Chapter 10 : SPORTING EXTRAS

An alternative venue and sport for the ‘gambling classes' were the ‘athletic sports' of the late ‘sixties and seventies.' To a population avidly gambling on the run of a horse or dog or the fall of a bird the chance to bet on humans or ‘pedestrians', as they were termed, was considered exciting, particularly by the lower orders who could ‘rub shoulders' with and talk to the representative sportsmen in public bars where many of these sporting events were ‘organized' and conducted.

England's influence on the nineteenth century would be seen ... not so much in the imitation...of representative institutions, of trial by jury, of freedom of the press, or even in the wide diffusion of English books (but) in the reproduction ... of some of our lighter social peculiarities (especially) in the contagious passion for our national pastimes such as foxhunting, cricket and horse racing.

Sport in Australia appears to be a national necessity.

Sport was part of the cultural baggage brought out to Australia by the convicts, the free settlers and the accompanying administrative personnel, though initially the limited size of the community and the priority given to the establishment of a viable settlement delayed the commencement of organised sporting activities.

One of the worst features in our colonial community is the wide-spread and growing taste for frivolity and dissipation in every form—cricketing, horse-racing, regattating, &c., &c., &c., and I confess I almost despair of the social and political—not to speak of the moral and religious—advancement of the people who expend so much of their time and means in such pursuits and amusements.

It seems that the Australian climate early encouraged an outdoor life ... the change to a more congenial climate and clearer skies was not without effect upon the temperament of the colonists ... The more ample reward attached to labour out here leaves the colonists more leisure. And this leisure he devotes to working at play ... the principal amusements of the Australians are outdoor sports of one kind or another.

The principal amusements of the Australians are outdoor sports of one kind or another.

The origins of our sport passion can be traced to our early British heritage and the transplanting of British traditions and customs to the new land. However, one of the primary reasons sport has flourished here has been the nation's ideal sporting climate. The warm summers and mild winters permit outdoor sports to be indulged in all year round. Hence, there have been more opportunities for playing a greater variety of sports than in many other countries, where harsh climates and long, cold winters shorten playing seasons and force the use of indoor facilities.

Any sport by which money could be won or lost found favour. For large wagers men would compete, rolling in empty casks, starting from high ground with the bottom of the hill as the winning post. They would run races carrying all sorts of objects, such as pumpkins on their heads or small boys on their backs. Some preferred to swing from horizontal bars; or jumping off bottles laid on their sides, to compete in broadjumping (the last proved a rather difficult feat, as the bottles had a somewhat alarming tendency to roll and is required a great skill to jump two feet from such a starting point). Another exciting sport was to see who could stay on a cartwheel the longest time, the competitors getting into position among the spokes and hanging on with legs and arms while the cart was driven, slowly or fast for a given distance.

These and many other queer activities attracted stakes as much as 100 pounds.

Recreation and amusement are the zest of life, and young and old will have them at any cost. It is all the more necessary, therefore, that they should be made as simple, cheap, and elevating as possible.

There is but little sport in Australia … some time ago, when times were good, there existed what was called the Cumberland hunt: they pursued the native dog, which always made a capital run; and the kangaroo. But that meritorious fraternity had been broken up; and horse-racing seems to be almost the only bond of union among sportsmen.

Last Monday and Tuesday were devoted to that species of harmless mirth, which twice a year gives relaxation to the inferior, yet not least useful orders of the British metropolis. With what anxious expectation, rising Youth, do ye await the happy tides of Easter and of Whitsun, that ye may once more enter into the Greenwich festive lilts, and break your necks in transport down her verdant hills! … In imitation of these annual festivities, a little fare was upon Whit-Monday and Tuesday held between Sydney and the Brickfields; and we have the pleasure to say, that the amusements were decorously conducted and that no single instance was the harmony broke in upon.

The sources of amusement have been confined to cricket, cards, water parties, shooting, fishing, hunting the kangaroo etc.

[Sydney in 1838] … the citizens enjoyed the pleasures of horse-racing, cricket, boat-races and regattas, in between visits to the theatre and concert halls.

The growth of the Australian nation [in the second half of the nineteenth century] was as deeply pervaded with sport as it was in the basic commodities of its economy; both were regarded as the key elements in Australian character and a sense of well-being. Recreation and money making were the keys to national happiness.

Drill followed a set procedure. First, the pupils bowed to the Deputy (then termed the first assistant), who stood on a rostrum and, having taken the bow, proceeded to give directions for ward, club, or dumb-bell drill, depending on the current vogue in equipment.

