I've Learned Not To Rely On The Fillies

I’m penning this New Year’s Eve epistle from the bright lights of downtown Tenterfield, ‘the Birthplace of the Nation’, where I’m overnighting on my way to Magic Millions.

It’s been a wonderful day’s driving from Sydney: not a cloud in the sky, virtually deserted roads, the roof of the car folded away, me looking like the playboy of the Western world, and the warm wind blowing through where my hair’s meant to be.

I find few things better for the soul (if we have one) than driving the Australian bush. Thanks to all the rain along the eastern seabord the country’s still looking great in midsummer. The route I take going north is off the beaten track and I always put aside two days for my journeys. It’s peaceful and the vistas are grand.

Tenterfield is just a few kilometers south of the Queensland border but tomorrow I’ll take a right turn out of town, staying in NSW, and head due east through the Range again for 100 kms to Casino, then north to Kyogle and Murwillumbah. From there is one of the best bits of all, breaching the Queensland border and into the land of cheap petrol via the tropical rainforest of the Gold Coast hinterland, coming out at Currumbin. You can stick the Pacific Highway where the sun don’t shine.

Sir Henry Parkes gave his famous Federation speech to the people of Tenterfield at the Tenterfield School Of Arts on 24 October 1889. His catch-cry was: “One people, one destiny”. It was a good idea at the time, pity it took until 2008 to take on the appearance of reality. Hank was a Pom with little formal education who in 1836 married his teacher in Birmingham – obviously, his mind was on extra-curricular activities rather than his textbooks – and emigrated to Australia under assisted passage. Eventually, in 1872, he became Premier of NSW, which says to those of today who didn’t get their HSC, don’t worry, too much education’s a dangerous thing. Parkes had three wives, not all at the same time, which helped him reach the age of 81. Perhaps with no wives he might have reached 100.

The bushranger ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ (Frederic Ward) is another celebrity of the Tenterfield district. He made his last stand at Uralla, just south of Armidale. He ended up there after escaping from Cockatoo Island Prison in Sydney Harbour, his offence: horse stealing (where is he today when I need him?). The beautiful stretch of road through the cattle country from Walcha to Uralla is known as Thunderbolt’s Way.

Major J F Thomas, a local solicitor, was noted for his defence of Harry "The Breaker" Morant.

My literary hero A B ‘Banjo’ Paterson is also a Tenterfield luminary. On 8 April 1903 he took the hand in marriage of one Alice Walker of Tenterfield Station. They were married in St Stephen’s (nice touch) Presbyterian Church. The Walkers built Concord Hospital in Sydney. Paterson married well, a bit like Henry Parkes. Malcolm Ellis wrote: “If ever there was a natural son of the old squattocracy, a fit mate for a daughter of the Walkers of Concord, it was Banjo. He always looked sartorially like a colonel of the cavalry who had just left Tattersall’s Sale Ring with a field-marshal after having bought a steeplechaser.” Reminds me of Arnold House, Sydney's most sartorial racegoer.

The other Tenterfield legend appears to be the late song-and-dance man Peter Allen, after whom the motel I’m staying at is named. You don’t see many motels named after people. There’s one on the right hand side going north through Singleton (not named after John). I can see it now, the Steve Brem Motel, on the road to nowhere somewhere. Talking about John, that More Than Ready-Sunday Joy two-year-old filly of his which Gai trialled at Randwick on Tuesday looks an absolute natural and the Encosta de Lago yearling half-sister is a MM sale topper if ever I’ve seen one. I suppose Singo’s got enough fillies out of the mare he just might let this one go, but I’m not taking any bets as to who the buyer’s name might be.

I haven’t found out yet what public New Year’s Eve celebrations are held in Tenterfield but after a short kip I’ll wander down the main street (the only street) and see what’s up. Years ago I swore never to go and see those Sydney fireworks again, or even watch them on TV. Another exercise in proving to the world that we do it “bigger and better” than anyone else. Who cares? Up until Tuesday we said that about cricket. As far as the crowds are concerned, there’s nothing attractive about being stuck amongst a million intoxicated Aussies. Everyone whoops and hollers on the stroke of 12 as the harbour bridge catches fire, conveniently forgetting it’s actually only 11 p.m. Why spoil a good story with a fact?

