Colin Little Interview
Gardenvale, Wednesday 19 June 2024
Location: Sons of Mary Café, Brighton
Present: Colin Little, retired horse trainer
Andrew Lemon, historian
Anne Kilpatrick, Glen Eira Historical Society
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0:00.00
Andrew: preamble re his history of William Inglis and Son, thoroughbred auctioneers.
Colin: Explains to Anne his understanding of Bart Cummings’s financial difficulties involving Inglis in 1990s
Anne: Explains background to this project and the recording.
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0:6:53.20
Andrew: Let’s sit down for an hour or so until you get impatient, and have a bit of a chat about it. Where I wanted to start 7:00.00 : I really should just—maybe Rod Fitzroy has told you it [brief interruption] … It was minus 2 when I left Eltham this morning, so: glad you weren’t out at trackwork this morning?
Colin: No that’s right, I think of it most mornings, as I turn over and pull the doona up a bit higher…
It’s just bizarre that people start at 4 o’clock in the morning. I’ve done a little thing on Racing.com—didn’t get any traction whatsoever—about trying to start a bit later, 6 o’clock. Why do we start at 4 o’clock? That’s just the way it’s always been. We start at 4 o’clock obviously because the track’s shut at 9 and we need those five hours. If we should get them worked in three hours, we’d start at 6, finish at 9. We can’t, so we need the number of hours. 8:00.00 But why can’t you start at 6? We can’t get anyone now, staff – no-one wants to get up at 3.30 any longer, and it’s pitch dark, you can’t see your horses. You look around at 9 o’clock, track’s deserted, sun’s up. Perfect. I call it archaic.
Andrew: It would be quite nice for a horse to get out there and have a gallop at that stage, particularly in the middle of winter.
Colin: I call it archaic.
Andrew: Well it is archaic, and it goes back to the days when trainers wanted to train their horses secretly.
Colin: Exactly, exactly. And there’s a couple of other things. There was only one grass and it was decimated at 5 a.m. You were a very poor trainer if you started a bit later, trained your horse at 5 or 6 because there was no grass when it was decimated, but now they have multitudes of grass and artificial tracks so there’s not such a workload on the grass, that’s another reason for starts later.
Anne: Is that the same 9:00.00 in other parts of Australia and internationally?
Colin: Well, no. Newmarket [UK] is a bit more civilized, you can’t find a horse before 6 o’clock. Hong Kong with the heat it’s very early. Queensland, with the heat, there’s an argument there. But not in Melbourne.
Andrew: Not even in summer.
Colin: It’s two days, hot days, and that’s about it. It will be like turning the Titanic around to change it.
Andrew: This isn’t meant to be my oral history: but I’ve been writing an article about the 1874 Melbourne Cup, 150 years ago, won by a horse that was owned by one of the Chirnsides at Werribee Park. So I discovered they were actually building Werribee Park mansion at the same time as the horse wins the Melbourne Cup. And there’s a bit of a question as to whether the owner was actually there 10:00.00 because when the horse won—Haricot, his name was, and he was a bit of an outsider, but they had some money on him—it’s unsure whether Chirnside was actually there at Flemington when it happened, but what they do know is that they sent the information by carrier pidgeon…
Colin: Oh, really. [Laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, so Chirnside had sent their carrier pigeons in a basket, and there’s a description of how they tied—you know, someone writes ‘Haricot’s won’, ties it on.
Colin: It might be more reliable, do you think?
Andrew: I reckon. I just love that story. But apparently the trainer was a man called Sam Harding, and he used to be a steeplechase rider himself, and he was famous for taking—he always took his horse, he was always the first trainer to take his horses to the track in the morning, so it goes back 11:00.00 to that period where they wanted to do their track gallops under cover of dark so that the touts didn’t realise how fast the horse was.
Colin: Yeah, well that was when I started, don’t want anyone watching these horses. Now the trainers ring up the press and say my horses is… [Laugh]
Andrew: The betting world has changed enormously, even in your lifetime.
Colin: Very much so. There was always people that were paid by newspapers there to clock the horses. As soon as videos came in they were redundant, no one was interested, they’d just watch the video.
Andrew: Picked up the Sporting Globe, get the trackmen’s reports.
Colin: Exactly. But I think bookmakers used to help them out a little bit, but when videos came in they were redundant.
Andrew: Colin, I’d love to start with your first memory of ever going to Caulfield Racecourse. Can you 12:00.00 specify that?
Colin: Yeah, most certainly. My dad was a jockey and I lived in Stephens Street, so one from the roundabout at Caulfield at the top of the tunnel, if you go towards the Glen Eira Town Hall, I’m the first street on the left; so I’m walking distance to Caulfield.
I still lived in Caulfield until a couple of years ago, so I haven’t gone far in life, a couple of hundred metres! So when I was about – my dad was a jockey, but I don’t ever remember him riding, he was injured when I was very young, but there was some thought I might be a jockey – weight was always a bit of an issue – but my dad made an arrangement with Ken Hilton that this kid could come over and jump on the pony and learn to ride and go round the track on the pony. So I 13:00.00—thirteen or fourteen—no restriction, and no supervision, you could just go round the track. I’ll try to explain it.
Andrew: Ken Hilton was at Lord Lodge, wasn’t he?i
Colin: Yes as his father was, I believe—but he was Lord Lodge. And as an aside, when you go round the track, the regime is you go past the gap and do a U-turn and come back out and go out the gap there. Because when I was very young you used to pull up and go out straight out the gap like that; well the pony would be going down, ‘That’s home!’ (so he’d whoosh), and you’d keep going, and the pony’d do a left hand turn! Happened almost every morning. You’re almost ready for the pony to run out the gap. Well, years and years later someone worked out 14:00.00 that if you go past the gap and do a U-turn and go back, the pony would be deceived, that’s not really the gap. So I went round there and fell off most mornings.
But I remember—a bit like Black Caviar recently—they had this horse called Lord, and they almost parted, and everyone: “That’s Lord, that’s Lord” And it’s, you know, it’s almost like “Make room for Lord”, like Black Caviar.
Andrew: Because Lord was famous for he loved Caulfield. Was it Sandown? It was Caulfield where he was having most of his wins.ii
Colin: Nearly every one. Some phenomenal amount of wins. The Memsie [Stakes] he won it three times in a row, then he ran third at his fourth try, then he ran second in his fifth try and I think on the fourth one, Hilton won it with 15:00.00 a horse called Future, so he won four in a row here, and Lord competed in five Memsie [Stakes], which is unbelievable really.iii
Andrew: So when you start to build up that mystique then the public want to come and see, can you do it again. Like Black Caviar.
Colin: Exactly. And he won something like 20-odd races at Caulfield. He was always favourite for the Caulfield Cup but his owner wanted to run him in weight-for-age races so he wasn’t handicapped with enormous weights. So he was always favourite [for Caulfield Cups] but never ran, they scratched him.
Andrew: So you would have gone to school in Caulfield. Which school did you go to?
Colin: St Anthony’s.iv
Andrew: So that was walking distance?
Colin: Bike. Yes.
Andrew: My wife grew up in Ormond, so she went to Gardenvale Central and Caulfield South, so I’m familiar from all her stories: it was the days when you could explore 16:00.00 the world on a bike.
Colin: Most certainly, yeah. So I went to CBC in St Kilda, or in Dandenong Road, later on, and everyone biked down there then, just normal.v
Andrew: And there would have been a bit of interest in the horses in your school, wouldn’t there?
Colin: A little but, yeah—the Brothers were always interested. I think they liked a bet.
Andrew: They wanted a bit of inside information.
Colin: Yeah, and there was the sweep on the Melbourne Cup, of course… so just to finish that story, so I jumped years and years and years later. Things were not too good in the racing industry in the [19]80s, and Brian Ralph had been the foreman for Ken Hilton and he became the in-house trainer and kept the major client, who was Sir Maurice Nathan (and referred to 17.00.00 as ‘S’Maurice’), and he became a pretty good trainer. But things were not going too well, and he invited me in to share Ken Hilton’s stables, that were now Brian Ralph’s stables, and so I couldn’t get in there quick enough because it was half the rent, less boxes—I was paying up to twenty—and he gave me ten boxes, so anyway I wasn’t there that long when Brian had actually gone bankrupt, and he took a job down at Epsom with Johnny Hawkes, and so I became in-house with the stable. And Rod Fitzroy helped me a bit with the committee and I was able to get that stable 18:00.00, which was the real jewel in the crown at Caulfield as a racing stable—with twenty yards, all under hundred-year-old trees, quite magnificent.
Andrew: With a most extraordinary history, that place.
Colin: Exactly, but a terribly, terribly rundown house.
Andrew: So by the time you got it—I read somewhere—you and your wife did a lot of renovations and stuff there.
Colin: We didn’t want the house but they said, no, you’re paying up for the house, it comes with the stable. And quite honestly it was falling down, a couple of rooms the ceiling had collapsed and was sitting on the architraves of the door. Really bad. All the carpets—the flat roof had leaked, the tower—so all the carpet was all rotten, holey; the walls, you know, all that lath and plaster had come away and there was just the 19:00.00 timber in the walls.
Andrew: But legally it belonged to the VATC, didn’t it?
Colin: Yes, but they lived through a period where Wally Cockram was in charge and they wouldn’t spend a penny on any of their properties.vi He was not a very well-liked man, Wally Cockram, you know. Ran a business on a shoestring, and when he became—I don’t even think he was Chairman—but he had all the say at Caulfield…
Andrew: The power behind the throne.
Colin: Exactly. And you couldn’t spend any money, so I said to my wife, ‘Look, we’ve been lucky enough to get the stable but unfortunately we have the house, so we can’t just not live in it and pay rent on it’.vii So we had to rent our house in Malvern and live in Lord Lodge. And she—we were there for a while—and she conceived the idea of spending a lot of time and money doing it up 20:00.00, with the idea of turning into a little Bed and Breakfast, and it was quite successful.
Andrew: So you did do that.
Colin: She did that on her own, it had absolutely nothing to do with me, and she did it all on her own and eventually she got a chap called Robert Hunter on board, of the [VATC] Committee, and he started to spend a bit of money on it and help us out. So the stables were renovated. I did a fair bit of that because I had a—subsequent to being a failed jockey I went into the building game and became a carpenter, a chippy.
Andrew: It was at the early stages of your career, was it?
Colin: Yeah, Eighteen, sixteen, eighteen, something; so I spent three or four years in the building industry and then decided…
Andrew: So it wasn’t wasted.
Colin: No, no. Anyway 21:00.00, but of course—just jump to where I was alluding to earlier—it had been called Hilton’s joint and then it was Ralphy’s joint and it was in danger of being Little’s joint. And Jacqui wanted to give it a better name when it became a Bed and Breakfast. So, I was thinking about it, what will we call this? And I was just thinking like I’m only fourteen or something and I’m thinking about this horse and, that’s right, it was this horse called Lord. And it became Lord Lodge. And that’s where the mail goes now, Lord Lodge.
Andrew: It’s a very good marketing label, isn’t it?
Colin: Yes, but terribly appropriate.
Andrew It’s fantastic 21:51.61 [gives background to his interest in racing history] Resume at 25:25.93 So cutting my long story short: Lord Lodge is of course: Leslie Macdonald who had Hugh Munro as his trainer, he had that house in the period when Wakeful was racing. Wakeful would have actually have been in those stables. And she was the Black Caviar of her day. And I think—they’d won the Melbourne Cup with Revenue 26:00.00 in 1901 but he wasn’t training from Caulfield at that stage. They had been at Geelong at St Albans Stud, the one Guy Raymond [later] had. That was sold up…
Colin: That’s where they hid Phar Lap?
Andrew: Yes, that’s right. In 1900 that property was sold and Macdonald moved down to Mordialloc for a couple of years, and then they took the house in Booran Road. So Revenue, I can’t remember if he was still racing: he wasn’t trained from there, but Wakeful definitely would have in the later part of her career, she was trained down at your stables.
