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E-mail: duncanstearn@hotmail.com
Web: www.bernborough.net
First published by Mitraphab Press January 2006
Copyright © Duncan Stearn 2006
ISBN 978-0-9870902-1-8
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover design and layout by Duncan Stearn
Front cover photograph: courtesy Ern McQuillan Photo Library
Also by Duncan Stearn
The Ultimate Accolade (New South Wales Greyhound of the Year Title 1965-1985)
Chronology of South-East Asian History 1400-1996
Pattaya, Patpong on Steroids
Porn Unplugged
Pattaya Snaps, A Celebration of the Women of Pattaya (with David Kuri)
Our Man in Pattaya
BERNBOROUGH
Australia’s Greatest Racehorse
Duncan Stearn
Contents
Chapter 1 ‘Every crook in the community goes racing’
Chapter 2 ‘The lousiest thing I’d ever seen’
Chapter 3 ‘I suppose I will get life for this’
Chapter 4 ‘He should do well in the south’
Chapter 5 ‘Champion of the Downs’
Chapter 6 ‘I knew I had a champion in my stable’
Chapter 7 ‘Going down the mine’
Chapter 8 ‘He’s certainly small enough’
Chapter 9 ‘He has yet to prove himself’
Chapter 10 ‘Bernborough always looked a good horse’
Chapter 11 ‘He seems to do the impossible’
Chapter 12 ‘He is almost public property now’
Chapter 13 ‘It is not that Bernborough concerns us’
Chapter 14 ‘I just cannot find the favourite’
Chapter 15 ‘Bernborough has a plan for every race’
Chapter 16 ‘He does not need his races made to order’
Chapter 17 ‘He…was under restraint all the way’
Chapter 18 ‘How sweetly Bernborough moves’
Chapter 19 ‘I don’t want to meet Bernborough’
Chapter 20 ‘Bernborough will have to be nursed’
Chapter 21 ‘I was…satisfied with the way he raced’
Chapter 22 ‘No more close finishes George’
Chapter 23 ‘We have had a fair test against him now’
Chapter 24 ‘It was one of his off days’
Chapter 25 ‘Bernborough is better than Phar Lap’
Chapter 26 ‘The hardest race in Australia to win’
Chapter 27 ‘Most people absolve him of all blame’
Chapter 28 ‘It’s hard to keep secrets’
Chapter 29 ‘I heard a sound like a pistol shot’
Chapter 30 ‘No offers…will be entertained’
Chapter 31 ‘They got plum pudding out of a tin’
Chapter 32 ‘I’ll have the last laugh’
Chapter 33 ‘He was a great horse trainer’
Chapter 34 ‘One of the best judges of a horse’
Chapter 35 ‘Bernborough was a great horse’
List of Illustrations
Bernborough goes through his paces on the training track with George Mulley aboard.
The finish of the Futurity Stakes at Caulfield.
Another view of the Futurity Stakes.
A close-up of Bernborough in full flight.
The finish of the Warwick Stakes at Randwick.
The controversial start of the Newmarket Handicap.
The first of Mulley’s controversial rides aboard Bernborough was the Newmarket Handicap.
Veterinarian surgeons inspect Bernborough after the LKS McKinnon Stakes. Harry Plant on the left.
Bernborough was always a good eater.
Bernborough being prepared for his last great journey, to stud in the United States.
A study in power. Bernborough stands quietly in profile.
Preface
Towards the end of 1945 Australians were recovering from more than a decade and a half of hardship, first the economic disaster of the Great Depression followed by a world war they had come close to losing. The great collective national struggle for survival united the nation, cementing the social fabric. In the darkest days of the conflict following the entry of Japan into the war, thousands of American service personnel flooded into Australia, commanded by General Douglas MacArthur. The American Caesar asked Prime Minister John Curtin, a MacArthur fan, to ban racing. He refused; a rebuff MacArthur must have found bewildering. Although Eagle Farm and Doomben racecourses in Brisbane were turned over to the military and Wednesday racing- and some Saturday’s- in Sydney were cancelled, horse racing went on as before, and crowds still flocked to the track.
With the end of the war and basking in the warm glow of a hard-fought victory, the Australian public were ready for a sporting champion. They found one in the unlikely form of a controversial huge bay horse from outback Queensland who went by the name of Bernborough.
Already six years old, an age when racehorses have usually run their best races, Bernborough became a household name and hero to a country for whom racing was almost a national pastime. Bernborough was the first cultural icon of the Baby Boom era.
His story was the stuff of legend, his early career held in check by racing’s unending reel of red tape; he was the underdog, the horse who hadn’t been given a “fair go”, and Australians- with their inbred resentment of anything resembling oppression- rallied to Bernborough’s corner.
Through most of 1946 no one could drink in a pub, eat in a restaurant, go to a nightclub or talk about racing without Bernborough’s name coming up in conversation. He was more widely talked about than any horse for a decade. His every move was studied and commented upon. Wherever he raced he drew huge crowds. People who had never before seen a horse race came just to see Bernborough. People who had never gambled, wagered on Bernborough. Stories and songs were written about him, advertisers invoked his name as if it possessed magical selling properties, churchmen centred sermons on his deeds and at least one Perth baker named his cakes and pastries after the horse. Crowds would gather for his training workouts, on race days the faithful assembled in front of his stall, people would risk injury to pluck hairs from his tail as souvenirs; others would scramble for his discarded racing plates. Competing in the 1946 Caulfield Cup, over 108,000 fans crammed into Caulfield, a record for the track and one of the highest attendances ever on an Australian racecourse. This in a nation of around seven and a half million people; the rest of the country listened to the race on the radio.
Three men were most closely associated with the emergence and success of Bernborough. Only one- his trainer Harry Plant- was not widely recognised prior to 1946.
His owner, Azzalin ‘the Dazzlin’ Romano, was a prominent and colourful businessmen in Sydney. Arriving as a poor migrant from Britain in the early 1920s the Italian-born Romano worked hard, exhibited flair and persistence and, flouting arcane laws, made his fortune; living proof Australia was indeed the ‘lucky country’. His eponymous nightclub and restaurant drew the cream of Sydney society through its doors. He loved racing, liked to gamble, and purchased a few racehorses. Until Bernborough, he lacked real success.