2009 ushers in my 61st year which causes reflection about what happened to the last decade and what to make of the next. Suddenly, these matters take on an urgency. I get the feeling this might be the last year I do this sales business. I love the horses, and most times I can pick the good ones, but it’s the people who are the problem. (By the way, my top pick from Easter '08, Wanted, is no longer with J Hawkes but with J O'Shea, and on another matter stand by for a juicy court case involving two of racing's headline-grabbers from 2008). I’m thinking I should be getting on a yacht and sailing round the world for five years, or something of that ilk. Despite 2008 being a leap year, I have still to find the woman of my dreams – actually, she’s hiding out in Melbourne and doesn’t take my calls. Ten years ago, on the occasion of my 50th, she gave me a certificate, done by her own hand, on which it proclaims that having attained the half-century I was now officially a “stayer”. Sad to say with another 10 years under my belt I’m now just an old plodder.

To wind up the year on the blog, I was going to recap the last month’s racing and pat myself on the back as usual for all my shrewd choices, observations and missed opportunities, but I decided that’s as boring as bat droppings. (Yesterday's first-up Gosford winner Zuhoor (3f Lonhro-Nesnas) was a MM stunner of '07, 'bought' by Dean Watt's Dynamic Syndications for $200k. Straight afterwards I approached him to secure a big chunk of her but was told she was all spoken for. Correct. He was buying her in for 'The Boss', Emirates' Nasser Lootah. I was also underbidder on another Gosford winner Power To Surprise at Easter '06. By the then despised Viking Ruler, splashed all over with white and with only one stakeswinner on the page, in the fourth dam, I was confident of getting him within budget. I cried 'enough' at $180k and let Nick Moraitis have him). I have a runner in the first race at Randwick on New Year’s Day. It would be very obliging of her if she could win or place because (a) it would be a nice way to start my particular decade, and (b) with the proceeds I might be able to fund that trip on the yacht. Especially as most of my meagre savings are locked up in one of those investment vehicles which currently prohibit me from accessing them “for my own good”. As someone who lived through the oil shocks, then 1987 and now this catastrophe, excuse me if I have a jaundiced view of the world financial (dis)order and all its greedy foot-soldiers.

Anyhow, the weather man says it’s going to be 34 degrees in Sydney on New Year’s day, so I’m not relying on a filly in those circumstances, she’ll be off to the paddock afterwards. I only have 286 first-book yearlings to see at MM when I get there on Friday. Less scratchings of course, but MM are never kind enough to list them on their website, unlike the other crowd.

Happy New Year to you all, my loyal readers from Vietnam to the Maldives and all points north and south. Back a winner.

Pic above: the National Trust-listed Tenterfield Saddler, immortalised in song by Peter Allen. This town and surrounding region is steeped in history and if you're interested in things other than, or in addition to, what's winning the next race, it's well worth a visit.

Big Breasts In Scone

I finished off my ramblings in the Hunter with visits to Amarina, Baerami, Brooklyn, Byerley, Edinglassie, Emirates, Glastonbury, Goodwood, Lomar Park, Reavill, Turangga and Vinery, so, all in all, I’ve managed to get a few hundred yearlings under my belt before facing the onslaught at the Coast. I begin my trek up there on New Year's Eve.

There’s one consignor in the Upper Hunter I can never get to see. I always seem to pick days when there’s something on at his place – x-raying, photos, Sirecam or all the staff having to dash up to Tamworth because suddenly the other farm’s got flooded. The same bloke is always the first to hassle me to see his horses when I arrive at the complex.

With no kids or missus to come home to, not for a lack of trying, I can take my time, and generally do. Breathe in the scenery. There are some fantastic vistas especially out in the Sandy Hollow/Baerami direction. Out in Patinack country as it soon will be. Does it mean anything that they’re setting up a pre-training facility in a place named Broke? I enjoy visiting the occasional vineyard on my journey with my trusty James Halliday under my arm. I’m trying to like Hunter region wines. The rivet-jolting roads around Pokolbin are still a disgrace. Perhaps under Kevin 737’s Infrastructure Australia crusade they might get around to it before my jalopy disintegrates.