Colin: Ok. Yeah, they’ve been there, a lot of good horses through there, been there a long time. Robert Hunter paid for a good carpenter 27:00.00 that renovated the stables even to the extent of all the fascia, I think it’s called, underneath the gutters, was all scribed with stars and everything, the bloke did it all by hand, he duplicated it and some of the doors were falling apart, but there was a fellow called Jack Hayes, quite a good trainer, trained a horse called Show And Tell, I think, a very good filly. He was in one of those side streets, Payne Street maybe, and they were demolishing the stables, so I went round there and grabbed the doors, the solid doors, with a horse float on the back of the car, and we introduced those. So the doors are not original but they are the same era.
Andrew: Good to know where they came from. So you when you’re starting training there, there’s still quite a lot of trainers who have still got properties—you backed onto the racecourse, but a lot of other stables were 28:00.00 had to get across the road…
Colin: Including my father’s, yeah. I started off with six boxes, like most. I would have been one of four or something amazing that had a little timber stables out the back of most houses.
Anne: Looking at the old maps, yes here they are.
Colin: And sort of source of income, I suppose, there was, you know they seem to be no problem, bigger blocks—but then people built next door, bought next door, and immediately started complaining about the flies and the smell. Immediately. They were there when they bought the place, but gradually Melbourne Racing Club started to come and build stables on course.viii And it was inevitable, you know, we were walking round the streets, 4 o’clock in the morning, cars went whizzing around, more and more traffic; so I have a memory of working for a cousin: the stables were 29:00.00 in Manchester Road (just near the supermarket) and jump on a horse and walk down North Road to St Kilda beach, just walk down the road, down North Road—there was no kerb and guttering, you’d just walk down the road.
Andrew: Used to be a sort of one lane road with dirt sides to it.
Colin: Yeah, I was fourteen or something, just walked all the way down to the beach at St Kilda and take the horse in for a swim.
Anne: The avenue of trees, the avenue of honour was still there?
Colin: Ah, look, you know, I was thirteen or fourteen, I don’t know. But I always remember, you know, bloody long road down there, not so many cars as there is today, of course, but still, you know, it’s amazing, used to walk all the way down from Caulfield to St Kilda Beach down North Road.
Andrew: And you realise the distances they covered on horseback: that’s one of the other things that staggers me: the lengths that people 30:00.00 would go to a race meeting before there were trains or, you know, they’d just ride.
Colin: That’s true. There were stables the other side of the railway line at Caulfield—the other side of the railway line—so you’d have to wait for the trains, the gates to open and the train to go to get through. I don’ know if there were trains at 4 o’clock in the morning, I never worked that side, but they had to cross the railway line. Which is amazing.
Andrew: The famous pot-shot at Phar Lap, wasn’t it, walking down Manchester or one of those roads?ix
Colin: Hidden in an alley, or something.
Andrew: So: in a way you can’t actually tell me the very first time you walked onto Caulfield because it’s really too early to remember, but maybe it was that when you first went to ride that pony.
Colin: That’d be right. I’d be pretty young.
Andrew: Did your dad 31.00.00 take you to race meetings there?
Colin: My dad had a job in the jockeys’ room, he was what he called the jockeys’ nurse-boy or valet, so he had a position there where the jockeys would walk in, he would allocate—they’d already know their locker number if you’re a well-known jockey. He would take their money and put it in a locker and look after it. He loved his job and he always had extra tights that the jockeys wore and if they were short of lead, my father had spare lead. He loved the job. Yeah. And so I would go across to the races occasionally and walk into the jockeys’ room, as we could, meet some of the..
Andrew: Big names, the heroes of the day…
Colin: George Moore, yeah, when they were down here. 32:00.00That was the highlight of my life to talk to George Moore.
Andrew: And did your dad, was he the sort of person who’d talk about his early life and his early experiences?
Colin: Not really. Not really. Somehow I know that he rode in Calcutta and that was amazingly where the money was, because Maharajah would give you a job, guaranteed salary. And there’s a couple of photos floating round of the big table, silver everywhere and the jockeys sitting there in three-piece suits. It’d be pretty warm, but they had three-piece suits. There were all these jockeys.
Anne: So you’ve got photos?
Colin: Yeah, somewhere, I think so. Well they certainly had them at Lord Lodge so hopefully. Lost a lot of books when I moved. A lot of books. Anyway, 33:00.00 he had a bad fall on his head, I think, in Calcutta.x He had a big indentation in the side of his head, and that’d be a bit scary with a brain surgery in Calcutta in those days. But I only’d known him as retired, he’d just retired and became just messing round in the garden when I knew him, apart (from his) every Saturday job at Caulfield and Flemington and he took a position at Warrnambool. He didn’t do many country meetings.
Andrew: Were there others in your family? Brothers, sisters?
Colin: Only child.
Andrew: You were the only one. So he—I mean, the Viceroy’s Cup was the big deal in Calcutta, there were Melbourne Cup runners who ran in Viceroy’s Cups, a lot of Australian horses would go over there. It was quite a big 34:00.00 magnet, just part of the British Empire. And as you say, there was big money there…
Colin: Don’t ask who they were, but looking around there’s names of the jockeys sitting around on the table, big glasses, but there’s quite a few well-known famous jockeys.
Andrew: And also sometimes the ones in trouble with the stewards would decide to spend a bit of time there. Rae ‘Togo’ Johnstone left Australia under a cloud and went to India.
Colin: If the Maharajah wanted him, it was not a problem.
Andrew: It was less of a problem! And then you could springboard to Europe because some of the English trainers would come out there and they’d spot the jockeys and so on. And is this a multi-generational thing in your father’s (family) further back, 35:00.00 were there family stories?
Colin: Not really. No, a bit. Occasionally the relations, but none of them were interested in racing, not remotely. My mum came from a racing background, she was a Bird. Harrie Bird trained in Manchester Avenue. He’d be in the [Caulfield Racecourse history] bookxi, I’d imagine. She was a Bird. But she was never involved working in the industry.xii
Andrew: She didn’t—I was saying to Anne—the Caulfield Racecourse would have generated a lot of part-time work for people coming in to work on race days, there’d be quite a lot of old jocks and people like that.
Colin: Sure, yeah, I don’t remember anything, nothing comes to mind about any names. Certainly most 36:00.00 either failed jockeys or failed trainers became trackwork riders or strappers or foremen, it seemed to be that if you were in the racing game you stayed in it. There were a lot of avenues for work.
Andrew: So when you were looking to starting out as a trainer, that’s quite a big step because your Dad’s not really training horses, so you’re deciding you’re going to become a trainer.
Colin: Yeah. I was in the building industry till I was about twenty-one and then decided I would train a racehorse. Probably didn’t have a licence, training under someone else’s name but it was no problem to get up at 3.30, train the racehorse, go to work—I was in the building industry then, and I’d always be late 37:00.00, 7.30 start—and then run home and take the horse for walk and finish at 6 o’clock, go to bed, get up at 3.30 tomorrow morning, not a problem: just loved it.
Andrew: What made you think that you could train a horse to be as fast as possible?
Colin: Well, I’d had a little bit of a background as an apprentice jockey, and then I continued to ride work as a lot of people did, just to earn some money and ride work, and I did that basically until I decided to train my own horse.
Andrew: And that was only at Caulfield, or did you ride trackwork anywhere else?
Colin: Only at Caulfield because I lived just round the corner. But then one became two, and I’d finished the apprenticeship fully qualified, and I had zero business acumen. Zero. I just thought if I got a licence, put a shingle on the front steps 38:00.00, people would flock to me, give me their horses. Four years later I’ve still got two horses. So I went in desperation to New Zealand, and I thought I’ll have a really good crack at this and I’ll go to New Zealand and beg, borrow or steal some horses to train, but couldn’t buy any, and I came back with a couple of horses, two or three horses from New Zealand, might’ve leased one or two—I don’t know, I forget now—and badgered some people to take a share. And they did. And those horses were no good. But those clients that I’d badgered into taking a share , they stayed around. So the next time I had a bit of a dip, we had a bit of luck with some horses, and it just grew from there.
Anne: So it was the building of the relationships that brought more success.
Colin: That’s right. Then 39:00.00 training behind Mum and Dad’s house, there was a stable came available, I call them Pentridge: Besser-brick stables at Caulfield. And I took one of those, with three, four or five horses. Twenty-horse stable. And trained there for a while. But I ran into this chap in a card game, actually. His name was Rod Fitzroy. And we were playing cards. And Jack Godby had been quite a successful trainer, and he trained where Angus [Armanasco later] trained right next door to me.xiii And he was my mentor, even as a proprietor of the squash courts. He retired, built what is now the supermarket in Glenhuntly Road. He built squash courts with a mezzanine floor of about 40:00.00 ten or fifteen full-size billiard tables. Full size, amazing. All up there. Did it all himself. And he retired and ran that, and that’s where the card game was. And I’d ridden a bit of trackwork for him, when he retired. I remember Bobby Scarlett was his apprentice, his champion apprentice. Anyway, one thing led to another and I ran into Rod. I’d bought a horse for nothing, a couple of hundred dollars, got him going and suggested to Rod he should buy this horse. He was a young real estate man with flash car, so he did, and we set it up. There’s a bit of a story. There was a fellow called Felipe Ysmael. He was a big, big punter. And one of the blokes that were brought 41:00.00 into the ownership of the horse worked for a bloke that had a concrete-cutting business, but his side, he was a commission agent, and he put the money on for Felipe Ysmael, who was spending hundreds of thousands. And we took this [horse] to Yarra Glen on a Saturday: where you could probably get $500 on the horse, but the commission agent rang up in Felipe Ysmael’s name and said he’d like $5000. You couldn’t possibly get it on (otherwise), and if you did it would be odds-on, but the bookie just…. [Coffee order]. 41:51.00 Running off at a tangent here, but I think it’s pretty interesting…
Andrew: Gets me into how you got involved with Rod.
Colin: Yeah, so it won and we got 42:00.00 a fair bit of money because the odds weren’t shortened with the amount of money. The figures I’m using I’m just pulling out of my head, but it was a substantial amount of money and impossible to get it on at Yarra Glen on a Saturday. So we won a bit of money, and Rod became a close friend, obviously, probably my best friend, and a mentor my whole life.
Andrew: And in a way he’s got the lucky touch. There’s something about Rod. He’s a success-oriented person. I worked closely with him, particularly when he was (VRC) Chairmanxiv and it was terrific because he loved the history and he wanted the history to be properly recorded and properly documented. And I pride myself on really doing the research. So people’s memories are all very well and 43:00.00 and you read stuff in the paper, and you know what journalists are like. I like to work out what really happened. Now I know in racing that you never know, but I used to joke that at the end of every race there’d be already seven different stories about why your horse got beat: the jockey’s story, the trainer’s story, the owner’s, and the horse won’t tell you.
Colin: Look it’s probably not relevant, but I like the story. So Rod’s there, and I was still starving, and I used to play a bit of squash, and I played squash with this fellow called Noel Stewart and he said to me, ‘My sister has inherited a young horse, maybe yearling, maybe little bit older, and the mother, the broodmare.’ She was a nurse in a dental practice, 44:00.00 and she finished up marrying—bitter divorce—but she married the principal dentist and a bit excommunicated from her family. Anyway, the dentist was badly injured and became paraplegic and didn’t know who she was. Her name was Joan Hearman. Anyway I was introduced to Joan, and she’s got this yearling and the broodmare. And I thought the yearling was a smashing yearling. ‘And what shall I do with it?’ Well, I think you should put it into work, with me! And so, it’s a lovely story, because she was hundred percent devoted to her husband, in the sense that every minute of the day where she wasn’t now working for the person who had bought the practice, and she’d go and cut Cecil’s toenails 45:00.00 and trim his hair, all day Saturday. He didn’t know who she was… He was injured in a car accident. Didn’t know who she was. She just devoted her whole life. So eventually this horse is in on Saturday, maybe its first run in a race, and in town. And she used to come round on the Sunday and look at her horse, and I said, ‘I’ll see you on Saturday’. And she said, ‘I couldn’t come Saturday, I’ve got to go and see Cecil.’ And I said, ‘Well, give him a miss’. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that. What if he died that day, and I wasn’t there?’ Anyhow we broke that spell, we got her away and she went to the races, the horse won, and she had the time of her life. The next foal comes around 46:00.00 and it’s a cracking yearling, but she’s struggling with the fees and doesn’t want to be paying up for the whole horse—I think her brother was helping her out with the original one—so I’d met this bloke called Rod Fitzroy and I suggested he should take a share in this horse. So Rod’s young and Joan is getting on a bit, matronly lady, but still devoted to Cecil. Well that horse is a horse named Testimony and he won 13 in town.xv
Andrew: That was your big break, Testimony.