His jockey, Athol ‘call me George’ Mulley, was a star in his own right: a combination of youth, verbal dexterity, ability, and enough of the unpredictable wild boy to make him both an angel and demon in the eyes of most racegoers. An acknowledged genius in the saddle, twice the leading apprentice jockey in Sydney and later champion jockey, he was no stranger to fierce and angry demonstrations from racegoers after riding what they perceived a poor race. Equally, he attracted standing ovations from crowds who witnessed some remarkable performances in an action-packed and controversial career. His wedding made the front pages of the national newspapers.
Like Bernborough, Harry Plant originally hailed from Queensland. A dedicated horseman, he was a former buckjump rider and trainer who settled in Sydney with a small but effective team of racehorses. Through his Queensland connections Plant gained an opportunity to purchase Bernborough at auction in late 1945. The result was a partnership that propelled Plant, Romano, and Mulley into a media and public spotlight for which none was truly prepared. Bernborough changed their lives forever. This is their story.
-1-
‘Every crook in the community goes racing’
One of Australia’s greatest poets and writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson was moved to write, ‘Before the North Pole was discovered, some cynic said that it would be discovered easily enough by advertising a race meeting there, when a couple of dozen Australians would infallibly turn up with their horses.’
For the only nation in the world founded as a penal settlement, racing and gambling grew to become a central part of the social and cultural life of many average Australians. While Australians love sport and the best sportsmen and women enjoy exalted status, they are especially fond of champions with four legs. The country was settled on horseback and as each new area was developed a rudimentary racetrack would appear along with a pub, school, and church. The early settlers knew their priorities.
Just like Rick’s Bar in Casablanca, sooner or later everyone who’s anyone in Sydney goes to the races. Perhaps more than any nation, Australians love to gamble. An Australian racetrack is a social atmosphere where many a scion of society finds he does more business in the Member’s enclosure while betting than through his city office.
In 1913 an American visitor noted, ‘The average person in Australia, including some men, women and children from each class, seems born with the blood of chance in his or her veins. If not, it has been inhaled from the gambling atmosphere which pervades all things.’ Four years later the introduction of the Totalisator into Sydney racing saw a large increase in the number of women who attended racecourses.
The racetrack is a great leveller. Leviathan bookmaker William ‘Bill’ Waterhouse would say, “There are only two places in this universe where all men are equal – on the turf and under it.” The track runs the gamut of Australian society. The Member’s enclosure has its socialites, politicians, leading businessmen, captains of industry; the wealthy elite of society. In the Paddock and the Leger enclosure’s are the rich, the poor, the con artists, the hopefuls, labourers, desk clerks, junior stockbrokers, used car salesmen, builders; in short, every strata of society. As the American racing writer Nat Gould noted, ‘What makes racing such a fascinating business is that the best and worst meet on a racetrack on an almost equal footing.’
Racetracks attract a Petri dish of characters, both gamblers and bookmakers. In the 1920s and 1930s, bookmakers were expected to be flamboyant and stories are told of a couple who would refuse to take home silver coins, flinging them instead to the general public at the end of a race day. Even so, up to ninety percent of bookmakers went broke. They had to be good to last even in the Flat, the cheapest of the enclosures, in Sydney. Even so competition was so keen every bookie’s stand was filled. The three codes, horse, harness, and greyhound racing, all flourished in the post-war years. In 1946 there were almost two thousand registered bookmakers in New South Wales alone.
Many become so well known they acquire nicknames: the Motherless Fowl, for his sad appearance; the Wild Duck, so named because he would never settle his debts and Crime, who never paid. A cautious bookmaker who would try and dissuade punters from taking his prices by saying, “You can get better,” was nicknamed The Doctor. A Brisbane bookmaker was known as Cyril the Circular Saw because his stock answer to punters who wanted to bet any kind of substantial amount was, “Sorry, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut you in two.”
One of the biggest bookmaker’s in the Leger in Sydney was Charlie Waterhouse, urged on by his younger brother William. Their omnivorous attitudes provoked explosive comment from a big bookmaker in the Leger at Randwick one day as Charlie Waterhouse passed his stand. Angrily turning to bookmakers near him he said, “These bastards never stop! You let them lay horses and wait for them to stop, and they just keep on going. They want every quid on the ground!”’ Bill Waterhouse went on to become the biggest bookmaker the world has ever seen.
One journalist commented, ‘Every crook in the community goes racing because he can mix with his fellow man there without having to explain what he does for a living.’ It was at the track in the period after the Second World War that black marketeers and the illegal two-up and baccarat game operators would launder money. Police corruption was endemic, many of the men entrusted to uphold the rule of law turning a blind eye to the two-up and baccarat games, for a price. The Metropolitan Superintendent of Police in Sydney later claimed he won £3,000 (a tidy sum) betting on racehorses between 1946 and 1951.
Starting Price (SP) bookmakers flourished throughout Australia and almost every Australian who gambled in any way would have dealt at some point with an SP bookie. In most country towns there was only one way to place bets on races- in the most notorious of them all, Broken Hill, every hotel had an SP bookmaker with a blackboard with odds written on it.
Although illegal, SP was considered a public service by most people. Every hotel, club and barber’s shop had an SP bookie; it wasn’t an organised industry then under the control of big operators, and bookies spent their profits in the local communities. In the mid-1940s Melbourne was then the biggest SP centre of gambling in the country.
Radio stations were forbidden from broadcasting on-course price fluctuations and whole teams of people were employed by illegal bookmakers to obtain information and then relay it by nefarious means to the SP operators outside the course. In some places it was easier to obtain information than others. For example, the houses overlooking Harold Park trotting and greyhound track were highly prized because they could look down directly into the betting ring. In the 1930s and 1940s the community viewed SP as a harmless service provided for the enjoyment of honest citizens. The Australian Women’s Weekly conducted a survey in 1937 and found two-thirds of female respondents said they did not believe SP betting was a criminal offence and was an accepted part of national life.
The Melbourne Cup, run on the first Tuesday in November, is still the only horse race in the world that stops a nation. American author Mark Twain was moved to write, ‘The Melbourne Cup is the Australian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays…’ Anzac Day, 25 April, would now rank above the Cup in the collective social psyche, but its pre-eminence only dates from the early 1990s. The Cup still stops the nation.