Let the reader turn over the file of the colonial newspaper for 1883 and he will find them stuffed almost to nausea with advertisements and accounts of races, cricket matches and regattas, with challenges to fight or to run or to row. The energy of the native mind of the colony seems to have been diverted almost exclusively into this frivolous channel.

Australians wore themselves out in all they do, mistaking exercise for cultural activity.

Sport is one of the characteristics of Australian life. It is impossible for any outsider to form any adequate conception of the meaning of this word in relation to this people. It is a part of their very existence - a necessity of the climate. If the reader entertains the idea that it is simply a pastime, that sport is indulged in for the purpose of killing time, he is very much mistaken.

Traditional Australian

... the major sports have encountered change much more publicly than minor ones. Change clearly occurs in minor sports but the dynamics of that change rarely become widespread public knowledge.

... the minor sports are less represented in these works. Indeed, it should be pointed out here that Australia is in danger of losing the artefacts of its sports history because so little attention is given to preserving them.

Touch football, one of Australia 's fastest growing activities, began as non-organised leisure and rapidly became excellence-oriented sport. Its paid officials are keen to promote regional, national and even international competition, as well as to gain the sponsorship and television exposure believed to characterise a successful modern sport. Some devotees still play for the fun of it but they are subjected to more and more rules, restrictions and playing changes designed to promote “touch” as sport rather than leisure. The business dimensions of indoor cricket, another recent phenomenon, make its story a little different but its participants, too, have seen the broad emphasis shift from “leisure” to “excellence”.

Australians have long considered themselves the greatest sporting nation in the world, possessed of abundant raw talent, a passion for participation, a craving for competition and an appetite for watching a wide variety of games.

A nation of sporting dreams

… Australians tend to spread themselves across the sporting spectrum. For a nation of 16 million people, we do pretty well at a remarkable range of sports, including many that do not get much in the way of national coverage.

The passion for sport can be explained partly in terms of climate and partly in terms of history. This is a country which lends to outdoor sports and activities, the recent and unusual wet weather notwithstanding. Indeed some Australian sports – those associated with lifesaving, for example – derive totally from climate and from opportunity. The surf carnival, with its boat races, its beach sprints and its splendidly anachronistic march past, is an Australian institution we take for granted.

Other sports have come from overseas with some adjustments for local custom. Polocrosse, for example, is a particularly antipodean adaptation of a rather more exclusive sport. And Australian football, devised originally as a means of keeping cricketers fit in winter, owes its peculiar rituals and rules to a combination of rugby, gaelic football and some Victorian interpretations. Historically, much of Australia 's development took place during the second half of the nineteenth century, when the weekend became established as a work break and when the eight-hour movement gave working men time off for sport, both as players and as spectators. This century, sport has proved to be a marvellous diversion in difficult times -- Don Bradman, Phar Lap and Roy Cazaly – were heroes during the great depression when heroes were badly needed.

... One-day cricket, in presentation at least, is moving closer to the American baseball games-summer diversions for audiences when their favourite shows are in recess.

But none of these advances would have been possible without the support of audiences and the sponsors and advertisers those audiences attract. Sport has a remarkable capacity to enrich and to entertain, to thrill and to enthral. It produces some marvellous moments to be remembered, long after the results have faded. Australians make heroes of their sportsmen and women because, subconsciously, they would like to have been there, at Lord's or on centre court at Wimbledon . Tread softly with sport, for you tread on an Australian dream.

The main race was the Stockmen's Sprint, 320 yards down a straight without rails, edged by spinifex and saltbush. There were enough entries for heats and a final of this event, no starting gates or barrier, no tic-tac men and the bookies couldn't raise an umbrella between them. The Bushmen's Sprint also was over 320 yards, but the Lady's Bracelet lasted for three-quarters of a mile. The stakes for each race were around ten pounds, sometimes a braclet or a ring. And anyone who went home winning ten pounds considered he had a fine win.

Look at that black boy crawling over the water!

It wasn't real easy. We used to play it by the light of the waste timber fire at night. It was popular at one time in bush camps and shearing sheds.

In this country a man was expected to be tough, rough and strong, able to ‘throw' a bullock by leaping from a galloping horse and grabbing and twisting its tail, to lay a man, any man … flat with one punch, to work sixteen hours a day seven days a week, for weeks on end, and show tiredness, but no sign of weakness or fear. A man should be able to swim a river in flood, to hold his grog, to be a loyal mate and show neither pain nor sadness. This was not a country in which a man could show the more subtle feelings that he must, as any normal human, have felt. He was expected to be gallant and chivalrous to white women but to be discreet about displaying affection of tenderness. Anything that was not on a large scale had somehow to be hidden, kept away from the prying eyes and ribald tongues of his mates.

