16^ RACEHORSES IN AUSTRALIA 



first Australasian Turf Register. There was a two day gathering at Yass in '47, 

 a Geelong Steeplechase in '45, a Colac Hurdle in '46, a Launceston Derby 

 and Town Plate in '43, a Mount Gambier Town Plate in '48, a Brighton Derby 

 and St. Kilda Cup in '49, and a meeting even at far-off Portland in '48. Yes! 

 We are a peculiar, a very peculiar, people! 



Chapter VII. 

 The Eau-ly Records. 



Of course, there was no Turf Register in these very far-off days, and foi 

 some time the newspapers of Port Phillip were very few and far between. 

 Just a couple of months prior to the running of that first race around Batman's 

 Hill, John Pascoe Fawkner had published "a rag," a veritable "rag," "The Port 

 Phillip Advertiser." It was in manuscript, and its "days were few, and full 

 of woe." Indeed, it was all but stillborn. There are no race records contained 

 in its thin leaves. From January, 1838, until 1846 there was a succession of 

 news sheets, "Port Phillip Gazettes," "Patriots," "Heralds," "Figaros," and 

 what not, all of them weekly and weakly, squabbling, screaming, quarrelsome, 

 puny infants, finding early deaths. The "Argus" was founded in 1 846, and on 

 June 2nd of that year its first number was printed. The racing news reported 

 during the early years of its existence was meagre in the extreme, and was 

 occasionally printed under the heading of "Domestic Intelligence." But so 

 mushroom-like was the growth of population in the later 'forties — and very 

 much more so in the early 'fifties — that not only had a daily paper become a 

 very flourishing concern, but the want of a weekly publication, of a purely 

 sporting character, became so urgent that Bell's "Life in Victoria" was estab- 

 lished somewhere about 1855, and continued to exist until, in 1866, "The 

 Australasian" came along with its sails bellying before a favourable breeze, 

 and swept it out of sight. From 1860 until its disappearance, "Bell" had 

 brought forth a little annual volume containing a list of all the principal race 

 meetings of the past year, and "The Australasian" continued the publication 

 under the title of "The Australasian Turf Register." This was a thin little 

 volume bound in red cloth, but nearly double the size of its diminutive pre- 

 decessor. It has continued in an unbroken succession ever since. 



The production of 1866-67 ran to two hundred and twenty-three pages. 

 The stout, good-looking, substantial volume of 1920, with its blue boards and 

 letters of gold, contains twelve hundred and thirty. And so, in proportion, has 

 our racing and our horse flesh waxed mightily and increased in volume. Has 

 the quality of our sport, and the excellence of our racehorse, grown during 

 the fleeting years to as marked an extent? We will talk about that ere we 

 wind up the clue of the argument. 



But now the gold rush was affecting every portion of inhabited Australia, 

 and the entire country was in a fever. People were too busy endeavouring 

 to become rich quick to trouble very much about the importation of fresh 

 blood stock, so that the list of arrivals between 1 850 and 1 ff60 was not nearly 

 so extensive an one as might have been thought or desired. For 1851 was the 

 "annus mirabilis" of Victoria. A Golden Age had dawned. On February 

 12th of that year Hargraves had washed his first shovelful of dirt near 

 Bathurst, and had found gold in extremely payable quantities. The discovery 

 had stimulated the early prospectors of Port Phillip, and the metal was soon 



