Part Two of the review of tracks utilised in the Melbourne metropolitan area will look at several of the racecourses that commenced operations in the late 1880’s and continued well into the mid-twentieth century.
Melbourne’s metropolitan track development can be broken down into six stages – this review is the first part of looking at the third stage taking in John Wren’s reign over various courses.
Mentone –
Mentone is a sea-side residential suburb at Port Phillip Bay, 21kms south-east of Melbourne’s CBD in the local government area of the city of Kingston. The area was known as Balcombe prior to the town’s formation, named after the occupier of land between Balcombe Road and the Bay, west of Warrigal Road, where central Mentone is now situated. When the railway line between Caulfield and Frankston was opened in 1881 the station was named Balcombe’s Road and remained so until 1884.
The racecourse was part of Mentone Racecourse Reserve in an area north of Lower Dandenong Road and one of three tracks in the area, the others being Aspendale and Epsom at Mordialloc. The Mentone Racing Company was established in 1888 with the course being built on around 60 hectares of land. The eight furlong and 132 yds track held its first meeting on 8 September 1888 shortly after nearby Epsom opened.
The first races were held with several thousand patrons in attendance filling the grandstand and milling about under shady trees. Whilst used predominantly for thoroughbred meetings, trotting races were held as part of these race days. The club lost a number of meetings when the Victoria Racing Club (VRC) reduced the number of race meetings around the state. Surviving through World War II because of the good condition of the facilities and the club’s willingness to make the track available for other racing bodies to use whereas many other clubs failed.
The Mentone site was closed for racing in 1948 holding its last meeting on 24 July, used as a training track by many prominent race horses until 1972 when it was redeveloped/subdivided for housing. An auction of fifty home sites in 1973 required a deposit of $750!!
Oakleigh Park/Sandown Park –
Sandown Raceway located in the Springvale district of Melbourne alongside Princes Highway approximately 25 kms from Melbourne CBD and 8kms from Dandenong.
Racing actually began on the site on 14 December 1888 when it was a privately owned track known as Oakleigh Park Racecourse. In 1891, the racecourse was sold to the Victorian Trotting Club (VTC) and renamed Sandown Park Racecourse, after the famous track in England. The site itself had long been earmarked for leisure use with Oakleigh Park the brainchild of John Riley. Horse racing was extremely popular and the course was one of a number of private facilities that sprang up around the growing city of Melbourne. The VTC made first use of the track with mixed programmes starting 14 October 1891.
The six furlong grass Oakleigh Park Pony Track was also in operation in the early 1890’s, with meetings held up until 28 August 1893. The Oakleigh/Sandown Park trotting track was a specialist 5½ furlong track built inside the pony track and first used on 9 December 1892. The first ever pneumatic sulky used in a race in Australasia was used by Will Whitbourn with Calista at Sandown Park’s 30 December 1892 meeting. The last meeting of the nineteenth century held at Sandown Park took place on 24 December 1894. It was at this facility that the first car race in Australia took place in March 1904.
Racing continued to be held at the track until 1931 (thoroughbred track of one mile 3½ furlongs), when the Victorian government decided to reduce the number of metropolitan racecourses in a government rationalisation programme thus closing Sandown Park along with others. The final meeting was held on 31 July after which the land was largely abandoned.
In 1940 the Williamstown racecourse was closed and the Williamstown Racing Club (WRC) planned to reopen and race again one day so they continued to operate. With the government also closing the Victorian Turf Racing Association (VTRA) which operated Mentone course in 1948, these two clubs merged to form the Melbourne Racing Club (MRC). The cashed up WRC funded the purchase of land that the VTRA had found in Springvale (Sandown).
By the early 1960’s, the Victorian Amateur Turf Club (VATC) merged with both the VTRA and WTC enabling them to raise the capital to purchase and develop the Sandown facility. The Sandown Racecourse site covers 112 hectares of land. Perhaps inspired by the Aintree course in England and Queensland’s Warwick Park, the plans called for a dual-use facility bringing motor racing for the first time onto a permanent course and restoring horse racing on a new turf course for thoroughbreds (1892m).
Australian racing legend Len Lukey was one of the key figures in the development of the motor racing facility together with Neil Marsden, the former secretary of the Light Car Club of Australia (LCCA). Marsden was appointed managing director of Sandown Park Motor Sport Pty Ltd which was formed to handle promotion of motor racing events.