Colin: Yeah. But, more importantly, Rod took Joan everywhere–they were always out Saturday night celebrating, he won 13 times in the city, so Rod: ‘Ah, come on, we’re out to dinner’, so she was reintroduced to society, life. She was a powerbroker at Flemington with Hilda Oldfield, Fred’s wife, and she might have had a lot to do with Rod getting on the [VRC] Committee, 47:00.00 because she was a bit of a powerbroker behind the scenes.
Andrew: He’d be a good person to have there.
Colin: Yes, and anyway she had for the remainder of her life she had a great time because Rod Fitzroy was taking her out everywhere, had a great time.
Andrew: So it would have been through Rod that Graeme Sampieri was part of one your horses, wasn’t it?xvi
Colin: Vassilator, yeah. I met Graham at one of the many card games. Graeme Sampieri was on a different level of card game to me! (Laugh). Lovely bloke, Graeme. Lovely, lovely man, lovely fellow. So, yeah, I used to go, if I wanted a bet, used to go to Graeme and he became the bookmaker of choice, as he was to a lot of people. It’s a good story, I don’t know if it’s relevant.
Andrew: It is relevant, 47:00.00 it’s to do really with this mystique of how somebody gets a foot in the door and then they can have the luck, or not have the luck, but they’ve got to ? persistence, they’ve got to have a bit of self-belief , and suddenly you end up being a trainer that people take notice of. There’s been some really big highs in your career. Not many trainers have won a Cox Plate, have they?
Colin: No, I’ve had some good times. A lot of times, you know, when I think back, of nothing, just nothing and, you know, all of a sudden you win a Sydney Cup or a BMW or something—and then it goes to sleep again for another three years.
Andrew: Back in the news again. So: when they pulled the plug at Caulfield on training, I understand that was done with very little notice, that you didn’t know what was coming much.
Colin: Yeah, look, it’s a bit of 49:00.00 a bad taste, there was [local MLA, David] Southwick was agitating for the closure of Caulfield, he was saying there were 15 MCGs in the middle of Caulfield going to waste—seems a bit of an exaggeration—and Jake Norton used to get the track occasionally. But I read this article [coffee interruptions] where… Southwick was agitating for closure of Caulfield, and Jake Norton turned up at the track, and I said to him, Look, when the committee were criticised a couple of weeks ago, Jake Norton was on the front page of the Age defending this decision that the committee had made, nothing to do with closure of Caulfield but, whatever, and I said, ‘Well I read all the time this Southwick is agitating for the closure of Caulfield and I don’t hear anything 50:00.00 from Caulfield, I don’t hear any negative argument against that.’ And he’d said, ‘Oh, they’ve got no say. The Council have got no say.’ He looked me straight in the eyes and four days later they called us all together into the office and said, ‘You’re out. You’re out.’ So he just lied. Just lied to me. Straight in the eye. Looked me straight in the eye and lied. Anyway, it was a done deal. There was no argument.
And I agitated for Caulfield training to be moved to Sandown. So we’d spoken to Sandown about it, and fantastic facilities. For $20 million you could duplicate Newmarket [UK]. Fantastic. But they said, no, that’s not going to happen. Why not? You know, it’s already there. Why not? We’d just move down the road. They had ideas of selling Sandown way back then. 51:00.00
Andrew: Because the point is that they own Sandown, they don’t own Caulfield. That’s always been the fly in the ointment, hasn’t it? And I’m an old fashioned romantic and I’ve always thought there’s a lot to be said for having big open spaces in a big city. That’s why I helped Anne in their [Glen Eira Historical Society’s] campaign [to have Caulfield Racecourse included in the Victorian Heritage Register] because you could see that there were these ideas that things should be built in the middle of Caulfield. Well, why? Why not have the open spaces where people can… When you take the training away from it, it’s like taking half the life away from the racecourse, isn’t it?
Colin: Well I think so, yeah. And I think the residents liked it. There was a lot of negative sentiments when they were off course, but once the horses were on course, I think the residents liked it, I really do. 52:00.00
Andrew: And it was a bit of a cachet for the area, and Caulfield has a reputation around Australia because it’s a place. So—you obviously really loved being out there, riding on that track…
Colin: Yeah, it was my whole life, I mean I spent 50 years there. I’m 75 and longer, I probably trained for 50 years, I don’t really know when I started, some time in my twenties. So, yeah, 50 years there and enjoyed it immensely. Soon as they kicked us out they gave us five years, which was good, and monetary compensation. And then they came to us after about three years and said , ‘We’d like to get you out now, we’ll pay 53:00.00 you extra to go.’ And that eventually happened.
Andrew: Is the house on the Heritage Register? Lord Lodge?
Anne: Yes, it is. The house and the stables.
Colin: And I think even the trees out the front.
Anne: Yes, the Moreton Bay figs.
Andrew: And on looking at the file on that, I think there’s a bit more history that could be added to that file, because it mentioned that Scobie Breasley was apprenticed to Pat Quinlan when he had those stables in the thirties. Pat Quinlan is a really interesting historical character, he used to be an athletics champion, a cycling champion.
Colin: Yes, there’s a little photo there, Scobie came round and signed a little photograph that someone had produced, it’s a really bad signature, a bit like charcoal. 54:00.00 There is a fine photograph. A lot of jockeys have come past and sort of: ‘That was my room over there’.
Andrew: And I think it was originally built by the Leek family, so Leeks have been at Caulfield since God was a boy, I think.
Colin: So Alan Burton was there, famous jockey. I might be talking out of school here, but Alan Burton came round, he was walking in the stable, he said, ‘Oh, I remember this box down here in the corner of the stables, down the corner—that’s where Mr Hilton used to make love to the strappers.’ [Laughs]. Might be not appropriate to put it in the book!
Anne: This is the reality of it. 55:00.00
Andrew: So you had some characters that you had to work with, but you—I have to say, Colin—you always had a kind of gentlemanly reputation, but there were a few rough diamonds around Caulfield in your day…
Colin: Yes.
Andrew: … Geoff Murphy. And so…
Colin: I had a phone call once, talking about rough diamonds. One of the strappers that worked at Lord Lodge, saying—about my age, so I don’t think I’d be training, I’d just be riding work there—and he said, ‘Come to Broome’. Where in the hell’s Broome? He said, ‘Come up here, it’s a magnificent part of the world’. And he invented the camels on Broome. So he was a knockabout strapper at the now Lord Lodge. He rode his bike from Perth to Broome. Smoked a lot of marijuana. Took him a year or two. But he invented the camels, 56:00.00 and now they’re renowned.
Andrew: When you were training there, did you have apprentices indentured to you?
Colin: No. Look, there were one or two that never looked like making it. Never felt all that comfortable with it as a trainer. Never felt successful early on, and I just wanted the best jockey. And if you’ve got an apprentice you’ve got to put them on. I didn’t want that negative…
Andrew: You didn’t have to run a hostel, you didn’t have apprentices or people living in…
Colin: Didn’t do it, because I was too greedy, and I just wanted the best jockey on my horse all the time. I didn’t want to have an apprentice and not support him.
Andrew: Because there were some trainers who would make almost 57:00.00 or make a bit of a sideline.
Colin: Yes it would be in the book [Rod Nicholson, Heroes of the Heath]—Frank King, notorious, probably not the right word, for successful apprentices. Quite a few. And I have a friend who’s now in Brisbane, and he talks about the time at Mentone where maybe a fellow called Billy Warke trained down there, and they had four apprentices and Mum would look after, feed, wash, clothe four kids. That was the go, and they’d [the apprentices] get nothing per week but they’d get their board and became your apprentices. Quite a few would be successful and eventually earn some money. But a lot of work for Mum!
Anne: … and not a formal partner.
Colin: No, And their own kids. Virtually look after apprentices like their children. 58:02.35
Andrew: [story about his Mum’s horse trained by Pat Burke at Flemington] 58:43.17: Living around Caulfield, would there be jockeys who lived in the neighbourhood and you’d regard them as Caulfield jockeys?
Colin: Not sure about that. What I have, a vivid memory 59:00.00: so I’m living with Mum and Dad and I want to be a racehorse apprentice and so the stables before—‘Pentridge’—
Anne: What is ‘Pentridge’?
Colin: Well, it’s a grey Besser-brick stables.
Anne: Well what was their official name?
Colin: I don’t know, there’s probably a plaque out the front.
Anne: Are they on Booran Road?
Colin: Yeah, nearly, next door to me.
Anne: Right. Western stables?
Colin: They’d be north of me. So between the red brick original stables.
Anne: Community stables?
Colin: Yeah. Next one is…
Anne: Booran Lodge stables.
Colin: Yes, it’s grey Besser-brick. No charm. 1:00:00 Next one is my magnificent stables where all the horses are out in yards, fresh air, sunshine, trees. Hot day, with the trees over the top. But it’s just bizarre, so the powers-that-be which would be the VRC deemed that the apprentice had to live with the master, because he’d be trained by the master, so at Caulfield stables there was just of strip of beds. And I had to leave home and live in there with drunks, they were all alcoholics, 50-year-old broken down blokes, they’d be smoking all night, they’d be drunk, they’d be snoring all night, you had to go and live with them. Now the trainer was probably living in Toorak or somewhere, but it was deemed that you had to live at the stables. Just bizarre. They’re pulled away from Mum and Dad, living in this ‘better’ environment sleeping next to this drunk.
Andrew: It’s like an ordeal. If you can somehow…
Colin: But they just—no, they just thought, oh he’s got to live with the trainer. They never went and: ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Oh, I live in Malvern,’ or something, and these kids are living next to these derelicts, probably drugs, wasn’t a lot of drugs in my day.
Anne: But asking for trouble.
Colin: Alcohol, drugs. Five beds in a row, with three of them’d be alcoholics except there’d be kids there. Just unbelievable.
Andrew: Technically, who were you indentured to?
Colin: Originally a fellow called Rod Turvey, who was one of the first blokes to go Hong Kong, and he went to Hong Kong very early. And then when Rod left I was indentured to a chap called Richard Alsop and he’d married one of the Grant Hays. 1:02.00
Andrew: Yes, he was married to Lady Clarke’s sister.
Colin: That’d be right. Yes. And then, not sure what happened there, but very famous jockey came down to Melbourne and started training, Arthur Ward. Not many people—Johnny Tapp interviewed me and he said, ‘That can’t be right, Arthur Ward didn’t train in Melbourne’ and I said, ‘That’s where he started his training.’ ‘That can’t be right’. ‘So I’m telling you, it was.’xvii His first client was S’Maurice [Nathan]. And I was apprenticed there and had my first ride in a race out of that stable. So in those days: no qualifications to ride in a race except you had to ride one out in the straight in a track gallop. Now they have to have a hundred trials, roughly. They can have ten trials a day so 1:03.00 get over it pretty quickly. No trials in those days. So: hardly been in the barriers, but anyway get to ride your first horse at Caulfield, your first ride in a race. So I’d been to the baths the night before to sweat so I could claim the seven pound that apprentices did, could only claim five pounds, and I’d never ever been in any jockey’s gear. In those days you used to ride with the RM Williams track boots with the big Cuban heels, they had the instep where the stirrups went into the instep. Different story on race day, you’ve got these tiny little flat soled leather shoes. So I’m in the barriers, gave it a kick to get out of the barriers, kicked my feet straight out of the irons. So I went down the Queen’s Road side like Hopalong Cassidy with my feet almost on the ground. First ride in a race! 1:04.00
Andrew: Do you remember the horse’s name?
Colin: No. I was trying to put it behind me, forget it.