Gai was also in the area and one night I was her guest for dinner at her Scone hideaway. Another night I visited Canter, the relatively new licensed restaurant in the space near the railway station where once lived Quince. Canter gets the thumbs up for a good feed in tasteful surroundings. The herb encrusted chicken breasts were the size of Maria Venutti’s. Both look like they were fed on growth hormone. On another night I was enticed by a billboard outside one of the pubs on Kelly Street proclaiming their “new summer menu”, so I thought, 'this looks promising, I’ll give it a go'. If you think there is no way you can completely bugger up something as simple as a Caesar salad, think again. It was so bad it was Seizure salad. Never again. I proclaimed last year that McDonald’s was going to be the culinary salvation of Scone but nothing appears to be happening on the building site, which also includes a servo, at the north end of the town just under the speed camera.

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Excuse me if I don’t read the newspapers much, particularly when I’m away in places like the Hunter, but what’s happened to John Messara? One day proclaimed a dictator-in-waiting, next day nowhere to be seen. Gone from Aushorse, gone from TBA, presumably in readiness for the board of RacingNSW? But he’s not one of the Gang Of Five, so what happened? Is it correct that he was appointed to the Board but couldn’t live with some of his would-be bedfellows and withdrew before the announcement? I missed all the excitement! I’m only acquainted to any degree with two members of the Board, Alan Bell and Arthur Inglis, so I have no opinion on the appointments overall. Bell is a hard man from way back and Inglis has come to light in latter times as a harder man than some might have thought. John has got much more to offer than just continuing to make Arrowfield the brilliant success it is, so how do we tap into him without all his jealous enemies out there getting up in arms about it?

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Greg Childs handled his exit from riding with pure class, the guy is an exemplar of his profession. He’s a Kiwi so he had a head start. He was actually born on New Zealand Day or Waitangi Day as it was then known, February 6. Seems like only yesterday he was a budding apprentice from Taranaki, a region famous not for its sheep but for its cows, its mountain and John Wheeler. The local joke is that if you can’t see Mt Taranaki (Mt Egmont) because of the clouds, it’s raining, and if you can see it it’s going to rain. Childs had a marvelous career winning more than 40 Group 1s in Australia, throwing his leg over several of the epochal horses of the late 20th century. That group of NZ jockeys who filtered over to Australia from the mid-70s onwards had a major impact on racing here, guys like Garry Willetts, Midge Didham, Brent Thomson, Nigel Tiley, Bruce Compton, Greg Childs, Shane Dye, Jimmy and Larry Cassidy, Brian York and Grant Cooksley (I’ve probably missed a few, sorry) and even the women of that period like Maree Lyndon, Dianne Moseley and Linda Jones proved a point or two. It’s hard to fathom why those times, now more than 20 years ago, should have unearthed such a strong group of NZ jockeys capable of making cut-through in Australia where, up till then, it had been a national sport, cheer-led by those boorish, self-aggrandised old pressmen, to savage NZ jockeys at every opportunity. Since that intake which ended about the time of Childs's arrival, there have been more Kiwis who have tried their luck but none has made the same penetration.

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That's not a Hunter Valley scene, above. It's Heron Island at sun-up.

See you at church on the 25th. Outside.

On The Hunt In The Valley

Five of the last seven days I've spent tootling around a very green and lush Hunter Valley looking at Magic Millions yearlings.

I've been to Strawberry Hill, Attunga, Yarraman, Kitchwin Hills, Bellerive, Holbrook, Kia Ora, Segenhoe, Darley, Riversdale, Ashleigh, Willow Park, Murrulla and Kulani Park.

I took the opportunity to go up to Willow Tree to see the new Kulani Park farm of Rhys Smith and Chloe Latif. I'm too much of a hardened old cynic to start pissing in peoples' pockets at my age, but this country blew me away. The property is on a magnificent stretch of virgin horse country lying to the north/east with rich soils, 1,000 acres or so, and whilst it's being set up with practicality a priority it is aesthetically very stimulating and will be a real showplace. Looks to me every bit as good as anything in the Valley proper. I used to say when I was running Waikato 20-odd years ago that a fool could breed good horses there (and I did, often) because the farm itself was superior. I can visualise Kulani Park breeding and rearing good horses at this new location; they have wide open spaces and fertile soils and have made a decision in principle never to overstock the place. Good luck to them. I also heard on the Hunter Valley grapevine that Coolmore have either bought or are acquiring land in this area as an insurance policy for the future.