Construction began in 1961 with the motor racing circuit completed the following year and the horse racing track ready for use in 1965. A star studded inaugural motor racing meeting was held in March 1962 featuring Australian double world champion Jack Brabham, Scotsmen Jim Clark and, Rob Flockhart, American Chuck Daigh and New Zealand champion Pat Hoare.
Sandown Raceway is promoted as ‘the home of horsepower’ and Australia’s oldest permanent motor racing facility with the circuit hosting five major meetings each year highlighted by the annual Australian V8 Supercar Championships. Its busy thoroughbred racing circuit within the motor racing perimeter, Sandown Racecourse until 2008, now named Ladbrokes Park, part of the Melbourne Racing Club (MRC) has been in existence for over fifty years having held its first meeting in its latest form on 19 June 1965 when a record crowd of 52,379 people attended.
Sandown is an undulating thoroughbred course which was redeveloped through 2002 into a dual circuit venue with individual tracks known as Lakeside and Hillside. The traditional course was formerly 1892 metres in circumference with a minimum width of 30 metres and the home straight was 407 metres in length. In November 1997, the MRC unveiled the first stage of new $6 million facilities with the completion of the second stage of refurbishments in August 1999.
The future of Sandown is unknown as the MRC (also own Caulfield and Mornington racecourses) undertook a strategic review of its land holdings in May 2019. Working on a proposal to rezone the site to provide flexibility and to facilitate opportunities to build a world-class facility at Caulfield. The re-zoning process has no bearing on the racing activities at Sandown for the foreseeable future with all current activities including use of the car racing track continuing. The land owned by the MRC is valuable and while no decisions regarding development, design or future planning have been made it is possible the MRC may sell the Sandown land for commercial and residential development.
Epsom –
There have been a number of tracks in the Epsom, Mordialloc area, a beachside suburb 24 kms south-east of Melbourne’s CBD in the local government area of the city of Kingston.
The horse racing industry’s first track in the Mordialloc area was Richfield 1887 – 1893. Richfield was a privately owned course operated by Alfred F (Braddy) Bradshaw situated on land that is now Governor’s Road, Braeside. Bradshaw played a prominent role in early racing at Mordialloc.
The Australasian Turf Register lists up to six meetings a year for the Mordialloc Racing Club. A meeting held on Tuesday 29 November 1887 records Bradshaw’s horses gaining places in two of the five races run. A mixed meeting (gallops and trotting) was held at the Richfield course in November 1890. There were numerous meetings conducted under Victoria Racing Club (VRC) rules held at Richfield between 1887 and 1889 but by the early 1890s the number had declined.
Mordialloc’s second racecourse was the Epsom course built by owner James Smith Jenkins in 1886 on the corner of White Street and Boundary Road. Jenkins, a successful land speculator who made his fortune in the 1880s land boom began his racing programme at Epsom in 1889 after floating the Epsom Park Racing Club Company in 1884. Renowned architect Philip E Treeby who designed many impressive buildings throughout Victoria – Brighton Grammar School; Carmelite Catholic Church, South Melbourne; E.S. & A. Bank, Brighton and winner of an award for his design of the Warrnambool Town Hall in the Western District of Victoria. – designed the grandstand with seating for approximately three thousand patrons.
The elegant grandstand was surrounded by lawns, fountains and a clock tower with views to Port Phillip Bay and the Dandenong Ranges. Compared to Flemington: ‘a beautiful lawn had been formed covered with rich velvet sward, and from the grandstand eastward there is an unbroken promenade 660 yards long, sown in English grass’. The grandstand was described as ‘a handsome structure …. the fittings and decoration are very ornamental’. Jenkins provided the best possible accommodation for patron’s comfort and spacious well-designed offices and rooms for stewards, committee and jockeys.
The Epsom racecourse at Mordialloc (eight furlongs 349 yds) began its racing programme on 15 June 1889. A large crowd attended the inaugural meeting for the running of the Mordialloc Cup with a prize of £500 for the winner. Conducted in the middle of a Melbourne winter but the weather was fine and the ‘track [had] little holding’. Mainly used for galloping meetings, in its heyday at the beginning of the 20th century it was one of Victoria’s premier race tracks which also hosted trotting races on mixed programmes especially in 1890’s and first decade of twentieth century.
A specially built six furlong trotting track situated inside the steeplechase track was utilised for just three meetings in 1907. In this short period Australian Pacers Mile records were established on 5 June 1907 by two year old First Ribbon (2:30¾ race mile) and all comers record by Dan Patch (2:11.0TT) on 10 September 1907.