This new sport is of Australian creation, and it looks good to me. There is spice and speed in it.

The iron man is one of the most physically demanding sports in the world, combining the endurance of the marathon with the explosive demands of sprint phases, in four separate disciplines – swim, Malibu board, surf ski and run.

For me, there is little to compare with the exhilaration and the excitement of picking up a big wave, dropping in with my shoulder and sliding across the face, carving and cutting, always on the verge of being overwhelmed and swallowed up by the raging foam just behind me.

There are no men in the world like your lifesaver ... this is the greatest labour of love in the world ... I have never seen anything like it.

He was so strong. He could pull a belt faster than most blokes could swim. But he was also a great body surfer. He could flum (make the best of) anything. You'd both catch a wave but he'd hold it 10 metres further. I'd say to him, ‘You've got bloody flippers for feet!'

Most spectators regard woodchopping as something decidedly odd, albeit exciting, to be put away in the same memory basket as eel skinning, brick throwing, coal heaving and shingle shifting, not to mention even more barmy activities such as racing toads and goannas.

Then there was the case of a hotel-keeper whose claim to fame was that he had spat farther than anyone else. The spit-mark was shown on the back of the hotel and the place where the publican had stood before making the prodigious effort. When the mark died out, visitors were shown where it had been, and the whole incident, when the record had been made and who was there, would be retold in the district for hundreds of miles around.

My favourite was Clothesline Tennis. They'd get the little sister to hang by one hand from the clothesline with a tennis ball in the other hand and they'd swing the clothesline and she had to close her eyes. Whenever she was ready, she'd release the ball and the two boys would have to dive and try to catch it.

Like the digger [the lifesaver] risked his life in the service of others – at least on the weekend. He volunteered to put dedication to the community before his own selfish desires. Like the soldiers he trained hard for combat (against the elements and sharks rather that fellow men, disease and deadly poisons); the surf carnival was translated into friendly rivalry which required disciplined almost military training to achieve the perfect ‘march past' in the surf carnival's parade. Just as men were tested in order to be inducted into the armed services, men were tested to enter the lifesaving unit.

In December 1854, at Geelong, Victoria, an athlete named Williams performed this series of eight feats in twenty-five minutes. First he raced against the best man in town in a hundred yards' sprint and won. Secondly he was obliged to pick up thirty eggs one yard apart with his mouth—without otherwise touching the eggs or allowing his knees to touch the ground. His third feat was to throw twenty weights over his head each weighing fifty-six pounds. Fourthly he was obliged to run a hundred yards backwards. The fifth condition was to hop a hundred yards. The sixth to throw a ten pound hammer eighty feet. The seventh to throw a two pound quoit one hundred and forty feet. For his eighth and final feat he rolled a coach wheel half a mile.

I'm pretty tired. I'm not as fast as those other boys but I have got good endurance.

Wheeled a barrow one mile, walked a mile, ran a mile, took fifty flying leaps, picked up fifty stones placed a yard distance from each other, and ran backward half a mile, in which last feat [a fall on his back] on muddy ground somewhat altered the appearance of the champion.

- Comment in the Maitland Mercury January 1848 about William Francis King ‘The Flying Pieman' who was a celebrity in Sydney in the 1850s and 60s. Included in his many physical challenges he walked 1000 quarter-miles in 1000 quarter hours and raced a mail coach from the outlying areas of Sydney into the city. The expression ‘Faster than the Flying Pieman' became an expression that recognised his achievements.

Before a gathering of Parisian high society, the Frenchman drew his glove, slapped the Aussie across the face and challenged him to a duel. “Choose your weapon,” he declared. “Sure,” said the Australian, “we'll make it axes.” The duel was never fought.

I think it's an exciting thing for a guy who works in an office building to decide one day he wants to race an elite sprinter, pay an entry fee and come in and have a chance to beat him.

The thing about the surf club movement is that it brings together people from all walks of life and it is such a family thing. The whole beachside community, in many ways revolves around the surf club and its activities. For years we had the same R and R team at Freshwater, from when we were at school. As we got older we had a journalist, a policeman, a barrister, hairdresser, doctor, nightclub operator, a builder and an accountant. But every weekend we came together as a group, did our training, had a good time socially and then went our different ways during the week. And another thing is there is no age barrier. Often parents and their children are actively involved for many years. One of the Freshwater coaches, Barney Mullins, is over 80, but a favourite with everyone from the adults to the kids.

