Life As I Know It (9 page)

Our lives revolved around horses. It was a life in two parts: the joy of riding them, and the hard work of looking after them. Even when we lived at The Farm in Rochy, Dad always kept a few horses around. When I first started riding trackwork there, it was on old Rudimentale. He was Therese's horse and he was the horse that in my quiet times I used to go and lie in the paddock in the sunshine with. I'd feel his warmth. Feel his breath. Smell him. And pat him. And then give him something special to eat. He was a lovely horse. He was always placid, so Dad and Andrew decided he would be a good horse for me to learn to canter, without a lead. Being around seven-and-a-half, I was a bit nervous, and despite Rudimentale being super lazy, he sensed this nervousness
and the second time I cantered on my own he took off flat out on me.

My first job was to muck out the boxes. I would get up with everyone very early in the morning and go down to the stables to work with Stevie. The older kids would saddle the horses and take them out to work. Stevie and I had to clean out the boxes before they got back. We'd fork and sweep out the soiled straw. Stevie would put it in the wheelbarrow and push it to the heap. He'd take ages to come back for the next load. Time would be getting away and I'd be wondering what he was doing out there. If they got back and we hadn't done the four or five empty boxes the older kids would get so angry with me.

‘What have you kids been doing? How come these boxes aren't finished?' I would be trying to do my best but I wouldn't say anything against Stevie.

One day I got jack of it and went looking for Stevie. I found him sitting between the handles of the wheelbarrow on the way out to the manure heap having a spell, talking to himself, laughing away.

‘So this is what you do,' I yelled at him. ‘No wonder we're always late. No wonder I'm always in trouble.' I was angry. It was always my fault and that wasn't fair.

When he got back to the box we were still arguing. He was making me so frustrated, I punched him in the belly. I have never felt so bad as I did then, because I winded him and he was crying. Although we'd argue and fight, and Stevie had hit me before in a boxing match arranged by the older kids—mainly Patrick—Stevie could never bring himself to hit me in the run of everyday life. Our little touch-up seemed to work, though. He never took as long from then on.

Clocking someone was part of family life. The boys were always fighting—and it was not uncommon for one of the girls to be sporting a shiner as well. Dad bought a pair of boxing gloves and
that's how Patrick and Andrew would sort out their differences. I used to put them on as well. So we all learned to handle ourselves.

Feed-up time was a real team effort. Someone had to make up the feeds, and crushing the oats was the worst because it was such an itchy job. Everyone tried to get out of that job and do something else. Someone would bring in fresh straw from the hay shed in a wheelbarrow for the boxes, and someone else would be laying it down in the boxes. Another kid would put fresh water in each box. Anything but crushing the oats …

When the horses were brought in at night, the chaff also had to be made up, which meant putting lucerne into the hay cutter—just as bad as the oat crusher as all the dust would get down your shirt and make you unbearably itchy. Thankfully Dad used to do this job most of the time if he wasn't at the races. He used to put a towel around his neck to stop it from getting down there. The horses that didn't come in at night also needed their water troughs filled up and feeds taken out to them.

As it was getting dark, Dad would make up the bran mash—fine bran mixed with molasses and hot water. I would do the final round with him, giving the horses a couple of handfuls each of the mash. We'd go to each box inside, where the better horses were stabled, and he'd put his big hands in the white buckets and feed them. The horses loved it and there was no doubt they were Dad's mates. They'd rub against him affectionately as he'd give them a pat with his clean hand and some of the older ones would give Dad a little neigh as he opened the box door.

As we turned off the lights I would take hold of Dad's hand and we'd walk home under the moonlit sky back to the house to have dinner. I used to hold Dad's hand wherever we walked and usually I'd have to break into a little jog to keep up with him.

After we had returned to Home from Rochy, some of the older kids moved away. Their blossoming riding careers took them to Melbourne and around the Victorian countryside. Bernadette was based in Adelaide for a while, where she had a lot of success. Patrick was riding in Hong Kong. I remember the day Patrick won the Doncaster Handicap when he was sixteen. Seeing him ride and win, I was just thinking about what he was doing—how he rode, his patience, his hands. He has the best hands to get a horse to settle, and patience in the finish. You'd be thinking he was waiting too long but then he'd pull it off. He just knows his horse; knows how to read them. And he was never much of a whip rider. He always got the horse going more through encouragement rather than the whip. He's like that now with his training. He's very kind to the horse. It's all about the kindness, unless they obviously need some standing over. But when I did a lot of trackwork for him, when I was about fifteen and onwards, he was very hard on me, a real arsehole at times. Looking back now it toughened me up and made me a lot more capable.

Once the older kids moved on it meant I was given more of the responsibility of working the horses in the mornings. Maybe two or three horses would need a gallop. From when I was about eleven Dad would let me gallop up the paddock in a straight line with Cathy and Andrew. The horses knew to stop at the top. As I got older I progressed to riding beside the car. He'd get me to rate the horse. We'd do evens, which is 15 seconds for 200 metres, and then we'd work a little faster. Dad taught me the importance of knowing precisely how fast your mount was going, to develop a way of understanding time and speed. It took a lot of practice, a lot of hours in the saddle.

Because I was little and not very strong, I knew I had to develop a technique to get the horse to do what I wanted it to do. And when you're a little kid from Our Lady Help of Christians hurtling
along at 45 kilometres per hour on a frosty Ballarat morning, you have to concentrate. Technique was everything. I had to learn to find the rhythm, learn to soften my hands and the horse's mouth to have it come back underneath me. Dad would get me to practise riding on the bomby old pushbike, as if it was a horse, for balance. When I was going as fast as I could along the members' drive of the Ballarat Racecourse, I'd pull out the whip and get that pushbike first over the line. It helped me develop the rhythm of the action while staying balanced.

