Following on from the previous article which looked at Brisbane’s metropolitan harness racing tracks, this time we concentrate on the regional racetracks of Queensland.
Early days – Toowoomba, Charters Towers, Rockhampton and Townsville were among areas interested in trotting in the early years as will be described further under each relevant locational heading.
Regional tracks –
Kilcoy –
Kilcoy (150kms north of Brisbane) holds non-TAB harness racing meetings on the grass track at the Kilcoy Racecourse operated by the Kilcoy Racing Club. The Kilcoy Racecourse has a track circumference of 1270 metres with a home straight 143 metres long.
The Kilcoy Showgrounds and Racecourse are owned by the Somerset Regional Council which manages the facility in consultation with the Kilcoy Showground Committee comprising representatives of the five associations based at the venue – Kilcoy Race Club, Kilcoy Show Society (also known as the Kilcoy Pastoral, Agricultural and Industrial Society), Kilcoy Campdraft Committee, Stanley River Polocrosse Club and Kilcoy Rodeo Committee.
In 2020, with the support of the Queensland Government, Somerset Council completed the Kilcoy Racecourse Grandstand Redevelopment project ($900,000 makeover, opened March 2020). The construction of the new grandstand facility included indoor and outdoor dining facilities, tiered seating for three hundred patrons and improvements to the betting ring. This project complimented works completed prior to this, the construction of a Trackside Pavilion and redevelopment of the Ken and Mary Nunn Pavilion. In February 2020, Somerset Council purchased a six hectare property adjacent to the north boundary of the showgrounds and approved the building of a thirty stable equestrian development.
Redcliffe –
The Redcliffe Peninsula Harness Racing & Sporting Club Inc. commenced operations in 1951, located in South East Queensland at Redcliffe Paceway. The Redcliffe Harness Racing Club is a provincial club situated thirty kms north of Brisbane. Many of the Club’s regular trainers are based in adjacent Knight Street or the surrounding Peninsula area including Deception Bay, Burpengary and Caboolture.
The 835m (170m straight) anti-clockwise crusher dust all-weather track with sprint lane features mobile and standing starts over 1780, 2040, 2280, 2613 metres, starting ten behind the mobile (front line six) and twelve for standing starts (seven front line). Facilities include the Pacers Trackside restaurant with a home straight location presenting great views of the raceway including bars, totes, bookmakers (on feature race days), poker machines, Café and inside/outside seating areas.
The club’s premier race is the Group Two Redcliffe Cup held during the winter carnival in June/July together with other features including Redcliffe Derby, Redcliffe Oaks, Redcliffe Trotters Cup and two and three year old Yearling Sales Classics. The four year old Patrons Purse (July) and Redcliffe Christmas Cup (December) are other feature races. The Redcliffe Club hosts the annual Redcliffe Yearling Sale plus related sales series classic races only open to yearlings sold during this sale.
Marburg –
The Marburg Pacing Association has been based at the 700m Marburg Showgrounds track located in Queen Street, Marburg since 1979. A forty minute drive from Brisbane, fifteen minutes from Ipswich and fifty minutes from Toowoomba. It hosts non-TAB restricted harness racing and gallops meetings. Official qualifying trials are held with un-official, jump-outs and education every other Saturday morning with fields drawn the morning after nominations.
Previously using a 550m running rail track, the new 700m x 15m wide and blended track provides for mobile and standing races over 1850m and 2200m (also 2900mSS) races. Feature races include the Marburg Country Derby and Oaks for three year olds.
Toowomba –
The first harness racing club that was founded in Toowoomba (1930’s) raced on Werrington Park, which is now the site of the city’s airport. Downs Trotting Club, as it was known then, moved headquarters to the then Toowoomba Showgrounds in Bridge Street, where racing was conducted regularly on Saturday afternoons. As the town expanded the showgrounds were outgrown and the club moved to Clifford Park, where it was known as the Darling Downs Harness Racing Club (DDHRC). Harness racing was conducted at the Clifford Park Paceway, inside the galloping track, until 21 August 2003.
The Turf Club acquired the 160 acre Clifford Park block in 1861 conducting its first meeting as the Darling Downs Jockey Club on 6 March 1862 at the course then known as Drayton and Toowoomba Racecourse. The Toowoomba Turf Club was formed conducting its first meetings on 3 and 4 June 1882. On 4 September 1996, the Toowoomba Turf Club staged the first ever night race meeting in Australia.
When racing ceased at Clifford Park the DDHRC combined forces with the Royal Agricultural Society of Queensland (RASQ) to form the RASQ Harness Racing Club. A 600 metre track was built in 2008 on the new showgrounds, which replaced the greyhound racetrack that was then in existence.
The Darling Downs HRC has been a part of Queensland country harness racing for over sixty years. During this period an annual race meeting has been conducted on the grass using Allman Park, site of the Warwick Turf Club located on the river flats of the Condamine River, at the intersection of the Cunningham and New England Highways, 170km west south west of Brisbane, or 60km south of Toowoomba. The Warwick race club is one of the oldest in Queensland. The 2017 Warwick Pacing Cup run at Allman Park was won by My Ultimate Fella.
In 2018 and 2019 harness racing was staged at the Toowoomba Royal Show Showgrounds while in March 2019 after a seventeen year hiatus the Warwick Show trotting track returned to harness racing action with races run over 1609m.
Closed tracks –
The Boonah Show was formed in 1897 holding its first Show in 1898 and around 1914 its schedule included trotting at the Showgrounds and it continued to be featured through the 1950’s if not longer.
