When Melbourne boasted an array of local racetracks
THERE was a time when Melbourne boasted an incredible variety of racecourses outside of the big four that exist today. From Richmond to Mentone, Mordialloc to Williamstown, take a tour of our racetracks of yesteryear.
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MELBOURNE had an incredible variety of racecourses from its earliest days until World War II, when the Victorian government deemed that the metropolitan area should only have four racetracks.
Flemington, Moonee Valley, Caulfield and Sandown Park survived, but racecourses were once dotted right around the metropolitan area.
Some were little more than bush tracks. Others were well established courses with grandstands and modern facilities. Some were operated by racing clubs, and some were privately-owned proprietary tracks. Thoroughbreds raced on some courses, while those of mixed stock known as ponies galloped at others.
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But the prominence of racecourses around Melbourne showed that racing was once first past the post in our city’s sporting culture.
BATMAN’S HILL
Melbourne’s first racecourse was on Batman’s Hill on the site now occupied by Southern Cross railway station and the rail yard west of the CBD.
Its first meeting in March 1838 predated Flemington by two years. The starting post was near present-day North Melbourne railway station.
The first railway station at the Spencer Street site opened in 1859.
WILLIAMSTOWN
Racing at Williamstown began in 1859. Years of lobbying for a racecourse in the area finally bore fruit just days after a Williamstown horse, Flying Buck, won the Australian Champion Sweepstakes at Flemington.
At first, there was one race meeting a year at the new course on the banks of the Kororoit Creek (on Boxing Day) but by 1865 a wider calendar had developed. The Williamstown Racing Club was established in 1868.
Floods in 1902 and 1918 caused meetings to be moved to Moonee Valley and Caulfield.
Even the great Phar Lap ran at Williamstown, winning the Underwood Stakes there in 1931.
The MCG, Caulfield Racecourse and Williamstown Racecourse were taken over by the government for military use during World War II, but things got rocky after the war.
A Victorian government rationalisation of racing in Melbourne dictated that there should be only four courses in metropolitan Melbourne — Flemington, Caulfield, Moonee Valley and Williamstown.
But behind the scenes, there was pressure for the club to merge with the Victorian Trotting and Racing Association, which was owned by private racecourse owner and colourful racing identity John Wren.
Wren had made his fortune in the 1890s in a form of off-course totaliser betting, and progressively used his wealth to buy a series of private racecourses around Melbourne despite the opposition of the Victoria Racing Club and others.
But working class punters loved Wren’s down-market product compared to the thoroughbreds run by the Victoria Racing Club.
A suspicious fire took out two of the grandstands at Williamstown in January 1947. The next year, Wren took compensation from the government for the closure of his racecourse at Ascot Vale to re-open Sandown (which had been closed since 1931, creating a modern rival for Williamstown.
Members of the Williamstown Racing Club merged with Wren’s VTRA to form the Melbourne Racing Club.
The racecourse at Williamstown was used by the state government to house displaced war veterans and migrants. Today, the site is the Altona Coastal Park. Racecourse Road leads to the park.
ASCOT
Ascot was a privately operated racetrack that was bounded by Union, Ascot Vale and Maribyrnong roads in Ascot Vale.
Its first race meeting was held in October 1893, much to the chagrin of 122 local residents who petitioned Essendon council to scotch the proposal because of the number of courses already in the area and their fear an influx of undesirables might reduce their property values.
The 1400-metre track operated trots, flat racing and steeplechases.
John Wren purchased the track in 1906 and offered the track for military use in 1915, sparking an immediate call from opponents to have the track’s licence to operate as a proprietary racecourse revoked.
Ascot was again taken over by the Commonwealth for military use in WWII, but racing did not resume there after the war, with the state government compulsorily acquiring the 31-hectare site in 1946 for £117,000 for use by the Housing Commission. Wren valued the site at £174,000 and took the government to court, but the government settled and met Wren half way at £142,000.
The Victorian government took control of the course at Ascot to build public housing, much of which still remains just east of the Showgrounds.
Wren took the £142,000 compensation he received from the government for the closure of Ascot to later re-open Sandown, a course that had been closed by the state government in 1931.