So thoroughly has the Bondi Surf Life Saving Club (sic) been organised by Warrant Officer Bond, Hon. Instructor of this Society, that its trained members are voluntarily on duty in rotation from daylight to sunset on Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays, this being always ready to render assistance.

Ladies fail singularly in their attempts to shoot the breakers. In all the thousands who bathe at Manly very few make the least show in this respect, whereas it is every youth's and man's ambition to become an expert shooter.

Now that cricket has been put aside for a few months to come, and cricketers have assumed somewhat of a chrysalis nature … rather than allow this state of torpor to creep over them, and stifle supple limbs, why can they not .. form a football club.

When the New York Yankees switch to cricket, when the world soccer cup is played on roller skates and when a camel wins the Melbourne Cup and St Patrick's Day is celebrated on Oliver Cromwell's birthday, Australian and Gaelic rules will merge and make the big time ... as far as football is concerned Gaelic is Gaelic, Aussie is Aussie and never the twain shall meet.

Australia, with a possible international competitor from America, seems to be the world capital of nonsense activities. It always had a strong historical tradition of larrikinism— loutish and mildly anti-establishment behaviour—and the enthusiasm for any fun-loving activity (the “have a go” tradition) was always strong. Across the nation, Aussies enthusiastically embrace fun of the most bizarre kind: thousands of quiz nights; line dancing; the outback camel cup (Alice Springs); national tug-of-war contest; dwarf-throwing (short-lived due to objections by the Little People's Organization); the Port Lincoln tuna toss; Coober Pedy sausage tossing; the nude running of the bulls in Far North Queensland (i.e., nude human males in Cairns); the Queensland cane toad race; the Alice Spring annual boat race without water; the Compass Cup (dairy cattle racing in South Australia); the Kalamazoo Classic in Cummins, South Australia (hand-pumped railroad cart race); the Lake Patawalonga (Adelaide) milk carton regatta (boats made of them); the “wife-carrying” running race in New South Wales (and even overseas where Australians love to exhibit their enthusiasm by running up the stairs in New York's Empire State Building or water skiing the entire length of the Mississippi River)—these type of events can be found throughout the island continent. One asks whether the good citizens of Australia have anything better to do than participate and observe these explosions of nonsense and the apparent answer is, no they do not. These events bind the community together, enhance local tourism and provide cohesion for a nation united by bonds of fun and games. It is, after all, the recreational society.

In Australia the bowling club is a place of social interaction and a night out for hundreds of thousands of people: its place in many rural communities, in particular, is pivotal. Bowls has had a huge impact on Australian culture, and in return, Australians have initiated changes in the way the game is played internationally.

Not surprisingly, many sporting innovations have been spawned in Australia over the years. Many involved the development of new techniques. In swimming, for example, the overarm sidestroke, the Australian crawl (which became known as freestyle), and the butterfly were developed in Australia. The crouched start in athletics was conceived by Australian sprinter Bobby McDonald in 1884, prior, to which runners started a race standing upright.

Will you stand up and cheer because this is the finest day in the history of Australian sport.

I don't think there's been a greater moment for national pride for Australia .

It still amazes me and bowls me over just how important it was to this country. It's part of our culture now.

Having participated in America's Cup coverages and other sailing events, the event usually gets minimal publicity, but Australia II's win touched everyone—whether they were sailors or not. It stands out as the No 1 sporting achievement in Australia – there is no doubt about it.

- Radio commentator Peter Shipway commenting on the 1983 America's Cup win.

Big Fellow, we're going to sink.

During the course of the twentieth century, millions of harried Australians flocked to the beach to escape the stresses, strains and complexities of industrial and post-industrial life. The beach became a sanctuary at which to abandon cares – a place to let down one's hair, remove one's clothes – and of uninhibited social interaction; a paradise where one could laze in peace, free from guilt, drifting between the hot sand and the warm sea, and seek romance. The beach was life at its most joyful and simplest. In this sense the beach has a specific social context.

… surfbathers were a fine healthy race of men, quite equal to their brothers who live outback in the bush and open air of the country.

Malriders [Malibu board riders] lack the true surfer's commitment. They left surfing once and they'll leave again. They're a miserable lot, devoid of all imagination and totally incapable of reflection.