From the latter part of the nineteenth century only a handful of the many magnificent racehorses to have graced Australian racetracks became legends. When horse racing aficionados gather to talk about the giants of the sport in Australia, five names regularly curl from the tongue: Carbine, the best horse of the nineteenth century; Phar Lap, the big red horse who conquered the United States; Tulloch, trainer Tommy Smith’s superstar who came back from near death to resume a grand career; Makybe Diva, the only horse to win the ‘public’s’ race, the Melbourne Cup, three times; and Bernborough. Carbine won thirty-three of forty-three races; Phar Lap thirty-seven of fifty-one; Tulloch thirty-six of fifty-three; Makybe Diva fifteen of thirty-six. Impressive statistics no doubt, but behind the facts and figures are tales of intrigue, tragedy, and triumph in adversity. The Australian Post Office went so far as to feature famous racehorses on stamps. In 1978 they issued sets featuring Phar Lap, Peter Pan (winner of two Melbourne Cups and twenty-three of thirty-nine races), Tulloch, and Bernborough.
In 1946, as Australian troops began service with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan, the Australian and British governments signed a pact for the free and assisted passage of ex-servicemen and women paid for by the UK. Migrants were charged a nominal £10 fee- £5 for children- on condition they remain in Australia for two years. They became known colloquially as ‘Ten-pound Poms’.
Despite the desire of the government to increase the population through immigration, the White Australia policy remained in place. Around one thousand Filipino, Indian, Chinese and Pacific Islander refugees from were refused permission to remain in the country. Equally, Australian servicemen who married Japanese women while part of the occupation forces were refused permission to bring their wives back to Australia.
Beginning in the 1930s, radio- referred to as the ‘wireless’- and newsreels changed the Australian public’s relationship with the track. People now had an involvement- almost a sense of personal ownership in their heroes, the horses. Big, ugly wooden cabinets, became living-room objects of worship. Radio was the medium of instant communication and home entertainment, with newspapers the more leisurely source. Television was still a decade away and 2CH, for example, had programs such as Bulldog Drummond, Lady of the Heather, The Amazing Duchess and Guilty or Not Guilty? People saw replays of major races by going to theatres and watching the newsreels before the main movie.
The film The Overlanders, which became an international success, was released. Australian film and radio star Ron Randell signed a seven-year contract with Columbia Pictures in Hollywood. As a Christian nation, cinemas were closed on Sundays. In July 1946, the Australian edition of Reader’s Digest magazine began publication in Sydney. Within twenty years it had garnered a readership of over half a million.
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian National University were founded. Trans Australia Airways (TAA) began daily flights from Sydney to Melbourne. These flights became important to owners and top-flight jockeys when their horses were racing in both Sydney and Melbourne. At the time, the only decent tourist accommodation in Sydney was the Australia Hotel.
Arnott’s promoted their Shredded Wheatmeal Biscuits to women claiming ‘their delicious flavour, combined with crisp excellence, invites slow mastication- one of the great allies of fitness and well-being.’
In cricket, Richie Benaud, a sixteen-year-old Parramatta High School student, finished the season with a batting average of one hundred. He made 105 not out in the final round of the High Schools’ Competition against Hurlstone Agricultural, his third century of the season. It was reported Benaud ‘also has a fine bowling record.’ Benaud went on to captain Australia, finished his Test career with a record 248 wickets and became the doyen of television cricket commentators.
For greyhound fans, a superstar named Chief Havoc rose to become the benchmark by which many future champions were compared. A Sydney syndicate offered £1,000 for the greyhound after one of his wins; when he scored again the following week they upped the offer to £1,500. The owner declined. The amounts offered would have been enough to purchase a house in most Sydney suburbs. Chief Havoc won twenty-six of his thirty-five races and was a huge success at stud.
It was against this economic and social backdrop Bernborough strode the Australian racing stage.
-2-
‘The lousiest thing I’d ever seen’
Thursday afternoon 23 May 1940 was a typically warm one in southeast Queensland. In Europe, Hitler’s war machine was sweeping through France prompting the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, to give a morale-boosting speech to the House of Commons about “blood, toil, tears, and sweat”. Little did he, or anyone else, realise just how much blood, toil, tears, and sweat would be shed before the war was brought to an end.
For Australians, the war was a long way off and its effects relatively minimal. Life went on much as before and on that Thursday afternoon a thoroughbred dispersal sale took place on a property at Rosalie Plains, west of Brisbane, that would see possibly the greatest racehorse the nation has ever known change hands for the first -but certainly not the last- time.
The property was the estate of Harry Winten, who had died of heart failure in May 1939. Four months later, on 24 September, his broodmare Bern Maid gave birth to a bay colt foal, by the imported English sire Emborough. Just three weeks earlier Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, joined with Britain and France in declaring war on Germany over the latter’s invasion of Poland. The Second World War had begun.
During the First World War, Harry Winten was rejected for military service in Australia because he was then forty-seven years old. He went to England in 1917 and was accepted into the British army. Returning to Australia after the war, he purchased a large farm called Rosalie Plains on the Darling Downs, a fertile region in southeast Queensland. The area was infested with prickly pear; a menace to arable land so insidious the government established the Commonwealth Prickly Pear Board in 1920 to administer the eradication of the plant. The introduction of a South American caterpillar in May 1925 proved successful in destroying prickly pear over the next decade or so. For Winten, the prickly pear plague allowed him to purchase his property at a bargain-basement price.
In 1923, Winten went to Sydney and purchased a brown filly by the imported sire Bernard at the William Inglis and Son’s sales. He named her Bern Maid. The following year, Winten sent her to the splendidly-named Brisbane trainer Norman Conquest. She proved hopeless as a racehorse, failing to win or even run a place in eight starts over two campaigns. In between campaigns Winten mated her with his stallion Paddington; producing a foal he named Paddy Bernard, which won fourteen races. Bern Maid may have been hopeless as a racehorse, but she was to prove prepotent as a broodmare.
Bern Maid’s next foal, Brown Paddy won the Queensland Turf Club (QTC) Sires Produce Stakes, QTC Champagne Stakes, QTC St Leger, and the Exhibition Handicap. Three of her next five foals also proved successful on the track.
