BIRTHED BY THE SALT OF THE TURF: How the clip clop of horses became the pulse of my race
Banjo Paterson ended his career as a racing writer as were greats of my time but now gone, headed by Bert Lillye, Jack Schofield, Jack Elliott, Bill Whittaker, Kevin Sattler and Keith Noud.
Perhaps this is a self-biography but Andrew Webster did a much better job on me in the Sydney Morning Herald (April 19, 2024) as does Sky Channel’s Greg Radley when he mimics my radio persona.
But I’ve always got a bigger kick out of being a racing writer. Once most newspapers carried a turf staff producing form and details now eclipsed by technology.
When Rupert Murdoch came to Sydney in 1960 with the afternoon Daily Mirror, he was regarded as a young upstart taking on the might of the John Fairfax and the Frank Packer empires. It was a circulation war between Murdoch and my paper, “The Sun”. Murdoch opined that racing and rugby league were the best circulation spinners. We boomed with Bill Casey’s “Golden Guide” on Friday. Murdoch attempted to emulate it but John Fairfax took out a prevention court order and Murdoch had to drop back to a faded yellow. Murdoch always had a gun racing columnist: Frank Browne, Pat Farrell and Ken Callander followed the tradition.
Sure, many fine scribes write the great turf tales, none better than Les Carlyon, but a racing writer is involved with comment, selections, features, every day and every week without the luxury of chiming in for champions.
Racing was a sport, but now is an industry under fire. After nearly 60 years in the current stint, I finished at the Sydney Morning Herald in April 2024. I commenced as a copy boy, three days after my 15th birthday in 1954, received a cadetship in 1957 and was graded in 1961. Shortly after I left for experience but poverty-stricken years in the United Kingdom.
Before it was taken over by Channel Nine, I claim the record for having been with John Fairfax for over six decades. Who would have started so young, and lasted so long? However, being in newspapers and racing has never been work, It’s a way of life.
At times lack of my formal education is apparent but then consider the university of newsrooms, peopled by professors in the journalistic craft – many mad, bad and dangerous to be around but what an experience.
Throughout the period John Fairfax, particularly, and the subsequent owners were exemplary to me. I ended with the Sydney Morning Herald not because of personal treatment but it was time to move on.
My era with “The Sun” at Broadway was the best. After leaving gallops at Randwick, scouting around horse stalls looking for stories and arriving at the office to the waft of belching hops fumes from the nearby Tooheys Brewery set the appetite for chasing a deadline prior to papers coming off a press: hot metal and news sprint. Another fragrance to savour.
Ross Gittens, a major reason for buying the present Sydney Morning Herald, was justifiably given credence for his 50 years with the newspaper and I marvelled the difference in our background.
Gittens was seasoned with the Salvation Army. I was a son of a publican but, like the economics ace, exposed to battlers albeit a different category at the Doncaster Hotel, Kensington in Sydney, alongside Randwick racecourse, where I was reared amongst the salt of the turf.
“Two-Bob Tommy” had an early grounding in the public bar, renowned as “little Tokyo – more nips than Japan”. Nips being bite merchants, seeking funds for a drink, bet or just general sustenance. “Two-bob Tommy” sold raffle tickets without a prize, racing advice and took starting price bets. He became T.J.Smith, a champion racehorse trainer residing in a Sydney Harbour frontage and driving a Rolls Royce.
While Gittens was on the street, preaching the good word, I was a willing subject of “Bubbs” Brown, a local S.P. bookmaker who operated in a nearby back lane, betting to the scent of a kerosene lamp when getting set at Harold Park trots on Friday nights.
Maybe it was the Doncaster days that influenced me towards the battlers, strappers, and urgers, who lived on their wits, gleaned from the Depression and World War 2. Character, now diminished by addiction to screens, flourished.
Nearby Randwick racecourse was a hub of activity, starting pre-dawn where I awoke the clip clop of horses going to the track.
Race days saw punters heading up Doncaster Avenue loaded with anticipation: it had a Pied Piper lure, something you wanted to join. Alas most returned like American civil war soldiers defeated and bedraggled in battle.
“The Sun” newsrooms, police rounds, general, and sport also had an enthralling vibe. Even as a copy boy being involved in a big story, running the piece (copy being the paper on which it was written) from the journalist to the sub-editors, produced a buzz. While I dabbled in radio, with the assistance of Ian Craig on 2KY’s Turf Time for 25 years, and the Helen Thomas direction with “Hoof On The Till at the ABC, and Channel Seven television, with playmakers Rex Mossop and Bruce McAvaney, “tabloid hack” as an addendum to racing writer fits me best.
Obviously to become a blogger is breaking new ground, particularly as I’m closer to the carrier pigeon than the internet.
So, what can I offer? An opinion and weekly advice on racing, similar to what I produced for the Sydney Morning Herald. Also forgive intrusions like Rugby League with the once mighty Souths and AFL concerning the Swans. Maybe I’ll even dabble in book reviews and tips outside of my perceived area of expertise.
Perhaps it’s not woke in this period of don’t gamble advertising but I’m tuned to the advice of a sage, Eric Connolly: “Money lost – nothing lost; courage lost everything lost”.
Lifelong habits are hard to break.