You go into oblivion. Suddenly all your life is there in this long, long stretched-out wave; you're removed from the past, everything goes to jelly, and you feel completely removed from the world around you. Nothing matters any longer but you and the board and the wave and this instant of time!

Huge rooster tails of water rose into the air with every turn and cutback as Nat slashed and ripped, now tucking into the power pocket, now skating out onto the shoulder to dig in for a turn.

I believe in the mingling of the sexes on our beaches and under proper supervision; but the cad is much more in evidence at a swimming meeting where women figure than he is in the surf.

A lot of surfers talk about the sheer joy of just being in the water. You come to appreciate that, and don't get hung up on whether you've caught the best waves or only fallen off a lot. The sense of that communion with the water and with a force that's greater than you – all those quasi-spiritual aspects – are important.

- Writer Fiona Capp (2003).

A lot of people don't understand the effort and talent involved in being a top pro surfer. But let me tell you, it's phenomenal. You're dealing with fickle dangerous elements.

There were three main sections of Cronulla Beach —South Cronulla, North Cronulla , and Greenhills. That's where the top surfies hung out—the prettiest girls from school and the best surfies on the beach. The bad surfboard riders on their ‘L' plates, the Italian family groups and the ‘uncool' kids from Bankstown (Bankies), swarmed to South Cronulla — Dickheadland. That's where it all began. We were dickheads.

Casual style (informal and unpretentious language, minimal dress, the appearance of contented idleness), outdoor-looking bodies (weathered, prematurely-lined, scrunched eyes, lean, taut, tanned) respect for the surf (swimming between the yellow and red flags, keeping a watchful eye on the next wave) and sun (shielded by sunglasses, sunblock creams), and busy bodies (lifesavers patrolling in coloured [yellow and red] caps, surfers walking determinedly with boards under their arms).

Surf carnivals, rescue drills, the shark bell or whistle, the system of surfing ‘between the flags', and the privileged, custodial position accorded to the men wearing coloured caps are features of the Australian day at the beach. These days, however, the lifesaver is not quite the central figure he once was on our beaches … his heroism is counterpointed and qualified by the few surfers suicidally straddling their boards further out to sea, affecting a nonchalant disinterest in the proceedings. The surfer is the bane of the lifesaver's life …

In any culture, symbols and images provide cohesion and a sense of national or tribal identity. One of the most enduring images of Australia for much of the twentieth century revolves around the activities associated with surf, swimming, and beaches. Lifesavers at Sydney 's famous Bondi beach … pulling rescue ropes over their capped heads or battling a big surf in a lifesaving ironman competition: that is Australia . The recreational society and masculine identity are all wrapped up in these pervasive images of Australian beach life.

Yes, in summer it can be hard to find a spot in the sand big enough to spread a beach towel, let alone to wax up your board. Crowds of sun seekers are everywhere – surfing, sunbaking or just plain posing. In winter, there's more room to stretch out. Even in the bleakest winter conditions, Australians still feel the need to wander the beach, picking up silvered arms of driftwood, peering into rock pools. Surfing and the beach. Both have become defining elements of our culture, as identifiable as Neighbours, as pervasive as infotainment.

- Murray Walding in Blue Heaven: The Story of Australian Surfing (2003).

Mainland Australia … has the desert's love-affair with the water. Its national icon is the surfer' amphibian man.

- Peter Conrad, Down Home: Revisiting Tasmania (1988).

There's times I sit out there and it's so crowded … I hate the fact that it is becoming ridiculously popular. It's a huge dilemma. I've got to make a living. What am I going to do? Give up and go work in a Seven/Eleven.

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialised days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out ... Cup Day is supreme – it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialised annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name – Supreme. I can call to mind no specialised annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but this one does it.

The ladies go to Flemington to show off their beautiful dresses—their spring ensembles— and the men go to pay them compliments, to lunch in the open air, and to drink a lot of champagne. But, to be quite honest, both men and women really go to the races in order to bet. The attraction of easy money won by chance is the mainspring and almost the sole motivation of most Australian racegoers.

The day on which the Melbourne Cup is run is one of Australia's truly national days in the sense that it involves most people in one way or another: work virtually stops throughout the nation for the three minutes during which the race, the richest and most glamorous in Australia, is run.

Only two kinds of people punt the horses, the needy and the greedy ... It's not a

sport mate, it's a lottery with four-legged tickets.