Late in 1938 Winten took Bern Maid to Kialla Stud to be mated with the imported stallion Emborough.
Andy Maguire was thirty-nine years old in 1939. Born in Melbourne, Maguire left school at twelve and after initially working for a druggist went into a finance firm. His brother was doing well as a boxer and Andy followed, winning four of his first six bouts.
In December 1916 he travelled to Sydney where the promoter had, unbeknownst to Maguire, matched him with Vince Blackburn, the Australian Bantamweight champion. The fight was a draw. The pair were re-matched for two further bouts, the first resulted in a loss on a foul and the second another draw. Maguire’s weight began to increase and since boxing purses remained small he took out a bookmaker’s licence when he turned eighteen.
Maguire fielded on the ponies at Fitzroy and Richmond and also tried his luck in Sydney. After the end of the First World War in 1918, he was enticed back into the square ring but lost a twenty-round bout on points. He continued bookmaking and boxing but was struck down by the Spanish influenza pandemic that ravaged the world between 1918 and 1920. It almost killed him (in 1919, the worst year, it claimed 11,989 Australian lives) and definitely ended his boxing career.
Maguire began fielding at Caulfield and Flemington and eventually progressed to the rails, the premier position for a bookmaker. He went on a tour to Europe in 1928 but in Germany contracted pneumonia and after returning to Australia his doctor advised him to move to a warmer part of the country. Four years later he relocated to Brisbane and met Brisbane Amateur Turf Club (BATC) chairman Terry Ahern and Michael Ryan, a QTC committeeman and owner of the Kialla Stud near Toowoomba. Ryan invited Maguire to stay for a few days at Kialla. He fell in love with the Darling Downs area and purchased Kialla, which came complete with the stallion Monash Valley -winner of the 1930 QTC Derby and QTC Claret Stakes- and two other sires of limited value.
In 1937, Maguire, in conjunction with Percy Miller, the manager and part owner of Kia Ora Stud in New South Wales, agreed to engage Reg Inglis to purchase two sires in England and share the costs of bringing them to Australia. Inglis purchased the five-year-old Emborough, and Midstream, Maguire taking the former, Miller the latter.
Emborough was by Gainsborough, winner of the 1918 English Triple Crown (Epsom Derby, Two Thousand Guineas, and St Leger) and champion English sire of 1932 and 1933. Emborough won such races as the Manchester Cup (twelve furlongs), Liverpool Autumn Cup (ten furlongs) and the one-mile Doncaster Harewood Handicap before being sold.
Maguire, hoping to attract business, offered the chestnut to breeders at a fee of sixty guineas, but gave Harry Winten a discount of five guineas for any mare he sent to the stallion. Winten sent three mares, including Bern Maid.
With Harry Winten’s death the Rosalie Plains property came under the control of his younger brother Darcy, and his family. After sorting out his brother’s affairs, Darcy Winten decided to have a dispersal sale. So it was that in May 1940, Bern Maid and her eight-month-old foal came to be Lot 3 for sale at auction.
There were a few interested parties in the mare and foal, one of whom was twenty-seven-year-old John Bach. Better known as Jack, he came to the sale with his father Frank, the pair getting a lift with their neighbour Joe Buckley from the nearby township of Oakey. On the way to the sale, Buckley “mentioned he was going to buy a mare with a colt foal at foot- none other than Bern Maid. We told him that was our plan too, and agreed that the mare and foal should go to the highest bidder. At the sale Jack overbid our friend…” said Frank Bach.
Joe Buckley made his final bid at 150 guineas. Jack Bach offered 155 guineas. No one challenged him and so Bern Maid and her colt foal were knocked down to him.
Jack Bach’s interest was in Bern Maid. Her foal, the future Bernborough, he described to Bill Ahern of the Brisbane Telegraph as “the lousiest thing I’d ever seen, literally. He’d been running out on dry grass in the middle of winter.”
Frank Bach wrote out a cheque to cover the sale. Due to wartime restrictions on the use of non-essential transport and petrol, Bern Maid and her foal had to be walked the twenty-five kilometres from Rosalie Plains to Oakey.
On 22 June (the day France concluded an armistice with Germany) Albert Hadwen, a thirty-three-year-old with a Brisbane-based panel-beating business, visited the Bach property and, after inspecting the bay colt foal by Bern Maid, agreed to pay £140 for the stripling. Jean Bach, Jack’s mother, is claimed to have suggested the name Bernborough for the horse.
Unfortunately for Jack Bach, Bern Maid died unexpectedly later in the year. Her last foal prospered under the care of the Bach’s, was broken-in by Jack’s brother Colin and in April 1941 went into the Toowoomba stables of Bob Mitchell, a forty-five-year-old veteran of the First World War. Everything should have gone smoothly from here: registration as a racehorse, trackwork, preparing for his first race and plans for his career. Yet it was all placed in jeopardy by a series of incidents that had taken place a few months before. The consequences were to have a profound effect on the racing career of the young Bernborough.
-3-
‘I suppose I will get life for this’
The racing game has always been noted for its skulduggery with some looking to gain that advantage which will see them make money, usually at the expense of the bookmakers and the general public. During times of economic hardship- and there’s no doubting the harsh effects of the Great Depression- the needy and the greedy are only too willing to test their wits against the established order of things if they think they can make a fast quid, as the pound was colloquially known.
The most common form of skulduggery was the application of helpful drugs, administered to horses to give them the extra edge needed for victory to bring off a betting plunge. A journalist writing about a stable that seemed to be consistently successful in bringing off plunges noted, ‘this particular stable has the reputation of producing its nags “chemically fit” one day, and very listless the next, with the result that the horses show great form discrepancies in their runs.’
John Hawkes, one of the leading Australian trainers of the latter part of the twentieth century and early part of the twenty-first, stated, “They say how good Phar Lap was. He must have had everything bar the kitchen sink. Everyone could do it in those days, no-one had an advantage.” The Australian Jockey Club (AJC) did not establish its first professional drug testing laboratory until 1947.