I'll be up in the Valley for a further two days, look at about 100 more yearlings, then call it quits. At least that breaks the back of the main catalogue. I hit the Gold Coast on 1 January.

There's general nervousness, and rightly so, about what state the market will be in when MM opens. In times of economic uncertainty - and I'm sure the worst is still well ahead of us - people react primarily on emotion and are likely to approach this sale thinking conservatively. I believe vendors hold the key; if from the start they adopt a realistic approach to the value of their horses and allow them to get sold and create momentum at the sale, that will be an encouraging signal to the buying bench to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in. Let's face it, yearlings have been selling for far more than they're worth for several years now and many breeders have enjoyed massive profits. It's in breeders' best interests now to keep the stock moving, keep owners in the game and help keep the wheels of racing turning.

In the last recession, late '80s/early '90s, the damage was done when very high ingoing costs of production (notably service fees) were met by a rapid drop in the value of resultant progeny, as much as 60% over a couple of years. This imbalance put a lot of breeders out of business. Faced with the near-certainty of a declining market in the immediate future, upper-end service fees in 2008 are totally out of kilter with the reality. Major studs profess to have the interests of their breeder customers at heart (though savage increases in service fees, sometimes before stallions even have a runner, tend to belie that). If they truly did have those interests at heart they should be rebating 25 or 30% of the service fees charged in 2008 for breeders who are contracted at full freight and who pay on time. They can afford to do so. It would give their customers a better chance of trading profitably at the sales of 2011 and would be an appropriate gesture of goodwill as breeders head into uncertain times.

Oh look at the sky! Pigs flying!

Excellent News

Hear ye, hear ye. William Inglis & Son are on the verge of unveiling a bells-and-whistles catalogue search engine on their website which will answer all our prayers!

Excellent news. MM will surely follow.

However, I have made the point to Wm Inglis that not everybody relies on the internet and that it would be advantageous and a positive service if both the indexes I mentioned - broodmare sires and grandams - appeared in hard copy in the catalogues.

An Old Whinge

This is an old whinge of mine but it falls on deaf ears.

The indexes or, if you insist, indices, in Australian and NZ yearling sale catalogues are inadequate.

In addition to the sire and dam indexes, yearlings should be indexed by broodmare sire. An index of second dams should be provided, too. Both have been featured in Keeneland catalogues for decades. They are invaluable for finding your way around the offering. If I want to know which yearlings are out of O'Reilly (NZ) mares - to some buyers that's as relevant as knowing which yearlings are by Redoute's Choice - I shouldn't have to thumb through 900 pages to find them. Likewise, if I want to compare yearlings from a family, an index of second dams will help me locate them. (Remember how useful the Bruce Lowe numbers were?). These filters should also be incorporated into the sales companies' web-based catalogue searches.

Please MM and Inglis, it's only a few extra pages.

I thought I'd bore you with another Heron Island pic (above). The black noddy tern. There are about 70,000 of them up there at the moment. Ear plugs are provided in your rooms so you can get to sleep at night. In the cities we complain we never hear birdsong, up there it never stops and the faint scent of guano wafts on the Pacific breeze.

If I keep chipping away with these photos I reckon I'll do more for Australian tourism than the movie Australia. I haven't seen it and probably won't. Fair dinkum, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman??? Archetypal metrosexuals.

I Have Owned Some Turtles, These I Just Watched

Thank you Mum, Dad and the kids for those ‘come back!’ ‘come back!’ messages of encouragement during the last couple of weeks.

I warned you kids, DO NOT to play with the computer!

My Blogpatrol widget tells me precisely how many people have read the blog, where they come from, what time of the day they log in, what search engine they use, the resolution of their computer screens, the operating system they use and the type of web browser. This is Big Brother! So I know how depressingly small is my constituency.

Which leads into the fact that the holiday I took recently was on account of my own big brother who, with his partner, was making just his second return to the southern hemisphere after leaving NZ 46 years ago. I have traveled north to spend time with them several times this decade but I managed to convince them they were well overdue for another look Down Under – 1982 was the last time.