MORDIALLOC
This old proprietary racecourse was the home of the Mordialloc Racing Club. It was established in 1887 by Alfred Bradshaw and was known as Richfield in an area near present-day Boundary and Springvale roads in Braeside.
The course was not a financial success, despite a spate of meetings held there, and it closed in 1889.
EPSOM
The Epsom racecourse at Mordialloc began its racing program in June 1889, the year Richfield closed.
Owner James Smith Jenkins, a successful land speculator, built Epsom at the corner of White Street and Boundary Road, using renowned architect Philip E. Treeby to design the grandstand with seating for about 3000 people.
The picturesque course boasted a clock tower, fountains and lawns, with views to Port Phillip and the Dandenongs and rooms for the jockeys, stewards and committee members.
Around the turn of the 20th century, the Epsom Turf Club was established and a company to manage the proprietary course followed in 1909. The course was sold to the Epsom Turf Club in 1924. The original main grandstand was refurbished in 1936 but accidentally burned down two years later.
This ended Epsom’s days as a racing track but it remained in service as a training track and a hub for the racing community in Melbourne’s south.
The course was later taken over by the Victoria Racing Club, which shut the track with around 40 trainers still resident there in 1997.
MENTONE
The Mentone Racing Company was established in 1888, and the course was built on around 60 hectares of land in an area north of Lower Dandenong Road.
The first races were held there in September 1888, with several thousand patrons filling the grandstand and milling about under shady trees.
Like nearby Epsom and Aspendale, the Mentone Turf Club lost a number of meetings when the Victoria Racing Club reduced the number of race meetings around the state.
But it survived through World War II, where many clubs did not, because of the good condition of the facilities and the club’s willingness to make the track available for other racing bodies to use.
Still, the rationalisation of metropolitan courses spelled the end of Mentone’s racing days in 1948. It remained a training track until 1972. The land was redeveloped for housing but the racing days are remembered with a large park, the Mentone Racecourse Reserve.
ASPENDALE
Like the tracks at Mordialloc and Mentone, the Aspendale track was handy to the beach and the water for trainers to take recovery sessions and its sandy loam was not hard on the horses when they raced.
Aspendale, and the Aspendale Park track, were named by owner James Crooke after Aspen, a horse he owned that won two Newmarket Handicaps. It was located a short distance east of the railway station.
The complex included a large and well planned “pleasure garden” for patrons to stroll through, with jockeys Mick O’Brien and Bob Ramage, who each rode Carbine to victory in the 1889 and 1890 Melbourne Cup, involved in planning the new track.
It opened in April 1891 and quickly also became a popular spot for picnickers and holiday makers with a steady stream of vendors selling fruit, ice cream and other treats by the turn of the century.
Crooke was also a big car buff. Aspendale Park was the place where the fledgling Royal Automobile Club of Victoria staged early car and motorbike races.
The track finally closed in 1931, despite objections from many trainers and the Aspendale Racing and Coursing Club, at the same time Sandown Park and several other tracks disappeared around town.
FITZROY
There were two tracks known as Fitzroy, and neither of them were in Fitzroy.
Another proprietary course was Croxton Park in Thornbury.
It was operated by the Fitzroy Pony, Galloway and Trotting Club and became known as the Fitzroy racecourse.
The Pilgrim Inn in High Street, Thornbury, was established in 1844. A later licensee, Josiah Goyder, painted the building red and renamed it the Red House Inn in 1865, developing a racetrack behind the pub. In 1869, Charles Hitchens took over the pub and renamed it the Croxton Park Hotel.
The first race meeting was held there in October 1865 but the racing had a reputation for poor quality.
Hitchens offered better prize money and invested in a grandstand for 400 people with two sections for members and the general public. But the track itself was primitive, the 2000-metre course marked by signs nailed to trees and forcing the riders to look away from the track while racing at full speed.
A judge at the track was Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Frederick Charles Standish, a notorious gambler.
The Croxton Park track did not last long. Its final meeting took place in July 1873.
Racing didn’t return to the area until almost 20 years later.
The new Fitzroy racecourse was on the west side of St Georges Road, between Woolton Avenue and Gadd Street. And it had a special place in racing history.