Anne: A question about the apprentices’ school that used to run out of Caulfield.
Colin: Apprentices’ school in the glass house. Yes, it was pretty good.
Anne: You went along?
Colin: Ah yeah, every apprentice, and I think they enjoyed it. A little bit of education, they were quite good. The stewards would turn up and take the class and everyone was happy to be there.
Anne: So how often during the week?
Colin: I forget. I’m thinking once a week, that might be an exaggeration. Not sure. But everyone at Caulfield, and they’d also come from—not sure Mentone or Epsom, probably Epsom—and they’d get a bus down, they’d put a bus on and they’d come down. They were quite good, 1:05.00 it wasn’t absolutely regimented. One thing that comes to mind, one of the stewards said, ‘Now we’ve finished all our lessons, and—you know, we’d take this in a jovial manner—but if you’re on a 100 to one chance and you had George Moore or someone on your inside and you’re offered $100 just to move out of the way because you had no chance: what would you think? What would your reply be?’ And the kids woke up. ‘I’d be hanging on like mad, sir.’ [Laughs] No, cause they were stewards, you were little kids, but you had the smarts to know, I’ll listen to Joe.
Anne: And you mentioned the glass house. So where was that on the course?
Colin: It still was there. Probably not there now. A little circular thing. 1.06:00 Next to the Tabaret.
Andrew: In the grandstand area near the stables?
Colin: I think it was called the glass house.
Andrew: On days when you’re galloping you’d take your horses out on the track and so on, just take us through what you’d be doing on a normal trackwork day when you were going out there in the morning. Who you’d been talking to. You’d obviously had to arrange riders, track riders and so on for your horses.
Colin: That’s true. So riders were—a lot of riders were self-employed —and they would do a circuit, so 1:07.00 if you weren’t riding your own horse or didn’t have your apprentice, which is most of the cases, you would sit there with your horse in your hand and this bloke would go round: ‘Oh, you’re third in line’ so he would eventually come to you, jump on your horse, and then he would disappear somewhere else, another horse. He’d do a lap. So you might be waiting an hour and a half for your horse to get worked, and waiting there wasting time. And they sort of controlled, the riders sort of controlled it a bit, and I think, you know, five-something, £5 comes to mind, and that might be at the end of the week.
Andrew: Would that be paid cash?
Colin: Most certainly. Always cash. So they’d be on the dole. Not a lot of them had another job, most of them on the dole. You know, cash. Christ knows what happened when they fell off 1:08.00 and broke a leg without any Workers’ Comp or anything. So everyone just rolled around, moved around those sort of problems.
Andrew: So when you were out there before dark: how dark’s dark?
Colin: It depends. It’s 5, half past 4 in the summer, but it’s 7.30 in winter. But they’d all just be lined up in the stalls waiting for your particular rider, he’d tell your? when he was ready. Bizarre. So when the Freedmans came to Caulfield they changed that, and they went to a jockey, said, ‘Here’s x amount of money per week. Stay here. Ride for me.’xviii And they revolutionised the place. It was fantastic. Then you had employed full time your own jockey and much more economical, got your horses worked one after another instead of waiting around for ever 1:09.00 for the jockey to get to you. The Freedmans turned that around. As soon as they came to Caulfield, they pinched the best riders. They’d say, ‘That one. That one. Best riders. Come down to us.’ They changed it.
Andrew: So in the Michelle Payne moviexix we have Michelle hanging around outside the door hoping to get a ride, trackwork and so on.
Colin: There’s a bit of poetic licence. Michelle came to Caulfield, everyone recognised her—not outstanding ability but dedication—she walked tracks to death before most people were thinking about it. She even walked as the horses went down the straight, she’d be at the mile and she would follow the footsteps down before they filled them in. She was that dedicated. She would follow a race 1:10.00 before they were renovated; and we put her on quite a bit. And she knew every inch of where she’d been on a racetrack before her time. But I think Paddy started it off. Everyone though? she was OK, but admired her dedication.
So when the Ride Like A Girl was coming along, the producer, whose name… trying to think of the name. She came to Caulfield in the trainers’ shed one day, and she said—Rachel Griffiths I think is the name—and she said, ‘Who’s the best jockey?’ And I said, ‘D. Oliver’.
‘Michelle Payne’s the best jockey, she’s won the Melbourne Cup!’ And I said, 1.11.00 ‘No. no, D. Oliver’s the best jockey’. This is verbatim: ‘You’re so fucking sexist, you trainers!’ [Laughs]. Verbatim.
Anne: It sounds like Rachel!
Colin: So she was always just considered to be OK.
Andrew: And suddenly in that race [Melbourne Cup 2015] the Red Sea parted… [Andrew’s story of watching Prince of Penzance win while at the Auckland races at Ellerslie]. 1.12:00 – 1.13.00 But for some reason the gods smiled on her that day and Frankie Dettori made a wrong move.
Colin: Yes. It was never up the race before the race or after the race.
Andrew: Won a Moonee Valley Cup [2014, 2nd 2015]. Look, your patience is probably flagging, but I do have to ask you about El Segundo and what sort of a difference that made to your life.
Colin: Well, there’s a bit of history there. I bought a mare in New Zealand for $7000 it seemed a bit of money at the time, and the vendor came to me after the sale and said, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ I said, ‘What I normally do, take them home and try to syndicate it’. And he said, ‘Well, I’ll take half, but never send me a bill.’ So effectively a lease, ok? And that was ok, at least I got rid 1:14.00 of half the horse, so I still had to find people to pay up for it. But anyway, took it back home. Rod had badgered me getting Ian Hickey around, who was HSJ Advertising, and he was doing commercial advertising for Rod’s real estate business. And Rod sent him round, took a lot of photos of Lord Lodge. Magnificent Lord Lodge. All the trees. Walking up and down, and we’ll print all these brochures. Really? The only publicity I think is good for a trainer, isn’t a brochure a waste of time? Anyway, Rod knew a lot more than me, so we produced a thousand brochures and he presented me—Ian Hickey presented me—a bill for about six grand. And I said, ‘Ever owned a racehorse?’ And he said 1:15.00 ‘Yeah, I had a couple with Rodney’. ‘What about this one here: I’ve got half of this horse here for sale’. And by this time it [the horse] was three. Anyway, lovely bloke, and he said. ‘OK, we’ll swap the bill for a share in the racehorse’.
Well it was called Palos Verdes, it won its first, a few weeks later, by six—by six lengths—and eventually held three track records: one, the Mornington Cup track record, the Manion Cup in Sydney, somewhere else, broke the track record. There’s a reason for that, I could never get it going in winter, just couldn’t get it going, and I thought it was a Melbourne-Caulfield Cup chance, but it just didn’t thrive in winter. And eventually the penny dropped, and we sent it to Queensland in July, but it got strangles on the float, 1:16.00 and didn’t race. But once it became hot and summer in January-February, it won the Mornington Cup—40 degrees—broke the track record. All its races were January, February, March, won the [VRC} Bagot, its last run. A very good filly. The Bagot was its last run because it bowed a tendon and didn’t race again in the Bagot. Danny Brereton rode it.
Anyway, she went off to stud in New Zealand and so I couldn’t get to the yearling sales quick enough to buy the first foal, because the first foal had everything you look for in a racehorse: it’s called an owner! [Laugh] Because we had these people who owned the mare, and they were hell-bent on buying the first foal. So I walked up and down, I looked at this horse walking up and down, up and down, up and down—1:17.00 and I hated it! I just couldn’t, you know: I wanted to like it but I couldn’t find anything to like about it. And it was called The Snake, and its first run was in a 2000 metre maiden where it ran last. Not worth a crumpet.
But the next foal was El Segundo. So back there again, First foal, The Snake, was for $20,000 and I paid $140,000 I think for El Segundo, he was a cracking horse, couldn’t buy him quick enough, but it was a lot of money. Don Howell the managing owner and the rest of the people owned half the mare, they still retained half, so they had to find ($)70,(000) so they ran around, found some people that were interested, eventually they sold the shares, and they asked Rod, 1:18.00 and to my worst thing in life, I didn’t talk him out of it but I didn’t talk him into it. He asked me, ‘What about this yearling that I’ve been offered?’ And I said, ‘Well, he’s a bit small but apart from that he’s a cracking horse, and really paid a bit of money for him and I liked him, but, you know, it’s up to you. He’s a yearling. Who knows?’ And he had a few, and he decided not to go into it. You know. Lifetime friend. Almost talked him out of it. Anyway, Rod was there when it won, there was no-one happier in the world than Rod Fitzroy when it won, never mentioned, ever, that he could have been in that horse. Never mentioned it.
Andrew: I remember him talking to me about it, it was like it was my horse.
Colin: Exactly.
Andrew: Colin’s my mate, Colin’s won the Cox Plate [2007].
Colin: Exactly. And there he was when it ran second in the Cox Plate [2006]. There he was commiserating with everyone and 1:19.00 when it won there he is, ‘It’s fantastic.’ He’s not in the horse. That’s the nature of the man.
Andrew: That’s fantastic to know all of that. Do you have any special, close mates, friends amongst the other trainers, or you are a cat who walks by himself?
Colin: No, no, we all got on really well there, unlike Flemington I understand. But we all got on really well, we—you know, if you were looking for a galloping partner you’d just ask the other trainers, they’d supply one if they could. You’d even—which was a bit of a no-no, but—sometimes there’s a bit of a (as they do in England, like Frankel would sit behind another horse in England, and this is the chopping block: and their crucifying this horse, but they do that in England, so Frankel’d sit back there and he’d, tack, tack, and then whizz past to give Frankel confidence and sacrifice, 1:20.00 and this other horse’s just destroyed because he’s beaten every time, but he’s discarded) so sometimes you’d say to another trainer, ‘Can you get a mate, and could I sit back?’ And ‘aaah’. ‘Well ok, but you know, don’t go past me, you know. Come up to me but don’t go past me.’ So we worked together like that all the time. I understand it’s not the case at Flemington, or wasn’t the case at Flemington. But, no, we got on really well.
Andrew: What about people like [Angus] Armanasco, was still going when you were training?
Colin: Yeah, very much so. Very much so. Angus was a little bit aloof, ran his own race. Where everyone was down at the gap, what we called the gap, which is around about the 1800 metre, there was a gap there and a wood fire 1:21.00. That was it, wood fire, standing around warming our hands of a morning and there was a little box in the middle, a little triangular box that was about 2 or 3 metres long by a metre wide, everyone used to huddle in there, Geoff Murphy and two or three other trainers, other ones to stay at the box. But Angus would go up to the other side, the Neerim Road side, and work from there. And he was, you know, he just had some great horses. A little bit aloof, just run his own race. He was a bit above everyone else. No one ever charged the recommended training fee—except Angus. No one was game to. The recommended training fee was a hundred. Well, everyone else eighty, Angus was a hundred. Another level.
Andrew: He’d got to that celebrity status, hadn’t he.
Colin: Yes, he had Stanley Wootton as an owner 1.22.00, and he trained champions.
Andrew: … I work a lot with Joe McGrath and of course the McGraths had The Judge and horses like that
Colin: Yeah. Bletchingly, Biscay and he [Armanasco] is quite amazing, he—I think it’s recognised that he had 27 successful stallions, or became successful stallions, to go through his hands. He retired them really early. Really early, maybe three, maybe a little bit into four-year-olds, that’s enough, including the mares and go to stud and be successful.
Anne: Where he used to live and race was next door to you?
Colin: Exactly, yes.
Anne: And not into Tecoma itself, but…
Colin: No, right next to it. So he lived in Lord Lodge duplication next door…
Anne: Yep, that’s Tecoma.
Colin: Yeah and then he eventually 1.23.00 built right next door on Melbourne Racing Club’s land. He never owned the house, he just built it on there, and I said to him one day, ‘Wouldn’t you buy that block of land on the other side of the road, and then you’ll own it? You’re never going to own this, is that the case?’ He said, ‘Yeah, that’s the case.’ ‘Why don’t you buy there?’ He said: ‘I don’t want to walk across the road.’ That’s what he said.