The Heron Island trip was part of our time together. They were very keen to see the Great Barrier Reef before global warming stuffs it completely. I understand Heron is one of only three cays which has accommodation. If your vanity demands a five-star resort experience then Heron’s not for you; stick to Cairns or Townsville, Hayman, Lizard or Hamilton, even though they’re not actually on the reef, but if you want an inspiring experience with perfectly tolerable living conditions then Heron is the place. Give it a Google. Heron is only 18 hectares, much of it is forest and there’s almost 100,000 birds living there, including nesting under your room. The snorkeling and diving are tops. You can swim with the sharks and the rays here, they don’t bother you (it’s true!). If you do go, spend the extra money and take the helicopter rather than the launch from Gladstone, it’s fantastic flying over the reefs and the pilots are a fount of knowledge. We were lucky to be there during the turtle egg laying season, one of the best in recent years. Each night at high tide as many as 80 green turtles (and the occasional loggerhead) come up out of the sea to dig their nests where the vegetation meets the sand, laying up to 150 eggs each. If you get up at first light, you’ll also see many of them lurching back down the beach to the water having completed their tasks. They are fascinating to watch; nature in all her splendour.

Another compelling feature of Heron is that your mobile phone doesn’t work nor does your wireless broadband. Stuck out there, you don’t give a hoot in hell what’s happening in the outside world. Whatever is happening, it’s bound to be bad news anyway.

I can wean myself off racing almost instantaneously so being cut off never bothers me. If I had a single other skill I could drop racing and go do it without a moment’s hesitation. But I’m 60 next month and virtually unemployable, so that isn’t going to happen. When you get to 60 suddenly it hits you: shit, look at all the things I haven’t yet done in my life and to think I may have just a decade left to get my act together – if I’m lucky. You have a panic attack at the thought and for the first time in your life the meaning of the old saw “live each day like it’s the last” sheets home to you.

Such a day was the Saturday before Heron, when my guests and I were in Melbourne. Sydney is extraordinarily beautiful – take a week off like I did, just to appreciate its breathtaking vistas – but Melbourne is more humane and if it had Sydney’s climate perhaps everyone would live there. It's growing at a faster rate anyhow. This particular Saturday, not far off the official start of summer, it definitely did not have Sydney’s climate. I think it was the coldest Melbourne November weekend on record, the mercury managing to creep up to about 8 degrees celsius. My guests came from Toronto where 8 above can be interpreted as a heatwave at certain times of the year so they were disappointed about the weather but inured to it. As they were shopping for Chinese-made Australian souvenirs, I took refuge in the Elizabeth Street TAB and watched a filly I race in partnership win at Kembla Grange. Horses do that when you’re not there. Anyway, it lifted me out of my meteorological depression. I was just as pleased with the win of another filly in NZ, Tampiko (3f Lonhro-Ancient Song) as I had bought her for $500,000 at Easter ’07. She might be OK. They got stuck into her over there as an early two-year-old which amazed me as I thought she was a relatively immature but nevertheless stunning first foal but I’m pleased to see she has survived this far.

Doubtless lots of interesting and newsworthy things have happened in the racing and breeding worlds since I went bush and I don’t intend commenting on much of it, except for an extraordinary article I saw on the Racenet news service a short while back in which the writer, one Brad Waters, tore new Melburnian jockey Glen Boss to shreds after he had ridden a treble at Moonee Valley. I’ve tried finding this article on Racenet’s news archive but it’s either been removed or reworded on legal advice or appeared earlier than the archive cut off date and is no longer available, otherwise I would have reproduced it here. The standard of journalism on Racenet falls short of the Pulitzer Prize but that’s OK, it’s an umbrella website used by a lot of people for a lot of different reasons and it's here today, gone tomorrow. But this vitriolic piece by the shrill Waters (who’s he?) was an astonishing critique of possibly Australia’s number one money rider, right down to how he sits in the saddle and where he points his elbows. I’m not a member of any jockey’s fan club but even so, this guy Waters was clearly having a bad night. Did anyone happen to read it?

Resisting the necessity to return to normal working habits, I have been to my mail box only once since my holiday ended. At this point in time I have just one sale catalogue in front of me, Book 1 from Magic Millions (somebody read my blog earlier this year). I also have the Inglis Easter preview. Sales of a different colour. I will begin looking at yearlings on Wednesday. Why I’m not sure.