In the 1930s and 1940s registration procedures in racing were practically non-existent. Those that did exist were far from watertight. This meant horses that looked almost identical could be substituted in races. The practice was known as ‘ringing-in’. In the early 1930s one smart sprinter figured in at least four successful ring-in frauds. One of the three jockeys who won on him in Sydney was Bill Cook, one of the best hoops of his era.
Daylate was an average racehorse. Brulad was better. About the only thing they had in common was looks. At some point in mid to late 1940 someone came up with the idea of substituting the pair and racing Brulad as Daylate. At the time, Brulad was owned by Frank Bach and being trained by Clive Morgan, a former bantamweight boxer and jockey who turned owner and trainer at the age of twenty-six due to increasing weight and would go on to become a steward and later chief steward. Daylate was in the care of a P. Strickly and registered as being owned by J. Jackson.
Daylate, ridden by Russell Maddock, scored at 6/1 at Bundamba on 20 November and prompted the Brisbane Courier Mail to note, ‘although beaten in hack company at Warwick recently, Daylate was backed heavily yesterday. He won in good style and should win many more races.’
At Bundamba on 11 December he finished a close third. Taken to Eagle Farm (better known as Ascot at the time) he ran fourth. On the same program a five-year-old bay gelding named Abruzzi, who would figure significantly in Bernborough’s early career, scored his third win from his past four starts when winning the Hendra Plate by five lengths.
Daylate then won at 6/1 on 4 January over eight furlongs at Eagle Farm; the placegetters were ridden by George Moore and Noel McGrowdie respectively, two men who would figure prominently in the Bernborough story.
After his win at Eagle Farm a steward made a close inspection of Daylate and told racecourse detective Charles Prentice he thought the horse bore a remarkable resemblance to Brulad. A week later Daylate was inspected by a number of people but allowed to do trackwork.
A panel of three stewards, headed by the chairman Jim Lynch, was established to investigate the possibility Daylate had been substituted for Brulad.
The following weekend Prentice along with Jim Lynch and another steward went to Bowenville with the aim of locating J. Jackson, the man represented as the owner of Daylate. They were unable to find him. The station mistress at Bowenville told them letters addressed to J. Jackson were handed to the daughter of Frank Bach. At Oakey they visited a property owned by Frank Bach at Woodbine. Bach raced Brulad.
They conversed with Frank’s son Jack Bach and were told Brulad had returned from Brisbane in a sick condition and later died on Frank Bach’s property. Jack Bach said he saw Brulad when the horse was dead and helped his brother burn the carcass.
On Wednesday evening 15 January, detective Prentice said he went to a place in Doomben around 10:15 pm and saw a man, later identified as Frank Bach, leading a horse from a stable. According to Prentice, the man said he was waiting for a float and the horse would be taken to Oakey. “I suppose I will get life for this,” Prentice told the inquiry the man, later identified as Frank Bach, said to him. “I will take all responsibility for anything. There is nobody else but me in this.”
The man said Daylate was branded Diamond N.X. and registered to Bertie Nicol. The brand had been cancelled in February 1938. Woodbine had once been owned by Nicol and later purchased from the banks by Frank Bach.
According to Prentice the float arrived at 1:30 am.
On Thursday 16 January, Bach was interviewed by the stewards and told them Brulad had died in June 1940 and claimed Daylate was not identical. This was contradicted by trainers C. Doyle and Clive Morgan who both trained Brulad at different times and were familiar with Daylate. They told the inquiry in their opinion Brulad and Daylate were identical.
Lynch then asked Bach to “tell us anything you know about Daylate. Is he in any way identical with Brulad?”
“I gave you all the information I know on Wednesday night,” Bach replied.
Bach then claimed he didn’t know who nominated Daylate for Eagle Farm. He said he had taken the horse to the stables of J. McIlwrick on 26 December and suggested either McIlwrick or Jackson engaged Russell Maddock to ride the horse.
McIlwrick was later interviewed and confirmed Daylate had been brought to his stables on 26 December by Bach. Jackson, whom he had met just twice before, was in the float. After the races held that day Daylate was left in McIlwrick’s charge and Jackson sent him £3 to pay training costs.
“Last Wednesday night Bach came for the horse. I told him I had been instructed to keep it under lock and key. Then I went down the road. When I came back the horse was gone. Later I saw two men with the horse,” McIlwrick told the inquiry.
Bach agreed Brulad and Daylate had similarities but was able to tell them apart when Lynch showed him a pair of photographs of the two horses. Bach then asked, “With all these questions don’t you think I should have a solicitor?”
Lynch said he was simply a layman asking questions that needed answering. Bach replied he had been answering the questions put to him honestly. He admitted he received and cashed the prize-money cheques from Ipswich when Daylate won there on 20 November 1940, claiming to have later met Jackson who endorsed the cheques.
Asked if he had reported Brulad’s death, Bach said he told Clive Morgan and a doctor, but not the QTC.
Morgan was questioned and stated he thought Brulad and Daylate were one and the same or they were twin brothers. He could not, however, reconcile the brand on Daylate and had never noticed any brand on Brulad. Bach said Brulad did have a brand that a stock inspector noted was ‘undistinct (sic) on near shoulder.’ Doyle, who also trained Brulad, thought Daylate identical.
Bach said he could produce two witnesses to say they had seen Brulad dead and burned.
The stewards interviewed Russell Maddock who claimed he had been engaged by Frank Bach on behalf of Jackson to ride Daylate. Maddock said on the morning of 4 January Bach visited his house. He never saw Jackson again.
Maddock also said when he won the race on Daylate at Ipswich he received a “money present from Bach.”
Bach asked, “When I gave you the money I told you it was a present from Jackson?”
“Yes,” replied Maddock.
Bach claimed Jackson filled in the nomination forms for the races himself but a Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) handwriting expert said he was prepared to swear the nominations for Daylate at Ipswich and [Eagle Farm]…were written by the person who registered Brulad, Daylate and others and who had signed a letter ‘F. Bach’ dated 4 April 1939. He said the endorsement on a cheque for QTC prizemoney was by the same person.
Jim Lynch then asked Bach, “You say you did not sign the nominations and the cheque?”
“I am not answering,” replied Bach.
“Did you collect the prize-money Brulad won?” Lynch asked Bach.
“I am finished answering questions,” replied Bach. “Unless I can have somebody with me. It has gone too far for me.”