Gold Coast –
The Gold Coast HRC operated from 1988 until its final meeting on 27 September 2013 at the 1000m Parklands Raceway. An earlier version, the Southport TC held meetings at Bundall Racecourse (591.7m) from 1950. Racing on the Gold Coast dates back to the 1890’s when an occasional public meeting was run in the old cane paddocks of Bundall, not far from the present Gold Coast Turf Club. Racing at the present headquarters of the Gold Coast Turf Club began on 15 May 1946 when the club was known as the Southport and District Amateur Race Club (formed on 17 March 1946). Racing in those days was on a sand track. The Southport TC later raced together with the greyhounds at Owen Park.
Parklands Raceway was a complex serving the greyhound and harness racing codes which opened on 7 December 1988 on the corner of Smith Street and Parklands Drive, Southport on Queensland’s Gold Coast at a cost of nine million dollars. The Queensland State Government announced plans to build a new hospital adjacent to the Parklands complex which resulted in the greyhounds departing Parklands in 2009.
In February 2013 the remaining part of the site was formally designated as the athletes’ village for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Following the closure of Parklands Raceway in late September 2013, demolition of the buildings on the site commenced and in December 2013 Grocon won the contract to build the Games village. The original plan was for harness racing to build a new Gold Coast home. To date this has not occurred with feature Gold Coast races incorporated into Albion Park programmes.
Parklands Raceways moment of glory came with the hosting of the 2009 Interdominion Championships – two rounds of heats and a final won by Mr Feelgood, bringing to an end the consecutive run of three ID Pacing Finals of Blacks A Fake (2006 – 2008).
The Ipswich Showgrounds located at The Ipswich Show Society, formally called the Ipswich Agricultural and Horticultural Society, was established on 14 March 1866, becoming the Queensland Pastoral and Agricultural Society, established on 28 August 1872. The first show was held on 13 May 1873 at a site in Churchill facing the Bremer River subsequently moving in 1877 to its present site on Warwick Road. The Ispwich TC conducted meetings on a 458m Showgrounds track from 1955 until 8 October 1983, which was also used by the West Moreton TC.
The Maryborough Showgrounds was holding trotting meetings at least as early as the 1950’s on the old Showgrounds track which closed in 1979. A revised track of 544 yds in length was used until the last meeting was held at the Showgrounds on 28 September 1985.
Rocklea Showgrounds, twelve kms from the CBD was established in 1917, utilised for harness racing between 1952 and 18 July 2009 on a tiny 545m track.
The Rockhampton Trotting Club formed after a meeting at the Union Hotel on 19 November 1891 conducted its first meeting on the Agricultural Show Grounds on Boxing Day Saturday 26 December 1891 consisting of six trotting events (one a pony trot) with a crowd of less than 500 attending.
In the 1950’s, Rockhampton were racing at Callaghan Park, an 800m track (inside thoroughbred track) where night trotting was introduced in May 1974, continuing to race there until the final meeting was held on 18 August 2007. Notable pacers Eva Thor and Rip Van Winkle won the Capricornia Mile on this course.
Mackay, raced on a track (800m) formed inside the 1600m thoroughbred track at Ooralea racecourse from 1971 with night trotting commencing in October 1976 before returning within a few years to day meetings. Harness racing took place in Mackay over ninety five years from 1912 through until the harness tracks closure at the end of August 2007. A gradual reduction in harness permits for race meetings and funding allocated by the harness racing board sped up the demise of trotting (forty meetings of six races 2001-2002 reduced to twenty meetings of four races 2006/7). Prior to 1971 races were conducted at the Mackay Showgrounds where they possibly started off or earlier at a track at Cremorne.
Local celebrity pacer Cane Smoke (trained by Brian Manzelmann) set an Australasian record of 125 wins, 73 seconds and 74 thirds, racing mostly at Mackay, Townsville and Rockhampton up to 1992. The first horse in Australasia to race on four hundred occasions (since exceeded by Destreos, 486 starts and Mister Skye Rocket, 410 starts) – all three raced predominantly in Queensland.
A short lived Townsville Trotting Club was the first known trotting club In Queensland holding a meeting on 6 November 1879. Townsville Showgrounds were established in 1882, situated approximately five kilometres (3.1 miles) from the city centre. The Showgrounds were first used by the Townsville Trotting Club on 24 May 1897 (four races) with the original track being 440yds (¼m). It was lengthened to 500 yds in the mid 1950’s and the show ring track was extended to its elliptical shape to better cater for racing interests such as harness racing (606m track) and motor cycle and bicycle races in 1969. The last non-TAB meeting held on the Townsville Showgrounds was run in August 2005.
Charters Towers Trotting Club (134kms inland from Townsville) was formed after a meeting at the Winterbottom’s Occidental Hotel on Monday 3 October 1898. The inaugural meeting held at the Athletic Reserve consisted of five races including the first Charters Towers Cup (saddle or harness) over a journey of about three miles for a twenty sovereign stake. The club continued to race through the 1950’s on an 800m track.
Among other clubs to hold registered meetings from the 1950 – 1959 era were :
Tweed Heads, Border Park Raceway (773m; 11.28ha) situated on Binya Ave (adjacent to the old Gold Coast Highway and opposite Gold Coast Airport), a picturesque former greyhound and trots venue sold in June 2016 for $16.5 million. The site was cleared fifteen months later making way for a northern NSW economic hub, planned for development over the next eight years. Whilst trotting ceased many years ago (18 February 2004), the final greyhound meeting was held on 3 December 2018.
Dalby, Bunya Park racecourse dates back to 1859 and was a black soil surface. In the 1900s the track was converted to a turf surface.
A further assortment of clubs including South Coast, Gympie, Kingaroy, Ayr, Innisfail (516m) and Cairns (720m) were conducting trotting meetings in the 1950’s.
Next Article : South Australia part one
Peter Craig
5 May 2021
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
Driving The Future Of Harness Racing
