Chapter I.
The Pre-historic Days.
The History of the Racehorse in Australia is such a short one that you might, with reason, imagine that the entire narrative could be condensed into a very small space when committed to print. But you would be utterly wrong. On the contrary, an historian, with his heart in the business, could reel off a number of fair-sized volumes, and still his work would not be fulfilled to his entire satisfaction. A little ancient history may be useful to us before we commence to study the subject. As you know, there was no trace of the genus horse on our island continent before the coming of the white man. In America, on the other hand, although there was no horse as we know him, before the advent of the Conqueror Cortez, in 1518, yet the fossilised remains of the Eohippus, the Protohippus and Hipparion are so numerous and well distributed on the great American continents that these wide lands seem to have been the most favoured home of the great race of equidae, in the far-off days before the ice.
The whole species was then cut off, to a horse, possibly by an epidemic, or by the ravages, more probably, of some insect or microbe, and its history in that quarter of the globe recommenced with the Conquest. In vivid contrast the tale of our own Australian horse, and all our other domestic animals, begins as late as the 10th day of January, 1788. Governor Phillip brought with him from the Cape of Good Hope, where he had called to obtain supplies on his voyage hither with his first fleet of convicts, a stallion and three mares with foals at foot, a few cattle, and in all 500 head of live stock, but which consisted for the most part of poultry.
The new Colony had a good deal of bad luck at this time. The four-footed animals, owing to the negligence of a convict herdsman, strayed away, and although one has reason to believe that the horses were recovered, there is no certainty on that head. With the cattle there is a different story to tell, and on the very day upon which I am writing this, I read, in “The English Sporting Magazine” of 1797, the story of their loss and recovery. A boat’s crew sought a bay on the coast whilst searching for fresh water. At the spot where the men landed they fell in with a convict who had escaped five years before, and who had joined the blacks. This man showed them where the lost cattle had made their home, deep in some fertile valley, and in the course of their nine years of liberty they had increased in numbers to sixty-one head. It was a valuable find for the struggling colonists, who, from drought and flood, had lost a large portion of their property.
In the very early years of “the Colony” there was exceedingly little need for the assistance of light horses in the daily work of the place, whilst the desire to possess an animal more speedy than that owned by a neighbour had not yet arisen at all. You will, perhaps, recollect that, until the year 1813 or thereabouts, the only portion of our vast continent which was being made use of by white men was a little strip of soil between the Blue Mountains and the sea, some forty miles by eighty, and the few horses which had now been brought over from the Cape, or out from the Old Country, were simply beasts of burden, or, at the best, perhaps, hacks and harness horses.
It was on the 31st day of May of that year that Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson burst their way through the hitherto impenetrable ranges and scrub into the limitless lands beyond, and it was upon that same day that the use for a swift and long-enduring saddle horse was discovered by the inhabitants who followed in the tracks of these explorers, and the first real need of the thoroughbred as a sire found its way into Australia.
Yet, though there seems to have been such a limited demand for the thoroughbred steed in these very early days, there were, at least, three importations before the transit of the Blue Mountains had been accomplished, and you cannot help wondering what was the inducement which tempted the importers to take the risk.
A mist floats over the particulars of these first arrivals. In the closing years of the eighteenth century there is on record that a blood horse, Rockingham by name, was shipped to Australia from the Cape of Good Hope. It was at the end of the seventeen nineties, and the only other authentic fact which I can ascertain concerning him is that he subsequently became known as “Young Rockingham.” There is no trace of anything which he may have left behind him in the way of progeny. He was probably by Rockingham, a stallion which was covering in England about this period, but not the Rockingham, of course, by Humphrey Clinker, who appears in the pedigree of Doncaster. The day of that sire had not yet dawned.
A blood horse called Washington is said to have been imported from America in 1802. The first volume of the “Australian Stud Book” simply mentions the fact, and adds that he was “said to have been a very handsome horse,” and there it ends. But Mr. T. Merry, in his book on the American horse, states that he was by Timoleon, and that he was not sent to Australia until 1825. The third importation before the transit was of one whose name is still alive, and that is “Old” Hector, or simply Hector. The exact year of his arrival here is uncertain. A correspondent in a weekly paper some months ago gives it with confidence as 1803, and states that the horse died in 1821. The first volume of the “Stud Book” quotes it as 1810, but refers to him as a “Persian.” Hector was a favourite name amongst horse-masters, and there were as many Hectors in Australia as there were King Harrys on the field of Shrewsbury. The thoroughbred Hector is described as “a very fine, commanding horse. The gameness of his stock proves that he was not an Indian horse.” The second volume corrects the dates, and believes that Hector was imported in 1806, whilst the seventh volume adds that Hector went to Tasmania from New South Wales in 1820. In a Tasmanian advertisement he is described as “by Hector, probably Hector by Trentham,” the property of the Iron Duke. All this is not only of interest, but it is of a certain value to studmasters, for the blood of Old Hector survives in some force to-day through the descendants of his daughter Old Betty. But, as that famous mare, the ancestress of such a very numerous and worthy family, was not foaled until 1829, we are left in a deep quagmire of doubt as to what her real pedigree can possibly have been. The “Stud Book,” however, accepts the mare as being by Hector.
And, to close these very early, almost prehistoric data, a bay stallion, named The Governor, was imported about 1817. He was by Walton from Enchantress, by Volunteer, from a mare by Mambrino, but I can find no mention whatsoever of this horse’s services, nor of his progeny. That, indeed, was inevitable, for until this period no race mare with a clean pedigree had ever come to our shores. Our country at that time was no land of promise, so hopelessly far away was it from the Old World, and from civilisation, over seas very dangerous, not only on account of the smallness of the vessels employed in transport, but also from the unceasing violence of the enemy.