“You don’t admit you registered Daylate or filled in the registration?”
“No.”
“Or that you nominated Daylate and signed ‘Jackson’?” asked Lynch.
“No. Unless you let me get help I am going to leave the room,” stated Bach.
“I cannot give you help. I am not a solicitor or barrister. You have only to answer questions plainly and truthfully,” replied Lynch.
On Monday 20 January 1941, Frank Bach was disqualified for life by the QTC for allegedly racing Brulad as Daylate on four occasions between 20 November at Bundamba and Eagle Farm on 4 January 1941. The stewards stated they were satisfied Bach adopted fraudulent practices by nominating the horse in the name of J. Jackson for the Bundamba and Eagle Farm races.
Frank Bach, who had been asked to bring J. Jackson, the owner of Daylate, to the inquiry, claimed he had not seen him. He also said his son Jack Bach declined to attend, but that P. Strickly, Daylate’s trainer, was available for questioning. Yet Strickly, like the mysterious Jackson, doesn’t seem to have ever appeared before the stewards.
On 2 October 1941, at a sitting of the Toowoomba Circuit Court, Frank Bach and two others were charged with conspiracy to obtain money by fraudulent means. The period of the conspiracy was allegedly between early April 1940 (before the Winten dispersal sale took place) and the beginning of January 1941, when Bernborough was still residing on Frank Bach’s farm. All three men pleaded not guilty. Six days later the jury charged with hearing the case brought down a ‘not guilty’ verdict. No other charges were ever brought against the men.
The Brisbane Telegraph commented,‘Daylate may or may not have been identical with Brulad. It will never be decided in actual fact, for neither horse has been seen by racing officials since the night of 15 January 1941, when ‘a horse’ was removed at dead of night from McIlwrick’s Hendra stables.’
Jack Bach later said Brulad was never harmed. Decades later Bach claimed the truck carrying Brulad had stopped “halfway to Toowoomba near the Murphy’s Creek turn-off [and] a man with a bridle and saddle stepped out from the shadows. Brulad was unloaded, bridled, and saddled. The mystery man mounted and rode off into the night.” This completely contradicted what his father told the steward’s inquiry: that Brulad had died in June 1940.
The two barristers acting for Bach, Gordon Garland and Dan Casey, later claimed Frank had taken them up to his stables and shown them a bay two-year-old with a star on his forehead. Garland claimed Bach told them to look closely at the horse because, “One day he will be a champion.” Of course, the colt in this apocryphal story was Bernborough.
Bernborough made his racing debut at the tough Clifford Park racecourse in Toowoomba- where the last five furlongs are run slightly uphill- on Australia Day, 26 January 1942. Three days earlier, Japanese forces captured the strategic port of Rabaul on New Britain while in Malaya, British and Australian forces were in full retreat down the peninsula to fortress Singapore, known as the ‘Gibraltar of the East’.
Bernborough was already a big horse for a two-year-old. Apart from his height, his other distinguishing feature was the white star on his forehead. Strangely, while the mane of almost all horses drops to the off (right) side, Bernborough was the one in a thousand whose fell on the near (left) side. He was carrying the featherweight of 113 pounds in a five-furlong Maiden Handicap of eleven runners. The topweight, and favourite at even-money, was Blue Val with 121 pounds.
Trainer Mitchell had engaged the services of Jack Wales, the Dux of the QTC’s first Apprentices’ School in 1939. Bernborough had been trialling well and both Hadwen and Mitchell thought he could win first-up. He was well supported in the betting ring and started second favourite at 5/2.
The favourite Blue Val began well and led coming into the straight from Dunfor and Cockatoo. That’s how they finished, Blue Val downing Dunfor by two lengths with a neck to Cockatoo.
According to some reports Bernborough finished fairly well into fourth place. Hadwen -disappointed in the effort- immediately agreed to lease Bernborough to thirty-nine-year-old Frank Roberts, a Toowoomba shopkeeper and horse float operator, for eighteen months. Jack Wales was called up for military service soon after the meeting and never sat astride him again.
According to the results published in the Courier Mail on 27 January 1942, Bernborough actually finished ninth, beating just two runners home. A horse named Amber On was credited with fourth place.
This would explain why Hadwen was so ready to lease Bernborough to Frank Roberts. After all, if the horse had indeed ‘flashed home’ to run fourth it is more likely Hadwen would have persevered with him and at least given him another chance. If the finish positions in the Courier Mail are accurate and Bernborough managed to beat home just two of his ten rivals, then the decision to lease him becomes more logical.
Bob Mitchell was not in the best of health and asked local trainer Gordon Neale to help him in the preparation for Bernborough’s second start. Neale later recalled, “Bernborough was a magnificent intelligent horse. If he were human you would have considered him as being one of nature’s gentlemen.”
The colt gave a glimpse of his emerging ability when he won by ten lengths in a three-furlong track gallop, running a brilliant 36½ seconds. He was more than ready to show his true form at his next outing. It nearly didn’t take place.
-4-
‘He should do well in the south’
On 2 February, Hadwen and Mitchell nominated Bernborough for a five-furlong Maiden Handicap at Toowoomba. The nomination was accepted but then the QTC intervened and ordered an inquiry be held into the ownership of the horse.
According to receipts from the Winten dispersal sale, the purchase of Bern Maid and her foal was registered in the name of Jack Bach, with Frank Bach writing out a personal cheque for full payment. Albert Hadwen had been issued with a receipt written by Jack Bach for his purchase of the foal now known as Bernborough. The QTC, having been burnt by the Daylate-Brulad fiasco, refused to believe the sale to Hadwen was genuine and consequently were not prepared to permit Bernborough to race in the Brisbane metropolitan area.
The case against Bernborough as far as the officials of the QTC were concerned centred around the fact the horse resided at Frank Bach’s property between May 1940, when he and Bern Maid had been purchased, and April 1941, when the colt went into the stables of Bob Mitchell. Had the horse not been on property owned by the Bach family the chances are the dispute over his ownership might never have arisen.
They later terminated the inquiry but told connections the horse would not be eligible to race in Brisbane until the suspicions surrounding Bernborough’s ownership were settled beyond reasonable doubt. Until then he would be restricted to Toowoomba.
