134 ON AND OFF THE TORF. 



them off. Some of tlie youngsters tried to dodge me. 

 They occasionally brought in skins that had been sent 

 down from other places where a reward was not 

 placed on them.^^ 



We chatted over the prospects of the horses 

 winning in the future and of victories won in the past, 

 and when the time arrived to depart, Mr. Forrester 

 generally drove me to the station, and I was loth to 

 leave his hospitable quarters. 



When I first paid a visit to the Hobartville Stud 

 at Richmond, N.S.W., the late Mr. Andrew Town was 

 the proprietor. He was the beau ideal of a fine old 

 English gentleman, although a Colonial by birth. He 

 was a fine, hale, hearty man then, with a cheery, jovial 

 face and a stout robust frame. Bad luck and misfor- 

 tune overtook him in later years, and when he had to 

 leave Hobartville, which had been in the family for 

 well nigh a century, it broke his health. He gradually 

 faded away and died much as an exile would in some 

 foreign land. It was like uprooting a sturdy old oak 

 to take Andrew Town from Hobartville. It was a 

 thousand pities he was not allowed to remain there. 

 Hobartville is a splendid place. The paddocks are 

 sown with English grass, and it grows luxuriantly. 

 There is an avenue of the finest oak trees I ever saw 

 in Australia here, and under their shade the annual 

 sale of yearlings used to be held by Mr. T. S. Clibborn, 

 the Secretary of the A. J. C. The Hobartville sale was 