Carbine was neither a pretty nor a perfect animal, but he possessed courage, coolness and sagacity. He was determined to win and was perfectly aware when a supreme effort was necessary.

I don't understand you Australians. You think the most important thing in the world is the Melbourne Cup.

How can you call the Melbourne Cup a world championship when all you've got is a second-rate horse with weight advantage beating a better horse? The Cup is not important to the world's breeders because most of the winners are geldings anyway - sad, malleable zombie-like horses which ... are of absolutely no importance to the breed in terms of going to stud.

Our big race: over-hyped, insignificant, inferior.

One of the first requirements which a newly laid out township seems to feel in Australia is a racecourse and a cricket ground.

Back in the ‘50s, it still was an all-male domain. About the only concession to the female of the species was a large ugly sign at the exit to the men's urinal which sternly advised the patrons to ‘adjust their dress before leaving' – visions of a thousand or so maddened punters, having done the rent, rushing from the pisshouse with the donks hanging out, flashing the only symbol they had left, always overtook me at the sight of that sign.

But when Phar Lap had swollen to half his size again and was groaning in pain, I took him to the barn. He whinnied, he groaned dementedly. I rushed about to make him more comfortable. Coming toward me he nosed affectionately under my arm. Then something inside him burst; he drenched me in blood and fell dead at my feet.

I love horses and I live for racing. I tried bowls and golf once but I got bored.

It is the sense of collective participation the Melbourne Cup gives that ensures it will remain as the premier event on the Australian sporting calendar. The Cup evokes heroism in a particular way. Like the ghosts that come ashore in our imaginations on Anzac Day, to hear the thunder of hooves on the home turn on Cup Day brings a lump to the throat.

- Journalist Christopher Bantick believes that along with Anzac Day Cup Day was a "quintessential Australian event."

Before I was out of my apprenticeship, I was on first-name terms with every nurse and doctor in Adelaide .

… an amusement which ranks amongst its votaries the greatest blacklegs and swindlers of the day, which in nearly every country in the civilized world has been tainted by roguery and vice of the deepest and darkest dye, His Excellency has stood forward as one who has lent all the weight of his powerful interest to suppress such practices; and in New South Wales, at all events, he has helped to keep fairly pure the sport which he loves so well.

Ya don't walk around in thongs and T-shirt, mate, and ya don't vomit down the front of a lady's dress, and ya don't urinate on the ground around the bar. ... Try it at Oak Park , and you're mightly likely to wind up with an XOS fist planted fair square in ya dial.

It was from the pioneer picnic meetings that the gregarious, egalitarian character of Australian racing developed. The rich and the privileged stockbroker, surgeon, industrialist, who spreads his chicken and champagne around his Mercedes or Rolls in the members' car-park on big days at Flemington, is following the footsteps of the 1830 squatter who brought a cask of brandy and fresh-killed mutton to the picnic races.

They know how to race in Australia . The courses are well-managed, kept in first-rate order, and there is every comfort for visitors in all departments.

Possibly no country in the world worshipped the horse with the same fierce veneration as Australia in the nineteenth century. In many cities and towns the day of an important horse race meeting was declared a public holiday.

One race day he appreciates something special is going on. He gets hyped up by the spotlight, pricks his ears at the click, click, click of the cameras and, at the end, he's more mentally drained than physically.

- Trainer John Hawkes on champion galloper Octagonal (1998).

How can you call the Melbourne Cup a world championship when all you've got is a second-rate horse with weight advantage beating a better horse?

- Author Richard Ulbrich (1995) in suggesting that the Melbourne Cup is an over-hyped event, internationally insignificant, with the best horses heavily handicapped.

Those who saw it are never likely to forget it. A hundred thousand people on the track, 39 horses at the barrier, a beautiful spring day.

- Punch in describing the 1890 Melbourne Cup win by Carbine, one of the Australia 's greatest racehorses.

He appeared to be a placid dog. He gained the confidence of the sheep and as soon as he had them under his control he just walked at their heels and they were at his will. If they fanned out; he would spread his front legs and rock from side to side until they bunched. He was an incredible dog.

- George Wescott, Secretary of the National Sheepdog Trials Association in commenting on the black and tan kelpie Johnny, five times winner of the Canberra National Trials (1947 to 1952 - did not compete in 1951). At the 1952 National Trials, Johnny scored 197 points out of the maximum of 200 including a perfect score of 100. Judge James Batson said he was, “A wizard which, whether handling difficult or docile sheep, would still provide a magnificent performance.”