Forty-four-year-old lightweight journeyman jockey Les Watterson was given the ride for the Maiden Handicap run on 7 February. Opposed to seven others, Bernborough, with just 115 pounds on his tall and still gangly frame, was sent to the barrier tapes as a 5/2 favourite.
Bernborough was drawn next to the rails in the number one slot but began only fairly when the starter let them go. Dunfor shot across from the outside and crossed sharply towards the rails causing interference to Bernborough and a couple of other runners as he raced to the lead. Dunfor held the lead from the start and held on to defeat the fast finishing Bernborough by half a length.
Coming back to scale Watterson fired in a protest against the winner. Stewards had clearly seen Dunfor cause interference and had no hesitation in upholding the protest and declaring Bernborough the winner.
Hadwen, watching how well the horse ran, regretted his decision to lease him to Roberts. Nonetheless, he was a man of his word and on 23 February 1942 Bernborough was officially leased to Roberts for eighteen months.
Bernborough had been nominated for the 14 February race meeting at Bundamba and a Two-Year-Old Handicap on the Albion Park sand track on 28 February. Both nominations were rejected by QTC officials without any reason being given. By then, Singapore had surrendered to the Japanese and Darwin heavily bombed. Australia looked to be facing imminent invasion.
Bernborough’s next race came on 7 March, at Toowoomba. Les Watterson was unavailable so Harold McFarlane, who had once been apprenticed to leading Sydney trainer Bayley Payten, took the mount. Carrying 119 pounds, Bernborough started a 5/4 favourite but missed the start and was last in the middle stages of the race. He stormed home in the final furlong but was beaten a long head by the Clive Morgan-trained Wee Did, who had led from the start. They streeted the others, the third placegetter six lengths adrift.
Prior to his next race, the Toowoomba Chronicle newspaper noted, ‘If Bernborough does as well as expected in the Two Year Old race at Clifford Park on Saturday he will go to Sydney in the near future. He should do well in the south, especially now that the two-year-old races there are being run over a bit of distance. Bernborough does not begin brilliantly, but appeals as a likely stayer.’ With Les Watterson back in the saddle Bernborough came from behind in the early stages to win the five-and-a-half furlongs race by one length.
On 4 April, Bernborough was sent out an even-money favourite over five furlongs at Toowoomba despite the fact he would be carrying his heaviest impost to date- 120 pounds- and the track was drenched by heavy rain that hit Toowoomba in the early afternoon. Last early in the field of seven, Bernborough was still six lengths off the lead with four furlongs to run, but by the time the field turned their heads for home he had charged to the front and came away to score by three and a half lengths.
With impressive victories at his past two starts, Bernborough was claimed to be the best two-year-old racing in Toowoomba. Yet for some unexplained reason the officials charged with the fair conduct of racing in Queensland appeared determined to find any excuse to maintain a ban on the horse performing at any racecourse other than Toowoomba by invoking Rule 62. The racing equivalent of Catch 22, this rule allowed QTC stewards to deny a horse a start or scratch a horse without giving a reason. Swabbing had yet to be introduced in Queensland and with ring-ins and drug usage hardly uncommon, Rule 62 proved a great asset. No allegation or charge had to be laid, just a suspicion a horse might have been ‘hit’ with an illegal substance or was not who he was purported to be could be good enough to see the animal scratched or denied permission to race.
The QTC’s attitude towards Bernborough may well have been a form of revenge against Frank Bach for having managed to overturn his disqualification. There is almost no doubt in the light of the evidence presented at the time that the horse who raced as Daylate was in fact Brulad. The QTC may have lost the resultant court battle, but its officials seemed determined to find any excuse to use against the Bach’s and restrict them to their own turf. Denying their horses a clearance to race in Brisbane also meant the rest of Australia was effectively barred as interstate tracks required a horse to be cleared by the QTC if it was to race outside Queensland.
In modern times connections would doubtless appeal to the press or even to the courts on the grounds of harassment. After all, the basis of law is that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Yet time and again in the case of Bernborough and his ownership the onus of proof fell not to the prosecutors but to the defendants. The entire fiasco reeked of personal vendetta using the methods of the Star Chamber.
Jim Lynch, the Chairman of the QTC stewards, was not convinced Albert Hadwen was the genuine owner of Bernborough. For this reason, the QTC instructed George Kirk, the chief steward at Toowoomba, to conduct an inquiry into the horse’s ownership.
The inquiry began on 27 April 1942. Albert Hadwen, Frank Roberts, and Bob Mitchell were asked to give statements to the stewards.
The stewards suggested that after Frank Bach’s disqualification in January 1941 he conspired with Hadwen to place Bernborough in the latter’s name yet still control the horse. It was strongly rumoured Hadwen was related to the Bach family in some way. The stewards claimed there had been no earlier evidence of Bernborough’s sale to Hadwen. Among the pieces of evidence produced by Hadwen were cheque stubs to prove he had paid money from his account as well as a receipt for the purchase of Bernborough, dated 22 June 1940.
Mitchell was unable to attend the inquiry but wrote a statement saying he had broken Bernborough in and marked the horse with Hadwen’s brand. Hadwen had sent the brand from Brisbane for this purpose. Mitchell stated he had only dealt with Hadwen and Frank Roberts, no one else.
The brief inquiry concluded Albert Hadwen was indeed the bona fide owner of Bernborough. To all intents and purposes this should have cleared the way for the horse to be nominated at any track in Queensland, and by extension, the rest of the country. Perhaps Lynch and his QTC stewards were disappointed Kirk failed to deliver the result they expected. In spite of the findings of the inquiry the QTC stewards continued to refuse to issue a clearance for the horse.
Early in May, the QTC rejected a nomination for the horse to race at Albion Park. The stewards told the press they would not allow Bernborough to start in the Brisbane area while ever they suspected Frank Bach of retaining an interest in the horse. Frank Roberts nominated the horse a second time for Albion Park, this time for a seven-furlong race on 9 May. Once more the nomination was rejected.
Soon after, the Downs and South-Western District Racing Association, which controlled Toowoomba, granted Frank Roberts an owner’s permit to train Bernborough. The Courier Mail was baffled by the QTC’s attitude toward the horse, stating it was one of the more amazing turf mysteries especially as stewards had not produced any evidence contradicting the veracity of Albert Hadwen’s statements.
