself more or less immortal, in that Explosion, an Ascot Vale winner, Pegasus, a Hawkes Bay Guineas winner, Volume (New Zealand St. Leger), and some others trace to her.
So now we have taken a rapid and somewhat bird’s-eye view of the thoroughbred arrivals in the Colony down to the beginning of the fifties of the nineteenth century, and we shall now endeavour to take a like bird’s-eye photograph of what these same horses came out to do, and what racing was like in their day.
Chapter VI.
Racing in Victoria, From the Beginning.
Horse racing in Sydney, of course, commenced some years earlier than it did in the Port Phillip division of the Colony, settlement in the north there having an advantage of nearly forty years over the south. I find in a copy of the first Melbourne “Argus” ever printed, on June 2nd, 1846, the entries for a race meeting at Homebush. Amongst these appear the names of Alice Hawthorn and Gulnare. They are somewhat puzzling at that date, as Macarthur’s Gulnare was three and twenty years old in ’46, whilst her daughter, also named Gulnare, was still breeding in ’83, a fact which apparently puts her also out of court. The name seems to have been a popular one, for some reason or another. There was also a mob of Alice Hawthorns, and this particular individual was most probably the mare by Operator from Lorina (imp.), a bay foaled about 1840.
But it is Victorian racing to which we are for the most part going to direct our attention at present. In January, 1803, a survey party had examined the site of the present Melbourne. Collins had formed a convict settlement during the same year at Sorrento, down close to the Heads, but had quickly abandoned the enterprise. Hume, as we have seen, had reached the neighbourhood of Geelong in ’24; Captain Wishart, in his cutter, “Fairy,” had entered and named Port Fairy after his little craft in ’27; Dutton, on a sealing expedition, had built a house at Portland in 1829, and Mr. Henty had made a permanent settlement there in ’34. In May, ’35, Batman entered Port Phillip Bay in a schooner from Tasmania, and Fawkner’s schooner “Enterprise” navigated the lower reaches of the Yarra in August of that year. He was the son of a convict who had been in Collins’ Sorrento picnic party, and was attracted back by his favourable recollections of the place.
In 1836 the blacks came down from the Goulburn and committed murder, somewhere near to the Werribee. In ’37 Messrs. Gellibrand and Hesse, exploring beyond Geelong, were lost, and killed by the aborigines, and life was very unsettled and wild. But now mobs of cattle had commenced to be driven over from Botany Bay to the new settlement, and white men, with the restlessness and energy of our race, were arriving with frequency, for reports concerning the place were distinctly good, and in 1838, so numerous were the inhabitants of Port Phillip, that they decided that the time was ripe in which to inaugurate a race meeting. We are a strange nation; a peculiar people. March 6th was the great day, just eighty-three years ago. There were five hundred spectators present, and four races took place for their edification. Two were won by a mare named Mountain Maid, and two by a gelding, Postboy. Four starters constituted the largest field of the day. The course was right handed, one mile round the she-oak clad Batman’s Hill, a rising ground between the present Spencer Street Railway Station and the gasworks. The starting post was at the site of the North Melbourne Railway Station. As you enter the city from Sydney, you can, if you care to, recall the scene. The scrub was thick between the hill and the surrounding country. It was cut by winding, deeply-indented waggon tracks, for the ground was soft and boggy. Two carts, sheltered from the sun by old sails, performed the functions of publicans’ booths.
It was a two-days’ meeting, but the second helping, like so many second helpings of other things than race days, was a failure, or even, indeed, an utter fiasco. In 1839 there was again a two-days’ gathering on the slopes of Batman’s Hill. The racing was poor, Postboy and Mountain Maid again being strongly in evidence, but the attendance was so large that it was generally agreed that the population must have doubled since the previous year. But now the turf world fairly began to hum, and Batman’s Hill was no longer considered suitable for the purposes of racing. The experienced eye of someone had “spotted” the flats by the Salt Water River as being made to order for the sport, and on the 3rd of March, 1840, the first race meeting at Flemington was successfully carried through. It was a three-days’ affair, and for the first time in Port Phillip the riders sported colours. The quality of the competitors must have been very poor, for, if you look up the arrivals, in their chronological order on a previous page, you will see that few, if any, of their stock can have been taking part in the contests, and, therefore, most of them must have been nothing better than half-bred hacks. But the spirit of emulation had now caught fire, and all through the country owners were making matches one with another, and metropolitan racing was booming to such an extent that a ruling body called “The Port Phillip Turf Club” was called into existence. To the deliberations of this body, and their resulting actions, we owe the fact that horses in Victoria now take their ages from the first day of August in each year.