It was initially known as the Croxton Racecourse, capitalising on the notoriety of the old Croxton Park track, and was established in February 1892 by two entrepreneurs named Byrne and Callahan.
The track was around 2500m long and had a grandstand for 500 people.
It became known as the Fitzroy track because of its link to the Fitzroy Pony, Galloway and Trotting Club.
In 1893, it pioneered a piece of technology that became the industry standard when it replaced flag starts with the barrier system. The Excelsior barrier was later adopted for the 1894 Melbourne Cup.
The track was made of sand and cinder, a dusty surface that raised the ire of neighbours on race days.
It was initially popular but crowds began to dwindle by the early 1900s, and in 1919 John Wren, along with a man called Ben Nathan, bought the track and made it part of their Victorian Trotting and Racing Association.
The VTRA shut the track for the first half of 1925 for extensive renovations but it was one of many proprietary courses ordered to shut by the Victorian government in 1931. The site was subdivided into 200 housing lots 11 years later.
BOX HILL
The White Horse Hotel was built on the corner of Whitehorse Road and Elgar Road in Box Hill in 1851, complete with a white wooden horse on its roof.
A racecourse developed nearby, a short distance from the railway station, and it was here that jockey Bob Ramage, who rode Carbine to victory in the Melbourne Cup of 1890, rode his first winner.
Box Hill hosted its last race meeting on Easter Saturday, 1883, with a special train from Melbourne ordered to carry racegoers to this last event.
ST KILDA
St Kilda’s Peanut Farm Reserve in Blessington Street was home to a racecourse from 1847 to 1868, and hosted the annual St Kilda Cup.
The Village Bell Hotel was linked with the course and the Village Bell Races was a popular pastime on Boxing Day each year.
As suburban development surrounded the racecourse in the 1860s, and the racecourse closed despite some local opposition.
BRIGHTON
Just down the road, at Brighton’s Elsternwick Park, another racecourse operated between 1882 and 1891.
This one was the first course in Victoria that was dedicated to trotting and was operated by the Victorian Trotting Club. Its first meeting was held on April Fool’s Day, 1882.
The club leased the land from the Brighton council, at first for £30 but the Victorian government ruled in 1891 that the Crown land on which it stood could only be used for a public park.
Its grandstand was dismantled and re-erected at the Junction Oval for the St Kilda Cricket Club.
RICHMOND
The old Richmond racecourse was in an area bounded by Bridge Road, Stawell Street and Westbrook Terrace, just west of the old Channel 9 studios in Bendigo Street.
The tiny trotting course was only five furlongs (a tick over 1000 metres) long.
It was established around 1892 and was operated by the Richmond Pony and Galloway Club before it was purchased by John Wren in 1906.
Wren faced the closure of his totaliser and bookmaking businesses the following year because of new anti-gambling laws that also banned betting at tracks of less than six furlongs.
Miraculously the track was exempted from those laws by amendments pushed through by Premier Thomas Bent, but the amendments also limited Wren’s weekly events at Richmond, Fitzroy and Ascot to just 16 each a year.
Wren improvised, establishing football and cricket matches, boxing tournaments and even rodeos at the sight. In 1922, he branched out into dirt track motorsport too.
The Victorian government ordered the cessation of racing at Richmond in 1932 but the Australian Light Car Club ran meetings at the track until the late 1930s.
The site was used for the construction of public housing in the 1940s.
ALBERT PARK
The St Vincents Place area of Albert Park was a racetrack during a period in the 1850s.
HEIDELBERG and IVANHOE
The village of Heidelberg boasted one of Melbourne’s earliest racecourses and was located on the Banyule Flats near the Yarra River within the present-day Warringal Park.
Races were held there generally between February and May from 1853 until 1882, with three races held at an Easter sports carnival in 1888.
Another track, associated with the Ivanhoe Hotel in Upper Heidelberg Road, ran between 1857 and 1867 on a course that included a steep downhill slope and a natural water jump.
KENSINGTON
William Samuel Cox, who later opened the larger Moonee Valley track and for whom the Cox Plate is named, opened the Kensington Park course in 1874 in an area just north of Kensington railway station.
The last meeting was held there in January 1883.
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