At his first outing for Roberts, on 16 May, Bernborough was assigned 134 pounds, a huge impost for a two-year-old. Ridden by Les Watterson, he faced just four opponents in a five-and-a-half furlongs race. He came from last at the three furlongs to breeze past his rivals in the straight and score by an easy two lengths from Logie O’Buchan (a Brisbane winner who was carrying just 105 pounds) in a fast 1:11.
The Courier Mail reported, ‘The future of Bernborough, considered one of the best two-year-olds the Downs has produced, remains obscure. Brisbane stewards continue to refuse his nominations for Brisbane races, and give no reason. Bernborough’s nomination for Brisbane races has been twice refused.’
Increasingly frustrated, Roberts obtained a clearance from George Kirk for the horse to race in Sydney. Bernborough and Roberts left Toowoomba on 12 June; just twelve days after three Japanese midget submarines had caused havoc in Sydney Harbour by sinking the depot ship HMAS Kuttabul. Four days later, Roberts and Bernborough arrived in Sydney and went into stables at Rosehill racecourse.
Les Watterson’s twenty-two-year-old son Neil rode the big horse in trackwork. Neil Watterson had ridden Pantler to third place behind Rivette in the 1939 Melbourne Cup. He would become the last person directly connected in some way with Bernborough to pass away when he breathed his last on 2 July 2005, sixty-three years after partnering the big bay.
On 26 June, AJC stewards dropped a bombshell by informing Roberts they would not accept any nominations for Bernborough unless a clearance was also issued by the QTC. Given their previous intransigence, it came as no surprise to Roberts the QTC refused to issue a clearance. Thwarted, the pair left Sydney on 1 July.
Roberts felt the only way he could obtain justice was via the legal system. Accordingly he issued a writ in the Supreme Court on 24 July against the Queensland Turf Club. Roberts alleged the QTC’s actions in failing to issue a clearance for Bernborough to race in Sydney was wrongful and illegal, in breech of, and contrary to, the rules of the QTC and rules of racing, and in excess of their powers under the rules. The lessee sought an injunction to restrain the QTC from continuing to reject Bernborough’s nomination as well as seeking damages for these allegedly illegal actions, as well as suing for defamation. The legal action ultimately failed.
In January 1960, the Courier Mail reported Terry Ahern -then Chairman of the BATC- wanted to purchase Bernborough in 1942 but was unable to gain the consent of the QTC to lift the ban on the horse. If a senior racing official considered beyond reproach was unable to gain assurances about being able to race one of the best horses in the state then the entire scenario takes on a sinister aspect. If the sale of Bernborough to Ahern could have been shown to be one hundred percent genuine, why would the controlling persons within the QTC continue to refuse to accept the nomination of the horse? Surely the only conclusion is this truly was a personal vendetta aimed squarely at the Bach family.
-5-
‘Champion of the Downs’
Bernborough resumed racing, as a three-year-old, on 1 August in a Third Division Handicap over six furlongs at Toowoomba, for the first time opposing older horses. By this time there was no grass-track racing in Brisbane with the closure of Eagle Farm and Doomben, so competition in Toowoomba was very strong.
With only 105 pounds to carry, Bernborough was ridden by Tom Dwyer. Topweight with 130 pounds was Godfrey M., owned by Clive Morgan. Named after Morgan’s father- a former Queensland Minister for Transport- Godfrey M. had run third in the 1941 Stradbroke Handicap. Given his light weight punters rallied to Bernborough and he went onto the track as a firm 6/4 favourite against his six opponents.
Wedbridge took the lead in the early stages and at one point led Godfrey M. by four lengths with Bernborough a further two lengths back on the outside. In the straight, both Godfrey M. and Bernborough raced past Wedbridge. In the run to the judge Bernborough and Godfrey M. raced almost as one, but on the line Bernborough prevailed by just half a head. Wedbridge was five lengths back in third place; he later went on to win a Stradbroke Handicap.
After the race, breeder Andy Maguire offered Hadwen 1,500 guineas for Bernborough. Hadwen declined.
Just a few days after this strong win, the Courier Mail reported, ‘Queensland three-year-old Bernborough is rated highly by southern bookmakers, as he is one of the most fancied in that class for the coming Melbourne Cup. Southern fielders have Bernborough, Hall Stand and Riverton among the best three-year-olds engaged in the race. Bernborough has won several races, and in each case he has finished well, suggesting that he will be a contender for distance honours.’ As it happened bookmakers in the southern states were spared the sight of a rampant Bernborough charging home to overwhelm classy fields for more than three years.
Bernborough did not appear on the racetrack again for almost six months. In the meantime, the war in the Pacific first stabilised and then the tide turned heavily in favour of the Allied forces. Victories at the Battle of Midway, Milne Bay, along the Kokoda Track and in Guadalcanal finally made Australia safe from invasion. In North Africa, the British Eighth Army decisively defeated the Germans at the battle of El Alamein and began the drive that would eventually see the collapse of Germany in Africa.
Bernborough resumed racing on 23 January 1943 (the same day the British army entered Tripoli) in a First Division Handicap over seven furlongs at Toowoomba. Andrew Tindall, a soldier on leave, took the ride as Bernborough was handicapped with just 114 pounds, a weight Les Watterson couldn’t make. Against just six others, Bernborough was sent out an odds-on favourite and didn’t let his supporters down, cruising home five lengths clear of Shotover. Third-placed Denice W. was a further five lengths adrift. On what was a heavy track, Bernborough ran just 1:31.
Tindall survived the war and continued riding until the early 1960s. He became a steward in 1964 and rose to be appointed QTC chairman of stewards ten years later, holding the post until his retirement in 1985.
Asked to carry 123 pounds at his next start, on 13 February, Les Watterson returned to the saddle. Running over seven furlongs Bernborough again scored easily, downing Denice W. by four lengths.
Bernborough made it seven wins in a row on 10 April when he carried 126 pounds to defeat Yeoman by two lengths, again over seven furlongs and once more with Les Watterson aboard. Bernborough ran the trip in 1:26.4, equalling Yeoman’s track record. Watterson had now ridden the horse six times for six wins, but little did he know this would be the last time he partnered the big bay.