How one Melbourne punter turned $6 into an $86,000 lucky streak

With only $10 left to his name, Kev Cain bought himself a beer, then spent the change starting one of Australia’s luckiest streaks.

Kev Cain, pictured in 1967 at Caulfield, has been a licensed jockey, bookmaker and trainer, but always a punter at heart.

On the morning of Show Day 1978, a young diehard punter named Kevin Cain woke in his Richmond apartment with only $10 left to his name.

By that afternoon, Cain had turned $6 into $86,000, after a day at Caulfield Racecourse that most lifelong punters will only ever dream of.

Cain, who has been a licensed jockey, bookmaker and trainer, is the subject of a new episode of the free In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters:

The tale is one of many told by Herald Sun journalist Andrew Rule in his new book Chance, subtitled “Of Grit and Gamblers and the Romance of the Racing Life”.

Kev Cain is the son of Norm Cain, who became an SP bookie during the 1930s Great Depression to top up his earnings from his job in a boot factory, and later became one of Melbourne’s biggest licensed bookmakers.

Kev was so broke that morning, he didn’t have the rent to pay for the new apartment in Richmond he’d signed up for a few weeks back when he was flush with cash.

He couldn’t afford furniture, didn’t even have a bed, and had slept the night on top of an expensive dining table he talked out of an expensive city store.

Bookmaker Norm Cain, father of Kevin.

As Rule explains, the shop had trucked the table over to Richmond, cash-on-delivery, and Cain had managed to persuade the driver there was a mix-up and he’d already paid.

Cain was out on the street in Richmond that morning when he ran into a mate, who offered to drive him to the Caulfield races and find someone to lend Cain $100 as starting bet money.

While Cain was waiting at the bar for his mate to return, he bought a beer or two, leaving him with about $6.

“A race is coming up, and he sees this horse that he knows a bit about, and it’s 33-1 or something, and he sees somebody who knows what they’re doing have a bit of a nibble at it,” Rule says.

“And he thinks those odds are a bit tasty, I’m going to have a bet on that. So he has his six bucks on it, and it wins! So he doesn’t need the $100 start. He has got $200, I think it was, at that stage.

Andrew Rule's new book Chance.

Andrew Rule

“So away he goes. Then he sees an 11-2 shot … about a $5 bet. He’s watching it on the board, and it gets pushed into 5-1 and then into 9-2, so obviously there’s money for it.

“So he jumps on and puts his 200 bucks on it, and it wins.

“You don’t have to be told he goes from horse to horse to horse, and keeps winning.”

Late in the day, Cain successfully backed a horse at 50-to-1, and by then had turned his $6 into about $100,000.

But in the final race, Cain’s pick ran second, and he walked away with net winnings of $86,000 – enough to buy a house in an up-market suburb in 1978.

“As he said, he spent the money on wine, women and song – and the rest he wasted,” Rule says.

Listen to the interview with Andrew Rule about Kev Cain in the In Black and White podcast on iTunes, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.