It is pleasant to know that the old champion ultimately fell into the hands of Mr. James Austin, in whose possession he lived a life of ease, “roaming the flats by the homestead creek,” until, at the ripe age of twenty-five, he passed in his checks.
And during the Petrel fever days, one is glad to notice that at length the winners in the metropolitan areas were beginning to come from horses which were eligible for, and ultimately were entered in the Stud Books of Australia, and were now repaying their enterprising owners for their extensive outlay and boldness. Thus, when Petrel was carrying off the champion prizes at Flemington, Garryowen, the second living son of our old friend Nora Creina, was winning Town Plates and Publicans’ Purses, whilst Paul Jones, a colonial-bred colt, foaled in ’41, by imported Besborough out of imported Octavia, threw down his Van Diemonian gauntlet to Petrel, and on one occasion, to the wild delight of the Tasmanians present, actually finished ahead of him in a heat. But while these exciting happenings were taking place in the centres of population, racing was also catching a hold on the dwellers in the wild bush. Thus you will find, if you read the works of the late Revd. John Dunmore Lang, that in 1846 this distinguished divine made the overland journey from Sydney to Port Phillip, during which he kept an extensive diary of events.
On his arrival at Albury, he relates how he discovered the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood, “on the Christian Sabbath Day,” indulging in the excitement of their annual races. So shocked was the minister that he broke into the Latin tongue:
“Quadrupedente patrem sonitu quatit ungula campum,”
which, in the words of “Young Lochinvar,” he aptly and freely translates as:
“There was racing and chasing on Albury Lea.”
“The respectable publican of the place, one Brown, told me that he was, with great reluctance, compelled to serve out rum in pailfuls to his customers who were attending the races.” And all over the huge colony of New South Wales we find at this time, and during the succeeding few years, that racing was becoming the favourite pastime of the people. There was a meeting at Maitland in ’46, where Jorrocks beat Emerald, and the event was considered so important that it is immortalised in the calendar for 1867 printed in the first Australasian Turf Register. There was a two day gathering at Yass in ’47, a Geelong Steeplechase in ’45, a Colac Hurdle in ’46, a Launceston Derby and Town Plate in ’43, a Mount Gambier Town Plate in ’48, a Brighton Derby and St. Kilda Cup in ’49, and a meeting even at far-off Portland in ’48. Yes! We are a peculiar, a very peculiar, people!
Chapter VII.
The Early Records.
Of course, there was no Turf Register in these very far-off days, and for some time the newspapers of Port Phillip were very few and far between. Just a couple of months prior to the running of that first race around Batman’s Hill, John Pascoe Fawkner had published “a rag,” a veritable “rag,” “The Port Phillip Advertiser.” It was in manuscript, and its “days were few, and full of woe.” Indeed, it was all but stillborn. There are no race records contained in its thin leaves. From January, 1838, until 1846 there was a succession of news sheets, “Port Phillip Gazettes,” “Patriots,” “Heralds,” “Figaros,” and what not, all of them weekly and weakly, squabbling, screaming, quarrelsome, puny infants, finding early deaths. The “Argus” was founded in 1846, and on June 2nd of that year its first number was printed. The racing news reported during the early years of its existence was meagre in the extreme, and was occasionally printed under the heading of “Domestic Intelligence.” But so mushroom-like was the growth of population in the later ’forties—and very much more so in the early ’fifties—that not only had a daily paper become a very flourishing concern, but the want of a weekly publication, of a purely sporting character, became so urgent that Bell’s “Life in Victoria” was established somewhere about 1855, and continued to exist until, in 1866, “The Australasian” came along with its sails bellying before a favourable breeze, and swept it out of sight. From 1860 until its disappearance, “Bell” had brought forth a little annual volume containing a list of all the principal race meetings of the past year, and “The Australasian” continued the publication under the title of “The Australasian Turf Register.” This was a thin little volume bound in red cloth, but nearly double the size of its diminutive predecessor. It has continued in an unbroken succession ever since.
The production of 1866–67 ran to two hundred and twenty-three pages. The stout, good-looking, substantial volume of 1920, with its blue boards and letters of gold, contains twelve hundred and thirty. And so, in proportion, has our racing and our horse flesh waxed mightily and increased in volume. Has the quality of our sport, and the excellence of our racehorse, grown during the fleeting years to as marked an extent? We will talk about that ere we wind up the clue of the argument.