It’s an early start for a High Steaks interview, but newspaper deadlines and the busy schedules of Harvey and wife Katie Page – the dynamic businesswoman credited with much of the annual Magic Millions carnival’s success – dictate a departure from the usual lunchtime chinwag.

We’re dining in the Magic Millions auditorium at the Bundall sales complex where about 1400 yearlings will go under the auctioneer’s hammer next week. Across Racecourse Rd, the Gold Coast Turf Club will pulsate with the sounds of thundering hoofs, the cheers of thousands of racing fans and the popping of French champagne corks during what were scheduled to be two Magic Millions race days (yesterday’s first-ever twilight meeting had to be moved to the Sunshine Coast after a track-poisoning incident).

Pre-sales inspections are already in full swing, with potential buyers wandering the stables sizing up future hopeful equine superstars, including some of the 70 or so yearlings being offered by Harvey’s Baramul and Vinery studs in NSW.

The glitz and glamour of Magic Millions has been coming to the Gold Coast each January since 1986, but it has galloped ahead since Harvey and Page bought the-then cash-strapped event in the mid 1990s.

“We were (horse) sellers here every year from the start. It was a good concept but it struggled a bit,” Harvey recalls.

When Magic Millions plunged into administration and was put up for sale for $6m, Harvey pounced. He phoned his good mate and fellow horse enthusiast, larrikin advertising guru John Singleton, to offer a quarter slice of the action.

“Singo said to me ‘you bastard, you’ve cost me a fortune – you’ve put me into horses and all I’ve done is lost my money, you can go and stick your Magic Millions up your rectum’,” he chuckles.

Singleton hung up only to call back a minute later to say: “I’m in mate, I’m in.”

It was a classic gee-up between the two colourful businessmen who have been friends for more than five decades and largely ran Magic Millions as the “Gerry and Singo Show’ until Harvey and Page bought out Singleton and the other shareholder, banker and horse breeder Rob Ferguson, in 2011.

It was then that Page began to really stamp her mark on Magic Millions and transform it into the powerhouse it is today.

“Kate was always involved but then she became really involved and that was the turning point,” Harvey says admiringly, stabbing at a slice of medium rare wagyu.

“I’d sat there (for years) and just watched the blokes,” Page nods with a mock eye roll.

“But to Singo’s credit, he saw it as I did – that, here we had this great brand that could be so many things – events et cetera – and we could elevate from its original concept as a (horse) auction house.

“And when we bought them (Singleton and Ferguson) out, I said ‘right Gerry, this is what we’re going to do’.

“Gerry and I don’t do the same thing (at Magic Millions). We’re a team and we’re very good at what we do separately. And we put it together and it’s become this very special, wonderful thing.”

Asked if it’s true that Page is the brains behind Magic Millions, Harvey quips: “I always tell people how good she is.” Page shoots back: “He actually gets publicity. He comes home and says ‘see, I said you’re the brains, can you make my dinner?’.”

Page’s innovations over the years have included the Magic Millions Racing Women initiative, which will this year offer $750,000 in bonuses for horses owned by women as part of a $20m prize purse.

British royal Zara Tindall, King Charles’ niece and an Olympic equestrian rider, is patron of the program as well as being one of Magic Millions’ celebrity ambassadors – another of Page’s brainwaves.

Other ambassadors she has brought on board over the years include NRL legend Billy Slater and wife Nicole, an acclaimed equine artist; Argentine polo star Nacho Figueras and wife Delfina Blaquier and Elsa Pataky, the actor/model wife of Chris Hemsworth.

Figueras, Billy Slater and the Tindalls are among the stars of one of Page’s other Magic Millions shake-ups, a polo and showjumping tournament being held on Sunday on the Southport Spit.

One of the biggest Magic Millions revolutions, she says, has been the barrier draw gallop on Surfers Paradise beach, with celebrity jockeys including champion hoop Hugh Bowman, Billy Slater, Zara Tindall and Figueras.