At the end of each gallop in the mornings, Dad would make a few observations and suggestions. Then I'd go in for a shower and something to eat and we'd head in to school, arriving four hours or so after I'd first woken up.

By the time I was thirteen I was riding on the training tracks at Ballarat. I felt very much at home there, and I was looking forward to the day when I got a start in an actual race.

Dad taught us to walk the track. He reckons it's one of the most important things, to find out where the better going would be. One time there was a meeting coming up at Ballarat and Therese was riding one of our horses. She was in The Next Room, lying on the couch watching
Days of Our Lives
.

‘Like sands through the hourglass,' came the voiceover, ‘so are the
Days of Our Lives
.' Dad was in the kitchen.

‘Come on, Therese,' he called. ‘We're going up to walk the track, for the races tomorrow.' Dad thought his horse could win and the track was heavy, so he was after any advantage. The horse had drawn wide, and would start from an outside barrier, and he thought that if Therese plotted a course out wide, down the back straight, the ground might have been firmer and faster and would save the horse's energy for the finish. But he had to check it out and show Therese where to cut across before the corner so she didn't waste too much ground on being wide by the time she turned.

Therese didn't move. This was her favourite show.

‘Therese! Come on!'

Grudgingly she trudged out with him, into the mist of the Ballarat winter. She knew she had to go but she was back pretty soon.

Dad always brings this story up because Therese hadn't really paid attention and when the time came for the race she just got beat. Dad was so angry. He was certain she had misjudged it. After much debate he dragged her back out again into the cold to look at where the footmarks of the horse were to make his point. She was the only jockey who took that path so it was clear where she had ridden. Dad was right and still to this day he says she would have won if she'd listened and not been annoyed about missing
Days of Our Lives
. It was a valuable lesson about how racing is a game of tiny margins.

As I got older I could see the benefit of walking the track, to see where the muddy patches were, to see where the divots were messy, and to see where the better going was. It was a sensible and practical thing to do, so I have always done it. It leaves one less thing to chance—to decide whether going the extra distance of sitting away from the running rail or going through the muddy patch can be a real equation. Sometimes it can be a real advantage to put in the extra thought and effort.

Dad was definitely not infallible, though. Sunny Glow was a grey horse we got from Kevin ‘Dummy' Myers. Dad always used to say Dummy by name but not by nature. The Myers were really close family friends from New Zealand. Sunny Glow was taking off in his trackwork with Cathy and me—Dad's main trackwork riders at the time—so he had nothing left for his races.

Dad thought he'd try working Sunny Glow behind the four-wheel drive in The 40-Acre Paddock, telling both Cathy and me to take turns in riding him just behind the car. Cathy or I would
start him off, cantering behind the car, but neither of us would get far; he'd just go flying past the car. He'd gallop flat out for a lap, about 1800 metres around. By the time we stopped, Dad would be going mad.

‘What happened? I told you to stay behind the car.'

‘Dad,' we'd say each time, ‘he's going to run into the back of the car if we do.'

‘He won't run into the back of the car.'

‘He will, Dad.' He would send us back out next time and once again we'd fly past the car. Dad got so angry. After a few goes at this he came up with a plan.

I'd drive, even though I didn't have a licence, Cathy would ride and he'd sit on the back of the car with its tray down. He was going to shoo him away from the back of the car if he got too close. As we got to cruising speed I looked back in disbelief—Sunny Glow was galloping all over the tray at the back of the car, right near Dad's legs, which were hanging over it, and Dad was unable to do anything to stop him.

Cathy was completely out of control. I was in shock, and I didn't think to drive faster. They were yelling, ‘Speed up! Speed up!' So off I went.

Thankfully both the horse and rider were okay when we came to a stop. Cathy and I just looked at each other. Dad was shaking his head.

‘Well, I didn't think he would do that.'

‘We told you he would, Dad.' It was one of the only times I've seen Dad beaten.

‘Who'd have thought?' he kept saying, ‘that a horse would run into the back of a car.' We didn't try it again.

After I left Loreto I felt I was ready to ride in a race and in February 2001 Dad agreed to let me. He put me on Reigning in a very average 2200-metre race at Ballarat.

The days leading up to the race passed slowly. I would be on a gentle giant, seventeen-hands high, trained by my dad; I was nervous and excited. I didn't sleep well maybe for a week before—running the race over and over in my head, thinking of how I wanted to ride a horse I knew so well. I ran the course every day the week before, planning my race, imagining what I would do at what point.

Sitting in the barriers before the race I must have looked really anxious. My barrier attendant was Darren Browell.

‘Just take a deep breath,' he said to me. ‘It'll be okay.'

I've never forgotten that, it's something that's stuck in my head my whole career. Even to this day, whenever I feel a bit nervous, I say to myself, ‘It'll be okay.'

The gates opened and away we went. Reigning went to the lead and travelled beautifully in front. I took him easy up the hill and let him slide down it as I strode along the back straight. Approaching the 1000-metre mark I allowed him to quicken slightly. He was a big striding horse and a bit of a lazy bugger, so I felt if he had a bit of a break it might encourage him to try a bit harder. When I turned for home and balanced him up I increased to full speed. He lengthened beautifully and went on to win by three lengths.

My school friends from Loreto College were cheering me over the line. I was so thrilled the girls were there. It really was a fairytale start to my career in the saddle. Dad looked really pleased, and maybe a little surprised.