Volume I: The Beginnings (1987)

Volume One, first published in 1987, and re-released with updates in 2008, remains the only comprehensive, national account of the beginnings of racing around Australia. It is a surprisingly complex story because horse racing quickly appeared in every settlement and was soon followed as the leading sport in colonial times. A whole volume is needed to tell the story from the beginnings up to the time of the first Melbourne Cup in 1861.

The research goes back to the era when Australian capital cities were mere country towns, when flags and ropes defined racetracks across scrubby plains, when horses walked hundreds of miles to compete, then raced in heats – two, three or even four times a day.

We go back to the time when handicaps were hardly known, when owners often rode their own horses in races and when two-horse match races were commonplace.

We discover the origins of Australia’s time honoured race courses and rediscover courses that are no longer even memories – Adelaide’s Thebarton, Hobart’s New Town, the Launceston Common, Brisbane’s New Farm and Sydney’s Petersham, Newtown, Burwood and Homebush. We see the Melbourne Racecourse evolve into Flemington, the Sandy Race Course reborn as Randwick and the swampy riverside on the Swan become Ascot in Perth.