Racehorses in Australia

The History of the Racehorse in Australia is such a short one that you might, with reason, imagine that the entire narrative could be condensed into a very small space when committed to print. But you would be utterly wrong. On the contrary, an historian, with his heart in the business, could reel off a number of fair-sized volumes, and still his work would not be fulfilled to his entire satisfaction. A little ancient history may be useful to us before we commence to study the subject. As you know, there was no trace of the genus horse on our island continent before the coming of the white man. In America, on the other hand, although there was no horse as we know him, before the advent of the Conqueror Cortez, in 1518, yet the fossilised remains of the Eohippus, the Protohippus and Hipparion are so numerous and well distributed on the great American continents that these wide lands seem to have been the most favoured home of the great race of equidae, in the far-off days before the ice.

The whole species was then cut off, to a horse, possibly by an epidemic, or by the ravages, more probably, of some insect or microbe, and its history in that quarter of the globe recommenced with the Conquest. In vivid contrast the tale of our own Australian horse, and all our other domestic animals, begins as late as the 10th day of January, 1788. Governor Phillip brought with him from the Cape of Good Hope, where he had called to obtain supplies on his voyage hither with his first fleet of convicts, a stallion and three mares with foals at foot, a few cattle, and in all 500 head of live stock, but which consisted for the most part of poultry.

The new Colony had a good deal of bad luck at this time. The four-footed animals, owing to the negligence of a convict herdsman, strayed away, and although one has reason to believe that the horses were recovered, there is no certainty on that head. With the cattle there is a different story to tell, and on the very day upon which I am writing this, I read, in “The English Sporting Magazine” of 1797, the story of their loss and recovery. A boat’s crew sought a bay on the coast whilst searching for fresh water. At the spot where the men landed they fell in with a convict who had escaped five years before, and who had joined the blacks. This man showed them where the lost cattle had made their home, deep in some fertile valley, and in the course of their nine years of liberty they had increased in numbers to sixty-one head. It was a valuable find for the struggling colonists, who, from drought and flood, had lost a large portion of their property.

In the very early years of “the Colony” there was exceedingly little need for the assistance of light horses in the daily work of the place, whilst the desire to possess an animal more speedy than that owned by a neighbour had not yet arisen at all. You will, perhaps, recollect that, until the year 1813 or thereabouts, the only portion of our vast continent which was being made use of by white men was a little strip of soil between the Blue Mountains and the sea, some forty miles by eighty, and the few horses which had now been brought over from the Cape, or out from the Old Country, were simply beasts of burden, or, at the best, perhaps, hacks and harness horses.