Andrew: I haven’t quite worked out, haven’t done the titles, at what stage the VATC bought the Lord Lodge property but it was probably in the ‘thirties or ‘forties, pretty early on.
Anne: I’ve got a title.
Andrew: If you’ve got a title, so you’d know.
Anne: And a couple of Royal Historical people did the historical searches, so, formally 1960s but, yeah 1:24.00
Andrew: Well I had definitely read somewhere that Kembell who was Hilton’s trainer—no, vice-versa—that he leased it from the racing club. And then there used to be: Sam Wood, who used to be on the VRC committee, his father [S.O. Wood] was the vet who had, there used to be a big veterinary hospital building that was almost at the extension of Glen Eira Road where it comes onto the racetrack. I think that was demolished when they [the VATC] bought that, but he was racecourse vet at Flemington, Caulfield and places like that. Who was your vet?
Colin: Oh, quite a few. Andy McKinnon [name check: Angus McKinnon OAM of Goulburn Equine Hospital?] comes to mind really early on, 1:25.00 local. Yeah, all vets were trained by Greg Morrison. Greg Morrison was the guru. He went to America, and came back with this idea of vitamin injections, so all vets made fortunes injecting horses with B12, B Complex, and you’d see when they were urinating, that they were urinating it all out! But it was a money spinner for vets and every, the bigger trainers, just pounced on it. But all the vets that finished up at Caulfield: Andy McKinnon, Bill Burns, they all went through Greg Morrison. And then eventually went out on their own.
Anne: So their hospitals, their premises were on course or on land in the vicinity?
Andrew: So if you had a sick horse, you called the vet in.
Colin: The vets had a business where they would 1:26.00 have a round and they would walk into every stable and you’d say, ‘No, nothing today’, and they’d do a U-turn and get in their car and drive down to the next one. They still do it. So they’d be up at 6 of a morning, on the road at half past 6 and the bigger stables they’d be there at, say, 7, and they’d still be working round there at half past 9, and then they may go to another location.
Andrew: I wasn’t sure, because I knew at Randwick where Inglis’s Newmarket [sales complex] was, somebody set up a quite lucrative Randwick Veterinary Practice just next, you’d walk up there.
Colin: Well that eventually happened at Caulfield, I’ll think of his name in a minute, he’s built a little near where McDonald’s is, there’s a veterinary practice and a hospital. Prior to that, they all went down to Werribee and I think even X-rays went down to Werribee, to X-ray a horse. 1:27.00
Andrew: They had all the gear, didn’t they?
Colin: Yeah. And you’d go in there, and they’d take a photo and you’d get a result about three hours later.
Andrew: What about your farriers?
Colin: Yeah. There was at the back of the original—what do we call the red-brick stables?
Anne: Community stables.
Colin: Community, yeah. There was a farrier shed there and I’m not sure if you took a horse down there or they came into you. Think they might have come to you. But it was all steel and, you know, two metres of steel and every shoe was hand-made. Cut it off, get on the forge and shape it up and—you probably took your horse down, it was fitted up. They’d make the shoe up, they’d take a pattern with a bit of 1:28.00 brown paper and then they’d bring the shoes down to the stable and tack them on. I think that’s the way it went. And then eventually shoes were made to size and they’d bring their truck and their forge around and just adjust them slightly, and did them in the stables. But I remember Ernie Shingfield is a farrier is that’s my first farrier, he’d be one of the first there and you’d pay if you won a race. No hope of just paying the farrier. He’d just wait till you won a race and then you’d give him some money! [Laugh] That’s the way it worked.
Anne: That’s not a very secure business financially!
Colin: The way it was. I don’t even know if they sent out a bill. But you paid if you won a race. 1:29.00
Andrew: And there were a couple of… Where did you get your feed from? Feed stores or so on?
Colin: There was a feed store in South Road near Nepean Highway. And you’d just ring them up and they’d deliver your feed once a week. Some of the smarter trainers bought bulk hay direct from the farmer, but you know that was a bit too hard because they wanted cash.
Anne: Your money. [Laugh]
Colin: So the feed merchant, so he waited a bit. But he was a bit harder than the farrier.
Andrew: He wouldn’t leave it too long.
Colin: No. And now if it was really bad, I understand 1:30.00 that if you got to the stage where you’re too much in debt, the feed would arrive but they’d put their hand up, they’re not unloading the feed unless it was paid for.
Andrew: I go back to the guy training Haricot in 1874, and after he wins the Cup he takes the horse to Wagga. And you might think, why Wagga? Well, the Wagga Cup that year was worth more than the Melbourne Cup. So he’s got the same jockey on it, and the horse who’s run third in the Melbourne Cup is a local horse. So Haricot was a front runner, Sam Harding always loved his horses to go out in front. So Haricot’s out the front, The Diver’s coming up on the outside. The two horses come together not far from the finish and suddenly The Diver spins out towards the outside rail. There’s a mounted policeman on a horse 1:31.00 just before the finishing line. The Diver crashes into the mounted policeman. Haricot’s little jockey comes off the horse but he’s got past the winning post…
Colin: Oh, really?
Andrew: So he actually fell from the horse after the winning post, able to weigh in… to retain the race. There’s a protest by another horse who’s finished 12 lengths behind, but he’s ruled out because he’s apparently run inside a post, because the course wasn’t fully fenced. Anyway I reckon [the owner, Andrew] Chirnside’s probably decided—oh, then the horse gets beaten in the Geelong Cup, then he gets beaten in the Sydney Cup—and at stage Chirnside suddenly takes all his horses away from the trainer. And they build big stables down at Point Cook. So Harding’s all of sudden been cut adrift 1:32.00 and the next thing he’s gone to Sydney and about twelve months later he’s insolvent. And all the bills are all Melbourne bills he’s left behind—including the feed. So that was his big moment but it didn’t set him up for life.
Colin: I presume… for a long time there was an agistment farm called Islay Vale at Nagambie, and Bart had all his Melbourne horses there, and my little string were there too. It was run by Andrew Chirnside…
Andrew: Doing a Chirnside family tree is like doing a stud book, I mean it’s complicated, but he would be a descendant of that Andrew Chirnside.
Colin: Drove a ‘Roller’, I know that: not many agistment farm proprietors drove a Roller, but Andrew did.
Andrew: Islay Vale, that’s fine. 1:33.00 So it was two brothers built Werribee Park, one was unmarried and it was Andrew Chirnside who was the progenitor of most of the rest of the Chirnsides. So it’s quite a complicated family tree … I think we probably should call a halt…
Anne: And it’s not as quiet as I had hoped it would be. [RECORDING SHORT BREAK. Conversation moves to recent changes at Caulfield racecourse; comparisons with his visit to racing in Japan]
Colin: [RESUMING] … some of the idea of the Mounting Yard and because ordinary run-of-the-mill meetings 40,000 people.
Anne: More than us?
Colin: Yeah, multiple levels of grandstands. Every single person is looking at the horses in the Mounting Yard, including five tourists. 1:34.00 They cheer the horses to the Mounting Yard, to the barriers, they cheer when they leave the barriers, they cheer. Deathly silence in the straight while they’re all waiting for the result, and as they go past the winning post they scream blue murder.
Anne: [obscured] Oh, the horses wouldn’t be straightened up ready for that.
Colin: Horse can’t hear, I don’t think.
Anne: You think so?
Colin: No, not really. There’s the Mounting Yard [indicates]. There’s 200 around the Mounting Yard when they come back in, with a hundred with their race book trying to get the jockey’s signature. Every race. Every race.
Anne: Every race, every jockey?
Colin: Not sure about that, because there is one that’s a superstar. You know, he just rides the best horse, he doesn’t ride all day, just picks out three or four. But he’s a superstar. 1:35.00 But they’re all, you know—they just revere the horses and the jockeys, and one bloke said to me, through Josh Rodder [MRC Racing and Media Executive 2010–21], at Caulfield, he introduced me to someone in Japan, would take us to the races and so he said, ‘I’ll meet you at the shrine’. So, where in the hell’s this shrine? I’m looking for this big thing [RECORDING SHORT BREAK] I’ll just start this again. I’ve been in Japan last year.
Andrew: And we’re just talking about the difference between Caulfield, Japan.
Colin: So, multi-storey building. Run-of-the-mill day, 40,000 people. Run-of-the-mill day. And they do look down on the horses, everyone looks at the horses in the Mounting Yard, and some of them are up three, four stories, everyone on the ground is looking at the horses, they cheer them 1:36.00 to the start. They cheer them when they leave the barriers. Deathly silence in the straight till they go past the winning post and then they go berserk. And then the Mounting Yard: there’s three or four hundred around the Mounting Yard including a hundred with their race book trying to get the jockey’s signature, hanging over the rails. So Josh Rodder at Caulfield gave me a contact, this bloke will look after us, my son and I, and we rang him: ’I’ll meet you at the shrine’. Where in the hell’s the shrine? So anyway we eventually found this little, tiny little, shrine and it’s got a wishing well down the bottom. Is this the shrine? These people queue up and they’d bow, throw a few yen in, and keep going, and that’s remembering the horses that have passed.
Anne: Who are gone. Yep.
Colin: And they bow, throw a few yen and move on. And 1:37.00 they queue up. Amazing. So you know, they love racing and the racehorse. So maybe they [MRC at Caulfield, by contrast] took this disgraceful [Caulfield] Mounting Yard design from Japan where they ? 40,000 people in, they’ve got to be up there, but, like, it’s a disgrace, where do they go? it’s an absolute disgrace.
Anne:[to Andrew] Have you been over there yet?
Andrew: To Japan?
Anne: No, to Caulfield.
Andrew: I have not been to Caulfield for the races now for… probably even the last time I went was probably before Covid, the last time I went to Caulfield. I hate what they’ve done there.
Colin: Oh, it’s disgraceful. And it’s not only is it so… It’s sunken, as the race stalls are. The stripping sheds we call them are quite good, they’ve done a beautiful job there if they’ve over-clubbed a bit because you’re a little bit too wide, but that’s not a negative but they didn’t need to make them as wide as they were. So again whoever designed them 1:38.00 doesn’t know anything about racehorses, they made them wider than Flemington. Flemington are perfect.
Andrew: Flemington is about right, isn’t it?
Colin: Exactly. These are made another half a metre.
Anne: A lot of land.
Colin: Well, yes, it’s being negative but they didn’t need to make them that wide. But the rest of them are beautiful, except everyone is walking round on grass, and when it rains you’d be walking round on grass. Negative. And they’re subterraneal, and they walk up into this Mounting Yard, but then the general public are looking down on the jockeys’ heads. They’re at least three or four metres above the Mounting Yard. You can only see the jockeys’ heads.
Andrew: So it’s like Moonee Valley except you can’t get down to ground level.
Colin: Much higher than Moonee Valley. Much. Three times higher. And then that level where the punters stand slopes down towards the racetrack, so at the racetrack end of this oblong Mounting Yard, 1:39.00 which goes the opposite way to what you would think: down this end near the racetrack end is much lower and so I said, ‘This is no good.’ So there’s a space down here where they’re only a metre above the ground, and they’ve opened that up for Members to run down and they fit fifty people, so they’re already admitting it’s a mistake, so they get fifty people at a lower level to look at the racetrack. But they only go sswww,? like that because it’s a skinny end. So they’re only looking at ‘em for a couple of seconds and then walking away from you. Just. Two things. It’s a bizarre mistake. And it has zero charm. Zero charm. It looks half finished.
Andrew: And you’re looking at atmosphere at a racecourse, aren’t you? You’re looking at something that’s going to—I mean some ways, something like the Flemington Mounting Yard, people will gather around it. You can be on the same level as the horses. 1:40.00
Colin: Exactly. And Caulfield…
Andrew: You can watch the way they’re moving.
Colin: It’s terrible. I was talking to Tanya Fullarton from Jonathan Munz’s thing [Chairman, Thoroughbred Racehorse Owners’ Association], and they’ve asked them to go back to the original Mounting Yard. [Laugh].
Anne: But she’s? gone. It’s all gone.
Colin: Of course. But they’ll say, ‘Go back. Get them back.’ I don’t think Melbourne Racing Club are going to grant them that wish.