“We started out with two horses racing on the beach – we’ve got 20 now and it’s become iconic around the world,” she says. “I don’t know of anywhere else it happens.”

Magic Millions, Page says, started out as a “passion project”.

“We run a very big business,” she says of the couple’s Harvey Norman empire, of which she’s CEO.

“We run in eight countries and it’s full-on 50 weeks of the year, and for two weeks of the year we do this (Magic Millions). And that passion project has morphed into a big business of its own.”

Last year’s Magic Millions sales on the Gold Coast grossed $223m, just $5m shy of the 2022 record, and the carnival pumped an estimated $60m into the Queensland economy.

Horses to be knocked down at Magic Millions include mighty mare Winx, which sold for $230,000 at the 2013 sales and went on to win $26m in prizemoney. Last year’s Melbourne Cup winner, Knight’s Choice, sold for $85,000 at the 2021 Millions.

“We get the most amazing people here for two weeks,” Page says.

“We’ve got all of these mates from around the world – the ambassadors are our mates, along with our clients that come in. It’s everyone’s happy place.

“I was just talking to someone that came up on the plane yesterday and she said, ‘Kate, everyone’s coming up for the Magic – they don’t know each other but they’re all talking about it on the plane’.

“These two weeks have a very special feel. The Gold Coast is a wonderful place, it’s holiday time, you’re coming off New Year’s Eve. Over the years, we’ve added lots of events. This year we’ve really taken a quantum leap with the first twilight meeting, and I’m so excited.”

Harvey says in the 28 years he and his wife have owned Magic Millions, it’s become better every year.

“If you can start a business or buy a business and make it better every year, you get a lot of satisfaction,” he says.

“Because most businesses eventually go broke, morph, go out of business or get taken over. If you look back at the stock exchange 20 years ago, half of the top 200 companies are gone. You go back 40 years and there’s only 10 left or something.

“I started Harvey Norman (then Norman Ross) in 1961 and it’s gotten better every year.”

Worth an estimated $3.4b, Harvey and Page’s diverse business interests range from retailing and property development to farming, including about 14,000 head of Wagyu cattle, one of which has provided today’s meal.

“It’s (wagyu farming) a bit like horses – it’s a long-range thing,” he says.

“You’re trying to get the genetics right and the feed system right to get a good marble score. And if you don’t get it right, you lose money. It’s not a game for sissies – if you’re a sissy, get out of horses and get out of cattle. We like a challenge, it’s more interesting than playing a safe game and being nice and conservative.”

Harvey Norman recently opened its first store in Britain, 15 years after launching in Ireland during the GFC and losing $200m in four years.

“We had to stick it out – again, not for sissies,” Harvey chuckles.

“We’re now the leading electrical retailer in Ireland.”

Harvey says he and Page have faced many “left field” challenges during decades in business, from the GFC and Covid-19 pandemic to Chinese beef import bans (and now a Magic Millions track poisoning), “and you must always be ready to adapt quickly”.

“Kate’s very good at that and I’m second-best,” he says.

Page adds: “I think that’s when Gerry and I do well, when we’re up against it.”

With Harvey Norman a major economic barometer, I ask Page and Harvey whether the cost-of-living crisis could finally ease this year – and if there’ll be a change of federal government.

Harvey reckons the economy is “actually better than I thought it’d be”, with strong pre-Christmas sales at Harvey Norman, and tax cuts and soaring home prices boosting household wealth. But he says even the best economists can’t pick when high interest rates will start to fall in Australia.

As for this year’s federal election?

“I spoke to John Howard about a year ago and I said (Peter) Dutton was an 80-1 chance (of winning) … now he’s about a 3-1 chance,” Harvey says.

But neither he nor his wife would tip a winner, likely or deserving.

“We work with both sides of politics. We’re apolitical – always have been, always will be,” Page says.

“You just want politicians that are running this great country of ours, whatever side they’re on, just doing it for Australia and for Australians. That’s all we ask.”