12 RACEHORSES IN AUSTRALIA 



The patriarchs of old, the Swiss Family Robinson of our childhood, were 

 never in it for the enterprise and romance of the whole affair. They sailed on 

 August 8th, 1842. The ship "Sarah" was not very seaworthy — indeed, she 

 was lost on the return voyage — but although there were several gales 

 experienced on the passage, and parts of the bulwarks were washed away, 

 they all arrived in safety at Port Phillip on the first day of December. "Mr. 

 Stawell swam his bulls ashore, but our horses were taken in a horse box on a 

 launch." 



In his diary, Mr. Green, under a September entry, says: — "My horses are 

 doing well. I take them to the main hatch every day that is fine, and give 

 them the height of grooming and salt water washing." Mr. Green was a man 

 of m.ethod, and he kept accurate records of his stud doings. There is no lack 

 of particulars with regard to Norah Creina's foalings, and the only thing 

 about it which we can complain of is, that he put her to her near relative, Rory 

 O'More, for all the first seven seasons. She had slipped a foal, however, on 

 board the "Sarah," to an English horse. 1 have no doubt he could not well 

 do otherwise, there probably being no other available stallion within reach. 

 The old mare had fourteen foals. Of these, the most famous were Tricolor 

 (V.R.C. Derby), Oriflamme (Derby and Leger), Royal Irishman (Adelaide 

 Leger), Norma (Australian and Adelaide Cups), Dolphin (Adelaide Cup), 

 PoUio (Australia Cup), Quality (V.R.C. Oaks), Spark (the Hobart and 

 Launceston Cups), and Garryow^en, a lesser light. Such races, no doubt, 

 were easier to win then than they are now, but it was a creditable record. 



Taglioni, the "favourite mare," although with no given pedigree, has 

 rendered herself more or less immortal, in that Explosion, an Ascot Vale 

 winner, Pegasus, a Hawkes Bay Guineas winner. Volume (New Zealand St. 

 Leger), and some others trace to her. 



So now we have taken a rapid and somewhat bird's-eye view of the 

 thoroughbred arrivals in the Colony down to the beginning of the fifties of 

 the nineteenth century, and we shall now endeavour to take a like bird's-eye 

 photograph of what these same horses came out to do, and what racing was 

 like in their day. 



, Chapter VI. » 



''* Racing in Victoria, From the Beginning. 



t Horse racing in Sydney, of course, commenced some years earlier than 

 it did in the Port Phillip division of the Colony, settlement in the north there 

 having an advantage of nearly forty years over the south. I find in a copy of the 

 first Melbourne "Argus" ever printed, on June 2nd, 1 846, the entries for a race 

 meeting at Homebush. Amongst these appear the names of Alice Hawthorn 

 and Gulnare. They are somewhat puzzling at that date, as Macarthur's Gulnare 

 was three and twenty years old in '46, whilst her daughter, also named Gulnare, 

 was still breeding in '83, a fact which apparently puts her also out of court. 

 The name seems to have been a popular one, for some reason or another. 

 There was also a mob of Alice Hawthorns, and this particular individual was 

 most probably the mare by Operator from Lorina (imp.), a bay foaled about 

 1840. 



But it is Victorian racing to which we are for the most part going to 

 direct our attention at present. In January, 1 803, a survey party had examined 