Anne: So, change of CEO?
Colin: Good thing. He’s a property developer. They’re all property developers … You know, I think what you’re getting to originally, like, we’re losing racing. Yeah, they’re all property developers. So they want to develop Sandown.
Anne: I wonder if it’s losing the, you know, community support for racing that’s so evident when you look at the history. Just for the people that go. 1:41.00
Colin: You know, they’re making it harder to enjoy it.
Anne: That’s right. And I think it’s like, I know my kids and that generation, they’re quite divorced from that whole…
Colin: You couldn’t become enamoured with what they have. Looking at the horses quite difficult, and impossible in the Mounting Yard. So, where is the charm?
Andrew: So it’s not just nostalgia. There was a bit of magic about going to the races in the heyday when I was first going there—I’m the same age as you are Colin, so you know, and Caulfield had a kind of coherence to the grandstands. They were all different periods, but there was a sort of sense that there was an architecture at Caulfield that held it altogether.
Anne: An ambience.
Andrew: With the trees…
Colin: .. the betting ring …
Andrew: And the old buildings and so on, I agree, and you could walk out the back and you could 1:42.00 talk to the horses in the raceday stalls. It just had, you know, a bit of ambience and you could…
Colin: It’s amazing in America with, see that Kentucky Derby.
Andrew: I’ve been there once.
Colin: All walk down the straight amongst all the owners, trainers—imagine H and S? here!
And the horses are all amongst these thousand people, at least five hundred people. But that’s got a lot of charm.
Andrew: It has. I had two months. I had a sort of scholarship, fellowship thing to work at a place called the National Sporting Library and Museum in Middleburg, Virginia. It’s about an hour out of Washington DC, and it’s a bit like the countryside, the countryside’s a bit like the Yarra Valley. And it’s horse country. And the horses are looked after there 1:43.00 better than most Americans are, I can tell you. Money is no object, there are some seriously wealthy people around there. So they still do point-to-point steeplechasing. They have the big name up there was Paul Mellon who used to own Mill Reef, and Mill Reef is buried near there. Well, he lived—there’s Middleburg and then there’s Upperville. But actually Middleburg thinks it’s a bit better than Upperville. Paul Mellon’s estate…
Colin: Was aircraft, was it aircraft or something?
Andrew: He was in banking. The Mellon bank. My name’s Lemon, you see, so I was introduced at a function as Andrew Mellon. [Laugh].And they thought I was one of the Mellons, worth knowing. But it was just amazing. I was investigating 1.44.00 steeplechasing, that was what I was there doing. So I was there at Kentucky Derby time so I drove from Virginia to Kentucky to watch the Derby.
Colin: Who won that year?
Andrew: That was won by I’ll Have Another. I think he was by Dynaformer, [No, he was by Flower Alley who stood at Three Chimneys Farm, where Dynaformer also stood. Dynaformer died just days before the running of the 2012 Kentucky Derby] the sire of Americain.
Colin: So I spent six months with Charles Whittingham.xx
Andrew: Did you!
Colin: Yes, in Santa Anita. San’anita as they call it.
Andrew: Santa Anita, California.
Colin: Yeah. Magnificent. Magnificent.
Andrew: Well the horses are so well looked after, aren’t they?
Colin: Yes. Well, I’m not sure if you’re up to training fees, so before—my son’s 34, and it was before he was born when I was there—but he was 100 a day then. Plus Worker’s Comp. Yeah. 1:45.00 So they had three professions: they had a ‘hot walker’, that was his profession walked round in circles. Big fat Negro, big cigar, everyone had a big cigar, and they’d just walk round in circles all morning. Slow motion. They had a groom that looked after the horses and he was a leg expert, he bandaged them up every day. And then you had a track rider. And Charlie had seven female riders, a bit before his time. They called them ‘Charlie’s Angels’. Yeah. Great time. Great time there.
Andrew: That was your American experience.
Colin: Yeah. I was there for six months.
Andrew: … picked up a few clues…
Colin: .He had a horse called Ferdinand.xxi But he [Whittingham] was absolute legend, he was really Bart Cummings and 1:46.00 and Tommy Smith rolled into one, he was something else.
Andrew: And it is a different world. And the steeplechasing world is sort of very old-world, it’s like I felt it was still—I’d read about the Hunt Clubs scene here between the wars and so on, it was a bit like that. So it would be still big individual owners owning, it’s niche stuff, the prize money was nothing. I went to the Maryland Hunt Cup which has been running for 100-plus years, and they run it over post-and-rail fences.
Colin. Really? I don’t know how jumps racing continues in Melbourne. Well I do know. It’s the prizemoney. So when they—when Racing Victoria—does a review on prizemoney, jumping is taken out 1:47.00 of the review. Not allowed to play with the prizemoney in jumping, they take it out of the review. Because Mike Symons: they stopped jumps racing, Mike Symons single-handedly got it back, then he said, ‘And you’ve got to quadruple the prizemoney.’
Anne: To keep it going, basically.
Colin: Yeah, that’s right. And they did. They rolled over. So now they have seven runners and two of them are only put in late so otherwise they’ll cancel the race. And they race for $200,000, and the turnover is $30,000. $40,000, like it’s just, it’s just a drain on the industry because it doesn’t even anywhere near carry its own weight. Everything else has to, like Maiden at Pakenham has to carry its own weight, except jumping. They’ve taken that out of the review.
Andrew: You never trained a jumper? 1:48.00
Colin: Yeah, Rod had a horse a long time ago, it’s by Balmerino, and someone had got to the end of it, someone said it would make a good jumper and that was relayed to Rod and he said, ‘Well, go and get your jumping licence’. ‘I don’t train jumpers.’ ‘Well now you do, go and get one.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t want to’. And he badgered me and I thought, well, this chap has never had a horse with any other trainer. Ever. And here I am pushing him away. So I relented and trained one. I think it won a Cup Day Hurdle, maybe at Caulfield, I know it’s run at Flemington, but maybe Caulfield. So anyway it did win a good Saturday hurdle race 1:49.00 and then a couple of disappointing runs and I was being controlled by the jumping jockeys at that stage, they were telling me what to do. I wasn’t training and they were telling me what to do. And then they said, ‘He’ll make a good [steeple]chaser.’ So went off to Flemington, I didn’t go, had to qualify over some jumps at Flemington. Never made it back. Died. So that was it.
Andrew: The other book that I’ve finished writing that I’m trying to get published at the moment—I’m negotiating—is about Crisp.
Colin: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: And that’s a different story altogether. And it’s an amazing story.
Colin: Although I have a lifetime friend, Philip Read, who said he worked for Des Judd and rode Crisp work.
Andrew: Yep, he probably would have.
Colin: So if you want his number… 1:50.00 [provides details]… He’s got photographs of he and Crisp, and he said he rode it work every morning… and he was to go overseas with the horse. Something happened. He was going to go overseas, and he would go with him, but then they decided to expand his campaign overseas and he’d be there for some time, so his story is he didn’t go then.
Andrew: OK, I am trying to remember the name of guy who went with him, but Tom McGinley rode him in America, he had the one run in America, and then he [Crisp] went to England because the quarantine, they wouldn’t let him come back from America, and so he goes to England. Then Manifold knew Scobie Breasley. And he asked Scobie Breasley if he’d look after the horse in England. Scobie said, ‘I’ve only just started training, You should send him to Fred Winter. And so that’s 1:51.00 how Fred Winter got him. And when they got him they realised that that horse could just jump in a way no other horse could.
Colin: Funnily enough, I saw the famous race on You Tube the other day, it’s top stuff.
Andrew: Doesn’t it make you weep? This is the Grand National of 1973.
Colin: He’s a jump in front at one stage.
Andrew: He’s 20 lengths in front.
Anne: He’s just phenomenal.
Colin: But he was up and down on the one spot at the finish. Three miles or something.
Andrew: Four and a half! Four and half miles. Thirty of the most unbelievable jumps. So I remember I used to be a great admirer of Tommy McGinley who rode him in all his [Australian] steeplechaser. Des Judd’s story’s similar, because Des wouldn’t—Des had trained a couple of hurdlers and he had (this is going back into the 1950s), I think he won an Australian Hurdle 1:52.00 but he had a horse that was killed in a race fall at Caulfield, and it was regarded as the stable pet, and Des’s wife loved this horse. And they actually managed to take the horse back to Des’s, because he was actually training at Caulfield at that stage. And the story is that Mrs Judd brings out the holy water from Lourdes, sprinkles the horse. It didn’t work.
Colin: Yeah, he would have trained, there was a big old wooden stable on the north side of the underpass. I remember a great big old wooden base, it’s just slightly north of the underpass.
Andrew: That’s right, so it was on the course, wasn’t it?
Colin: Yes.
Andrew: So Mrs Judd says 1:53.00—Mary—says, ‘You’ve got to promise me, Des, you’re never going to train another jumper.’
Colin: Fair enough.
Andrew: And he was never going to. But just like your story, he had Crisp as a—trying to get him as a flat racer. He won one race on the flat but he just wasn’t showing his best, and Manifold says to Judd, ‘Try him over the jumps.’ Because he’d got stories from old trainers that you could freshen up a horse, you know, give him a bit of activity. And as soon as they put him over the jumps they realised he was something special. He ran in hurdle races to start with, Ron Hall rode him quite a few of his races. And then Ron was getting—couldn’t get down to the weights and was really past it, and then they started running him in the steeplechases. Tom McGinley rode him. So Tom’s still going , he’s 88 or something. 1:54.00
Colin: Is he really? He was a steward.
Andrew: He was a steward after he retired, yeah. And his son Bruce also. And then Pitman who rode him in England, he’s still going, he’s 82, 83. I had a long phone chat with him. He loves telling the story of How I Got Beat in the Grand National.
Colin: Yeah, well if you’re interested you might be interested in Philip Read, he worked for Judd, he’s got a lot of stories, racing stories….
SESSION ENDS 1:54.10
APPENDIX I
LORD LODGE TIMELINE (previously ‘Moidart’, 30 Booran Road, Caulfield)
1890 House and stables built for trainer John Leek (b.1846), previously training from Kambrook Rd (reference to his splendid and newly-erected house, Sportsman, 3 Sept 1890)
Leek family notes
John Roberts Leek (1846–1926) was reputed to have been a good boxer in his youth in Melbourne and NZ, and was also a billiards champion. (See 2024 interview with John Leek jr).
1896 John Leek’s house and stables are in Queens Ave, Caulfield (birth of child there noted).His eldest son Norman became a jockey 1896, won the Caulfield Cup 1898 on Hymettus, trained at Caulfield by Phil Heywood. Norman Leek was later a Caulfield trainer. Other Leek sons, Gordon and Harry (‘Horrie’), also trained at Caulfield in neighbouring stables.
1898 John Leek’s second son Leslie Roberts (Jack, sometimes John junior) Leek age 16 killed in a training accident at Caulfield. Portrait (and drawing) and report of the accident: Sportsman, 6 Dec. 1898. John Leek continued training at Caulfield.
1900 John Leek owns Ingliston, winner of Caulfield Cup.
c.1893–1902
House owned and occupied by American dentist, Dr Alfred Perkins Merrill
Merrill family notes
1890 Arrives in Melbourne to practice dentistry (from 82 Collins Street by 1891)
1893 Marries in Melbourne widow Elizabeth Chalmers
1896 Advert, Age 17 Oct 1896: Lot 27, Caulfield, CA2 Section 8, frontage to Booran Road through to Kambrook road… ‘nearly opposite the residence of K.D. Lurking Esq. and Dr. Merrill, about 7 minute’s walk from Caulfield Railway Station’.
1905 Chairing the Automobile Club meeting re motor speed
1905 Chairman of Tasmanian West Extended Mine
1905 Appointed Vice Consul of the US in Australia
1906 is President of the Automobile Club: presides at first motor race meeting at Apsendale Park racecourse
1908 His residence is Rose Street, Armadale
1911 He and his wife return from a motoring holiday in USA; he and she attend race meetings in Melbourne and Sydney
1914 Sale of pictures and antiques of Mr A.P. Merrill of ‘Woolscour’, High St, Malvern
1914 Arriving in Paris to see the horse racing Grand Prix, at the outbreak of WWI.
1915 In Pasadina USA, 1916 San Diego: no plans to return
Earlier biographical profile: Table Talk, 28 November 1890.