And now the course itself, at Flemington, became firmly and thoroughly established when, in 1844, plans were submitted to the Town Council, and that body approving of them, the place was declared to be a reserve for the purposes of racing. Five trustees were appointed, in whose name the ground was held, these including the Crown Commissioner of the day, the Surveyor-in-Charge, Mr. J. C. Riddel, Mr. Dalmahoy Campbell and Mr. William J. Stawell. Shortly afterwards the Superintendent of Port Phillip declared this transaction not to be legal, and a new grant was completed on October 22nd, 1847. The land included those portions of the Parish of Doutta Galla from 23 to 28 inclusive, beside the Saltwater or Maribyrnong River, the trustees being Mr. Riddel, Mr. Stawell, Mr. Dalmahoy Campbell again, and Mr. Colin Campbell. The term of years was subsequently increased from ten to twenty-one, which, on the latest renewal of the compact, was finally extended to ninety-nine, at the rent of one peppercorn per annum. The spot was then known to the inhabitants as “The Racecourse,” but a little village now began to grow up in the neighbourhood, and this was soon christened “Flemington,” in honour of a genial butcher who supplied meat to the hamlet, and whose name was Bob Fleming. In those early days everyone went to the races, and the route to and from the course was either by river-steamer or by road. The boats left the wharves at eleven o’clock and returned at sunset, and you may be sure there were hot times in the town o’ nights after the races. Bands and Christy minstrels enlivened the voyage by water. Passengers on the trip home not infrequently toppled overboard, and one or two were actually drowned. Accidents by road were common. At one meeting alone three men were killed, two being run over by vehicles, and one by a runaway horse. Assaults were common, and fighting very popular. Mr. O’Shanassy—who afterwards became Sir John—was attacked whilst taking a meditative canter round the course, and struck over the head very viciously by a ruffian armed with a heavy hunting crop. It was proved to have been a premeditated crime. Not being disabled by his injuries, and being a man of much determination and courage, O’Shanassy turned upon his assailant, pursued and captured him, and had the satisfaction of seeing him receive a sentence of six months’ imprisonment.
The winning post stood alongside the river bank somewhere between the present mile and seven furlong barriers. It was a handy spot at which the steamers could tie up to gum trees on the banks, and could disembark their passengers, but it had the disadvantage of being a considerable distance from the top of the steep, rising ground which soon became known as Picnic Hill. It was not, however, until the sport had been in existence for some twenty years that it was found advisable to change the winning post to its present site, thus converting the Hill into a permanent, convenient and commodious stand. By the year 1846 racing had taken a very firm hold of the light-hearted community, and already a public idol had been discovered and worshipped, spoken about and written about, much in the same way as the public and the press magnify our idols the Carbines, the Poitrels, the Artillerymen, and the Eurythmics of our own times. This golden image which the folk had set up on the Flemington Flats was a dark chestnut horse called Petrel. The reports concerning his paternity and his adventures before he became a racehorse varied considerably. By some he was considered to be by Rous’ Emigrant, whilst a sporting writer of the period maintained that he was “by Operator or Theorem from a Steeltrap mare.” The most authentic story concerning his origin seems to have been that, in 1841, an overlander between Sydney and Adelaide arrived at a station near the Grampians, bringing along with him two well-bred looking mares. Both were heavy in foal, and it was believed that they had been stolen. The overlander found employment on the station of a Mr. Riley, and here the foals, both of them colts, were dropped. One of these was Petrel.
At two years old the colts were sold to the overseer of a Dr. Martin for thirty-six pounds the pair, and the future champion commenced his education as a stock horse. Mr. Colin Campbell soon heard that Petrel had shown wonderful speed after cattle and emus, and you may be pretty sure that the stockmen had also discovered on their homeward way of an evening, that “the big chestnut beggar could gallop like fun.” Mr. Campbell swopped a mare worth twenty pounds for him, and his racing career then began. He was the undoubted champion of Victoria, and was then despatched, per sailing ship, to Botany Bay, to “take the Sydney-siders down.” But the voyage over was long and rough, he had no time before the races in which to recover himself, and he was very well beaten. The excitement in Sydney was tremendous, and the description of the event reminds one somewhat of a latter day happening when the Victorian, Artilleryman, was unexpectedly defeated by the New South Wales representative, Millieme, in the St. Leger.