The rolling, verdant paddocks beside the Hunter River are a long way from the (then) gravel streets of Sydney’s Silverwater in the late 1940s – and later Waterloo – where a young Kevin Maloney was raised in the orbit of his publican father’s love of racing, be it trotters, greyhounds or thoroughbreds.

“My father bought the Zetland Hotel right in the heart of the lovely downtown slum areas of Waterloo,” Mr Maloney said.