Genealogical information (born 13 Nov 1843, died Los Angeles 1926) see
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~megen/reunion/ps18/ps18_203.html
Photo of Dr Merrill at foundation of Automobile Club 1903: https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE1486713&mode=browse
1926 died in Los Angeles
1902-11 C. Leslie Macdonald, racing owner-manager acquires property, names it ‘Moidart’
C.L. Macdonald notes
1902: “Mr C.L. Macdonald has purchased Dr Merrill’s residence and his horses will be shortly transferred from Mordialloc to be trained here. There are several loose boxes attached to the residence, but three or for more are to be erected’ – Australasian, 7 June 1902.
1902 “[Trainer Hugh] Munro, with Mr C.L. Macdonald’s horses, arrived from Mordialloc on Monday to take up permanent residence. Team includes Wakeful, Revenue. Revenue won the 1901 Melbourne Cup. Hugh Munro, father of famous jockeys Jim and Richard (Darby) Munro.
Prior to 1901 Macdonald had managed W.R. Wilson’s St Albans Stud, Geelong
Prior to St Albans Stud, Macdonald had worked with J. Eden Savill in South Australia, trainer of 1882 Melbourne Cup winner, The Assyrian.
Moidart is a name associated with the Clan Donald in Scotland.
1911 Macdonald announces his retirement from racing: – Advert for sale of Macdonald’s furniture, piano, riding gear and Jersey cow. Age, 18 March 1911
1911 Macdonald sells Moidart to John Gordon Robertson (of East Mount Mitchell Estate, Lexton, Vic) whose sister Mrs Buchanan owns Alawa (Victoria Debry winner, second in 1909 Melbourne Cup). Obit: Herald, 21 Sept 1929
1911–19 John Gordon Robertson ownership
1911 Charles Wilson at Moidart, private trainer for J.G. Robertson. Wilson previously trained at Ballarat and Flemington. His father, Tommy Wilson, trained two Melbourne Cup winners in Ballarat: Sheet Anchor 1885, Bravo 1889. Charles Wilson died 1917.
1917 Colin Wilson, current owner of Moidart, described as the ‘son of the late C. Wilson’ (Charles Wilson) and taking over training his father’s horses. There till 1919.
1919–40 John Percy Arthur ownership
1919 J.G. Robertson sells ‘Moidart’, Booran Road: ‘The Extensive Racing Stables, Formerly in the occupation of Mr C.L. Macdonald’ (Details in advert, Age, 4 Nov 1919 p.2) Land: 290 x 290/269 feet.
– see also advert for same sale, ‘Under instructions from Mrs C. Wilson’
1921 reference that J P Arthur, has purchased adjoining land and subdivided it into paddocks.
Bob Keating is J.P. Arthur’s private trainer, a returned soldier from WWI. (See Herald 23 April 1921 which includes photos of stables)
Robert Keating born NSW 1877, horse trainer at Caulfield. Trained Gladwyn who won Moonee Valley Cup in 1914 and 1915: joined AIF 1915, served in France 1916. Hospital 1918, discharged Aug 1919; died 1951.
1922 Ron Cameron training for JP Arthur, replacing Keating. Ron Cameron
NZ born; as a jockey won the 1911 Melbourne Cup riding The Parisian and the 1912 Australian Hurdle at Caulfield .
1923 Ron Cameron has leased house adjacent to Moidart for his sister from NZ. He has 12 horses in his team. (Cameron profile, Sporting Globe, 13 Dec 1923).
Cameron continues as a trainer at Caulfield after leaving Moidart.
1926 Charlie Hodson trains Fujisan (also raced as Fuji San) at Caulfield, private
trainer for J.P. Arthur
1927 Charlie Hodson becomes private trainer to Ben Chaffey at Flemington
1927 Patrick B. Quinlan takes over the stables in Booran Rd and will
train for Mr Arthur.
1929 Stables damaged by fire: four boxes gutted but ‘none of the boxes attached to the big stables was affected. These stables were originally built by the late Mr John Leek, and were considerably added to by the late Mr C.L. Macdonald’.
Pat Quinlan is a former champion cyclist .
Arthur ‘Scobie’ Breasley becomes his apprentice, wins first metropolitan race 1930. Becomes world famous jockey
1940 Pat Quinlan moves to new stables at Mentone
1948 John Percy Arthur dies age 76: owned Fujisan who won 1925 AJC Doncaster Hcp, etc. Had mining interests in Japan).
1940–69 William Robert Kemball ownership (or lease from VATC- needs checking)
of Moidart
1940: ‘Mr W.R. Kemball has acquired Quinlan’s stables in Booran Road, Caulfield and his trainer, H. Hilton, will have headquarters there. Mr Kemball’s other trainer, W. Hawthorne, will shift into the stables formerly occupied by Hilton.’ (Sun, 8 April 1940)
Kemball was born in Melbourne 1881 (source: Vic BDM), lived in Melbourne until moving to New Zealand: architect and owner of multiple picture theatres there. Purchased horses in NZ from 1914; obit Canberra Times 9 Dec 1969 says that from 1932 he had raced 480 horses for 418 wins, 408 seconds and 387 thirds. Owner of Lord.
1969: died ‘widower’ aged 88, Melbourne
Obit re his NZ architectural work and picture theatres (spelled here as Kembell): http://mtvictoria.history.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Newsletter-61-May-2012.-William-Robert-Kembell-Embassy.pdf
Henry (Harry) Hilton private trainer for W.R. Kemball
1946 article says Hilton is a New Zealander, born in Picton. His son Ken, after discharge from army war service, has secured a permit to train and assists his father with the management of his horses.
1953 Death of Harry Hilton.
Ken Hilton, son of Harry, had been managing the stables with foreman
Jack Mooney. Private trainer for Mr Kemball. Property still ‘Moidart’
1969–74 Hilton continues the lease of Moidart
1972 Ken Hilton trains Sobar to win Caulfield Cup
1973 Ken Hilton has heart attack. Foreman Brian Ralph takes
over.
1974 Ken Hilton dies (age 60)
1974-80 Brian Ralph lease of Moidart
1980–2021 Colin Little (b.1948) takes over the lease of the house and stables. Re-names it Lord Lodge. Best horses he trained include Testimony (13 wins, placed in Gr.1 SAJ Goodwood Handicap), Palos Verdes (10 wins including VRC Bagot Hcp, N.E. Manion Cup, Hobart Cup, Mornington Cup), Blutigeroo (STC MMW Stakes, Hobart Cup, Canberra Cup), El Segundo (son of Palos Verdes): (MRC Memsie Stakes, Underwood Stakes, CF Orr Stakes, Moonee Valley W.S. Cox Plate 2007 (2nd in 2006), Ista Kareem (AJC Sydney Cup, Launceston Cup; 2nd in Adelaide Cup); Vassilator (2nd in MRC Caulfield Guineas).
2021 Colin Little enters training partnership with Matthew Lindsay based at Pakenham; vacates Lord Lodge.
2022 Colin Little retires from training.
Colin was apprenticed as a jockey to Arthur Ward 1963, permit to ride in races 1964; indentures transferred to R.L. Alsop, May 1964; cancelled Dec 1964; granted General Permit to Train 1970.
APPENDIX II
COLIN LITTLE’S RACING FAMILY
Colin’s Father:
William John (Bill) Little (1913–1988)
Eldest son of Evelyn (‘Ike’) Miller Little (1888–1942) and Sybella Gladys Cobain (1889–1974)
Evelyn born at Sale 1888, died at Mirboo North 1942
Sybella born at Sale 1889, died at Highton 1974: They married 1910: children: Mavis Little (b.1911), William John Little (b.1913), Leonard Evelyn (1914), George Clifford Little (b.1918)
1913 Born, Dandenong, Vic. (Source: Victoria Births, Deaths and Marriages)
1930 Sept 13, Age: Granted an apprentice’s permit to ride in races in Victoria.
1932 April 9: Herald (Melbourne) ‘W. J. Little has probably had more mounts than any other Melbourne apprentice. In 15 months he has ridden in 160 races, 22 of which he won. The most important wins were on Gold Digger at Moonee Valley and Segati at
Williamstown. Little is 18 and still has to complete 12 months of his apprenticeship with L. J. McCann. the Caulfield trainer. Being only 7.0 [7 stone], Little’s services are greatly in demand at the track. He usually rides more than 20 horses at exercise. His father was a prominent rider in Gippsland some years ago.’
1934 April 12, Referee (Sydney): ‘For India. The lightweight jockey, W. Little, left last week for India under engagement for 12 months to Lady Shannon, who has a string of 15 horses in work. Little, who has not had the opportunities of late, that his skill warrants, is a splendid type of lad and should do well in India.’
1934 Sept 3: Herald: after recovering from an accident, he won the Reay Plate, described as the chief race at Poona, and was anticipating riding in Bombay and Calcutta.
1936: April 20: he returned to Melbourne ‘on a holiday after a successful season in Bombay’
April 21. Age: Little had been associated with trainer A. Higgins in Bombay. He did not return to India that year.
1938 April 23, Argus: Little had been riding for several months in New Zealand, based at Palmerston North, chiefly for the stable of Mrs McDonald (trainer of 1938 Melbourne Cup winner Catalogue). Some later reports say he rode Catalogue in races in New Zealand.
1938 Nov. 7: Herald: Caulfield jockey W. Little to ride in Adelaide.
1938 Dec: Suspended for one month after causing interference in a race at Epsom, Vic.
1940 July 26 Sport (Adelaide): on list of those granted an ‘A’ jockey license in S.A., riding weight 7 stone 6 pounds
1940 Nov. 2 Weekly Times: ‘W. Little, who has been riding in Adelaide for some months, is back at Caulfield. He rode several horses in work on Monday.’
1942 Oct. 12 Age: ‘TRAGIC NEWS FOR JOCKEY: GEELONG. Saturday.
— Soon after he had ridden in the first two races at Geelong to-day, the jockey W. Little received advice that his father, who was well known as a cross-country rider in the Gippsland district, had been found dead in a paddock near Drouin.’
1942 Dec 4, Age; address 20 Queens Ave, Carnegie. Administering estate of his late father Evelyn Miller Little.
1943 William John Little marries Rosena Mary Bird (see section 2, below)
1944 Aug 12, Sporting Globe and August 16, Weekly Times: At Ballarat races in 1944 W. Little and trainer E.H. Nichols are disqualified by the stewards for six months for alleged improper practices in connection with the running of Uncle Joe in the Welter Handicap Trainer and jockey lodged an appeal with the Ballarat District stewards. . Appeal is dismissed. Considering further appeal to VRC. Sept 16: VRC dismisses the appeal.
1945 August onwards : riding in races at Moonee Valley etc.
1946 April 2: Daily Mirror (Sydney): ‘AND HE WON’T RIDE CAMELS.
Melbourne, Tuesday.
— Lightweight rider W. Little has accepted an offer to go to Egypt as first jockey to Mr. S. Chaffo, a film magnate with over 30 horses in training at Cairo. Little, who will leave as soon as he can complete transport arrangements, has ridden five winners on country tracks in the last month, including a double at Narracoorte (S.A.), last Saturday.’
But note, Little is still riding in Victoria in April, May
1946 April 9: Advocate (Burnie, Tas.) Trainer Harry Bird and jockey Sam Martin won trebles at Yarra Glen and jockey W. Little rode a double.
1946 June 3: Sun:
‘FUNGI BREAKS HOODOO FOR JOCKEY
One of the most remarkable hoodoos ever to beset a jockey, who once shaped like
a champion, was overcome when W. Little, on Fungi in the Point Cook Handicap at
Flemington on Saturday, won his first race in Melbourne for 12 years. Little seized an opening on the rails to defeat Punctilla by a head. Little’s last metropolitan success
was a double at Epsom on Nutcracker and Hugo. To try to change his luck, Little went to India, where he won races at Colombo, Madras, Bombay, Bangalore, Mysore and
Poona. Returning to Melbourne in 1937, he again attempted to break his luck in Melbourne, but with no success. Yet he was able to visit New Zealand and win races at Wellington—where he ran second in the Wellington Cup on Melbourne Cup winner, Catalogue — Napier and Marten. “I have never felt fitter in my life—in fact I am just going to grit my teeth and win a race,” said Little to me before the meeting on Saturday. Little, who has won many country races in New South Wales and South Australia, recently won the Casterton Cup on Fungi for the president of the club, who races as Mr. “F. Desmond.” [Mr L. Koch]. Strange as it may seem, Mr. “Desmond” has won several Melbourne races, but It was not until Fungi won the Point Cook Handicap that he was present to see his colors carried successfully in the metropolis.’
1946 Sept. 30: Age: ‘Jockey for India: Jockey W. Little has accepted an offer to ride under contract to the Royal Calcutta Turf Club, and the engagement is from November until March next year. He will leave Melbourne on Wednesday next. Little, who can go to scale at 7.5, will not be a stranger to India. He rode many winners there some years ago’.
1946 Oct 2, Argus, ‘Jockey Delays Departure For India. Caulfield lightweight jockey W. Little said yesterday that he had decided to wait until after the VATC spring meeting at Caulfield before departing for India to ride under engagement to the Royal Calcutta Turf Club. He has completed arrangements to make the trip by air.’
1946 Nov. 25. Herald: W. Little rode a winner on his first day at Calcutta.
1947 April: Little returned to Melbourne, but was given a two month suspension for
causing interference in the VATC Chatsworth Plate.
1948 Oct 6 : Herald,: ‘Well-known Caulfield jockey, Bill Little, has accepted a retainer to ride during the coming “cold weather” season in Calcutta for leading Ceylon trainer, A. Silveratnam.’
1948 Oct 9, Brisbane Telegraph: ‘The overseas engagement was made by former well-known rider, Jack Daniels, who rode for the same stable in India and Ceylon for many years.’
1951 Feb 2: Argus: ‘ W. Little resumes tomorrow.
Jockey W. Little, who recently returned from Singapore after an absence of two years, will resume riding at Flemington to-morrow. He has already been engaged for My Queen in the Iramoo Handicap.’
1951 Feb 2, Herald: ‘There is a doubt about W. Little being able to ride My Queen in the Iramoo Handicap, as Little recently returned from Singapore, has not yet received his licence from the VRC.’
1951 Feb 17, Sun,: W. Little, who recently returned from Singapore, was yesterday granted an A jockey’s licence by the VRC Committee.
1951 March 9: Age, Jockey Hurt. Club Lacks Casualty Room
‘Jockey W. Little, who. suffered head injuries in a race smash at Ballan yesterday, had to be treated out in the open in front of the crowd, before removal to hospital, because of the lack of a casualty room. His mount, Mohandas, fractured a shoulder, but it was nearly half an hour before the horse was destroyed. Little, who recently returned from India, was admitted to Ballarat Base Hospital with severe lacerations and queried fracture of the skull. Although still unconscious, his condition last night was reported to be satisfactory. Conditions at Ballan are primitive, but the club cannot get permission to make improvements. There is no casualty room on the course and yesterday the veterinary surgeon was absent. A humane-killer was not available, and Mohandas was eventually shot with a rifle by a policeman. Little received his injuries when Mohandas crashed over Blodwen, who fell first, and Probate at the two-furlong post in the Welter Handicap. He was picked up by ambulance attendants, but was later removed from the vehicle to the ground in front of the winning post for examination by a doctor.’
1951 March 10: Argus: ‘Jockey’s condition improving.
Jockey W, Little, who is in Ballarat Base Hospital with a fractured skull, was reported to be semi-conscious yesterday, but showing a slight improvement.’
1951 May: W. Little riding again in city and country races
1952. August 28, Age:
‘Jockey on Danger List
Caulfield jockey W. Little is on the danger list in Ballarat hospital with a fractured skull, received in a race fall at Ballarat Miners’ races yesterday. Early this morning an operation was performed on Little. Little fell when his mount, Flower of Africa, sprawled after he struck her with the whip. Little was thought to have sustained only abrasions to the chin, and he was allowed to leave the casualty room. During the meeting however his head worried him and he was admitted to hospital. Stewards held an inquiry into the mishap and found the occurrence accidental.’
1952 Sept 10: Age: W. Little shows slight improvement, regained consciousness last Friday and it is expected he will be transferred to St Vincent’s Hospital on Friday.
1954 Sept 4 Herald. … ‘Jockeys hurt in falls, either in races or on the tracks, have the keenest appreciation of the way they are treated by VRC who see to it that they get the best possible medical attention and hospital treatment. Only the other day jockey W. Little, who has had two or three severe operations as the result a race fall, told me of the understanding treatment given him by the ruling body during his long illness.’
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Colin’s Paternal Grandfather
Evelyn ‘Ike’ Little (1888–1942):
Eldest son of John Thomas Little (1888–1942) and Elizabeth Cobain
Evelyn Little born at Sale 1888, died at Mirboo North 1942
Married Sybella Cobain 1910: children: Mavis Little (b.1911), William John Little (b.1913), Leonard Evelyn (1914), George Clifford Little (b.1918)
1942, 22 October
Morwell Advertiser
‘The late Mr Little, who was 59 years of age [Vic BDM says he was born 1888], was well-known throughout Gippsland in horse racing circles, being one of the leading jockeys in this province in the early days. When racing was booming in Gippsland, “Ike” was in great demand as a jockey, and always attended the Morwell and district meetings and generally rode a winner or two here. He holds the Australian record of riding the winner of every race (seven), including a hurdle race, on a programme. He performed this unique performance at a meeting in N.S.W. On one occasion at Heyfield he piloted six winners. Other jockeys on very rare occasions have ridden all the winners on the flat, but missed out in the hurdle event.’
Andrew Lemon Note: I have not been able to verify the truth of this claim of riding the card. It could be a confusion with James Lamrock Little of Mudgee (NSW), born Penrith NSW, son of a hotel keeper and horse trainer at Mudgee, died 1929, who reportedly also won every race at an undated race meeting at Mudgee and was presented with a gold whip at the time. Probably no relation. Can’t confirm this story either.
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Colin’s Mother:
Rosena Mary Bird (b. Ballarat 1912)
Youngest daughter of Joseph Bird and Catherine (Kate) Ronzio.
Joseph Bird born 1868, died Caulfield 1939
Kate Bird born at Ross’s Creek, near Ballarat 1876: They married 1893. Other children included Harrie (b.1900), Kathleen (1897), Allan Joseph (1894), Maya (1904) and James (1908). Famous family of jockeys, riders and trainers.
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Colin’s Maternal Grandfather :
Joe Bird, originally a jockey, trained horses at Ballarat and later at Caulfield. Obituary note, Sporting Globe, 8 Nov. 1939 says he was apprenticed to Alec Taylor at Ballarat; later trained for Andrew Chirnside for 11 years: best horse was Vindico who won 29 races. Survived by his widow, 3 jockey sons and 3 daughters. Son Harrie Bird begins training at Caulfield after his father’s death, stables in Glen Huntly.
His daughter Maya Bird in 1924 married Alan (‘Tich’) Wilson who rode two Melbourne Cup winners: Sister Olive (1921) and King Ingoda (1922)
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Colin’s Maternal Grandmother:
Catherine (Kate) Ronzio: born near Ballarat 1876, daughter of Antonio Ronzio and Isabella Allen.
1890 she owns the successful steeplechaser Blair Athol and rides him to hounds.
1890 31 Dec: Sportsman: drawing of Miss Kate Ronzio, ‘the fearless lady rider’: her riding exploits described. ‘A typical Australian girl.’
1891. Second in the ‘Lady Hunters, exhibited in action’ at Ballarat Grand Show
1899. Ballarat Hurdle Race: winner Novarino at long odds won comfortably: owned by ‘the wife of its rider, F. Bird [Joe Bird]. This lady is better known to metropolitan racing men as Miss Kate Ronzio, a fearless horsewoman, who owned the steeplechaser, Blair Athol, a few seasons ago. Navarion, it is said, has been used solely as a lady’s hack and has had no regular training’ (Sportsman, 28 March)
Her riding exploits described in Joe’s obituary, Sporting Globe, 11 November 1939.
i ‘Lord Lodge’ was the name given in the 1980s by Colin Little and his wife Jacqui to the house and stables at 30 Booran Road, Caulfield. The stables opened directly onto the back section of Caulfield Racecourse. The house was built in 1890 for horse trainer John Leek (b.1846). A subsequent owner Colin L. Macdonald named the house Moidart. For further property notes, see Appendix.
ii Melbourne-born New Zealand architect William R. Kemball (1881–1969) owned Lord (NZ), foaled 1954, trained at Caulfield by Ken Hilton at the stables later called Lord Lodge: 28 wins and 24 placings in 80 starts to 1961. Lord’s major wins included races at Flemington and Randwick (NSW) but chiefly at Caulfield: his wins included the VATC Memsie Stakes four times, the VATC Caulfield Stakes three times, VATC St George Stakes twice and the MRC Underwood twice.
iii Lord’s record in the VATC Memsie Stakes was: 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961 (won).He had three runs in the VATC Futurity for 1 win (195), a third, to Todman (1960), and a second to Sky High (1961). Sandown Racecourse did not open until 1965. Future, by the same sire (Targui) won the 1964 VATC Memsie and Futurity Stakes among many wins.
iv St Anthony’s Primary School, 172 Neerim Road, Glen Huntly.
v Christian Brothers College St Kilda, a boys’ Catholic secondary school, merged with Presentation Convent, Windsor, in 2021 to become St Mary’s College.
vi Walter William Cockram (1909–1988) was on the VATC committee and owned Arundel Stud, Keilor.
vii Jacqui Little died August 2009.
viii The Victoria Amateur Turf Club (VATC) changed its name in 2002 to Melbourne Racing Club.
ix Unidentified gunmen in a car fired shots at Phar Lap when the horse was being led to his stables in Manchester Grove from Caulfield racecourse where he had been exercising on the morning of the 1930 Melbourne Stakes at Flemington, three days before he won the Melbourne Cup.
x William John (Bill) Little (1911–1988): See Appendix with family details. The head injuries that ended his riding career occurred at Ballarat Miners’ Rest course in 1952.
xi Rod Nicholson, Heroes of the Heath (2024).
xii Colin’s maternal grandmother Kate Ronzio was in fact a renowned horsewoman in her day. See Appendix.
xiii Jack Godby, former jockey, was a son of famous Caulfield trainer Frank Godby and a nephew of jockey-trainers Cecil, Norman and Charles Godby.
xiv Rod Fitzroy AM was Chairman of the Victoria Racing Club at Flemington 2003–2011.
xv Testimony (1981) (True Statement—Cockcrow). His wins were in 1984. Colin’s earlier city winners included Tune Up (in 1976), Ranee’s Palace (1981 VATC Seaview Handicap at Sandown Park, 1983 Big M Stakes, Sandown). Perfect Dignity (1982 Moonee Valley Yering Handicap), Greenwich Pike (1984 VATC Virginia Stakes and Sturt Hcp, Sandown) before the first city win of Testimony in the VATC Orrong Hcp, Caulfield, April 1984.
xvi Graeme Sampieri, bookmaker, died 2018.
xvii Sydney jockey Arthur Ward moved to Melbourne in May 1962 to be no.1 jockey for Caulfield trainer Bas Conaghan after the stable’s usual rider Allan Burton moved to ride in Malaysia: Canberra Times, 2 May 1962.
xviii Leading trainer Lee Freedman moved his quarters from Flemington to Caulfield.
xix Ride Like A Girl.
xx Charles E. Whittingham (1913–1999), American Hall of Fame trainer, trainer of multiple top class races including the Kentucky Derby twice. He became the American trainer of top Australian performers Daryl’s Joy (NZ) and Strawberry Road.
xxi Ferdinand won the 1986 Kentucky Derby, the 1987 Breeders’ Cup Classic and was 1987 US Horse of the Year