Administration at Epsom underwent several changes over the years. The Epsom Turf Club formed at the beginning of the twentieth century ran under private management. The Epsom Racecourse Proprietary Limited officially Incorporated in May 1909 had its registered office at 159 Queen Street, Melbourne with Directors being John Langtree Reilly and Robert C. Anderson. Reilly was involved with both Epsom and Mentone racecourses management and a major shareholder. In 1924 a special resolution determined that the Epsom Racecourse be sold to the Epsom Turf Club as at 20 June.
The many changes taking place in racing administration by the 1930’s applied equally to Epsom Racecourse at Mordialloc. John Langtree Reilly stepped down as Secretary of Epsom and Mentone with his grandson John Campbell Reilly taking the position. The Epsom Turf Club spent ten thousand pounds on improvements to the course including upgrading the original grandstand in 1936. The main stand was accidentally burnt to the ground in December 1938 with the fire believed to have started in the kitchen area of the Press room. This occurred in the first years of JC Reilly’s administration of the club. Race meetings were never again held at Epsom with the course retained as a training track.
There used to be two types of racecourses – Proprietary courses owned by private businessman attempting to make a profit and Not for Profits owned by the Clubs. During the Second World War, government took over control of many courses using them for defence purposes. The war years proved a turning point for small Victorian metropolitan clubs. The controlling body the Victoria Racing Club (VRC) took steps to rationalise the haphazard suburban development of racing taking measures for change considered beneficial for the Industry brought about by a drop in the popularity of horse racing. In short this meant an increase in track closures and it left clubs such as Epsom and Mentone no other option than to agree to remain open as training tracks only.
The Epsom course was later taken over by the VRC, continuing to be used as a training facility until they closed the track in 1997 with forty trainers or so still resident. The VRC made the decision to close the complex as they considered the cost of training there was more expensive than at other venues in Victoria. Trainers argued that Epsom was the best training facility in Victoria. Epsom was home to a large number of Melbourne trainers including John Hawkes (Carbine Lodge), Pat Hyland, Pat Carey, Jack Holt, George Hanlon and Don Baertschiger.
The closure of the Epsom Training Track at Mordialloc was the final chapter in the rich and rewarding history the racing industry had maintained in Melbourne’s southern bayside suburbs, the last metropolitan track committed solely to training. The 104 acres of land that the course was situated on bordered by Boundary and Governor Roads and White Street has been redeveloped into a housing estate.
Maribynong –
Maribyrnong an inner suburb 8 kms north-west of Melbourne in the local government area of the city of Maribyrnong, part of the River Ward.
Maribynong racecourse was established by Sam Cox just down the road from Moonee Valley. It opened for operations in 1891 on an eight furlong and 140 yds track with occasional trotting meetings and single events held from 27 December 1894 until 2 December 1905 when the track closed. After Moonee Valley and Richmond, it together with Ascot held the majority of trotting metropolitan meetings during last decade of the nineteenth century.
Aspendale Park –
Aspendale Racecourse or Aspendale Park Racecourse was a horse racing and the world’s first purpose built motor racing track located in the quiet Melbourne suburb of Aspendale 27 kms (17 miles) south-east from Melbourne’s CBD in the local government area of the city of Kingston.
The suburb was named by one of the first race track owners of the district, James “Robert” Crooke, whose father Elijah Crook (note the spelling change) purchased the land from Peter Carroll in the late 1870s. His eldest son James Robert fulfilled his dream and established a racecourse and pleasure ground on the outskirts of Melbourne naming the course Aspendale after one of his finest horses, Aspen, who had won two Newmarket Handicaps in 1880 and 1881. Robert Crooke was a successful trainer; another of his well-known horses, Saladin, won the Australian Cup at Flemington in 1872 by four lengths in a time of two minutes twelve seconds. This was after two dead heats with another horse the Flying Dutchman.
The course was close to the Mordialloc-Frankston railway line, situated east of the current Aspendale railway station and was a pear shaped course of one mile and 176 yds (1.6km) in circumference with a slight slope to the rails mainly used by thoroughbreds. The track was laid down with buffalo grass which was suitable for racing. The enclosure at the course offered patrons shade and comfort. Horses were off loaded from the train at Mordialloc and travelled the extra distance to the course by horse float. Although considered a country track, Aspendale was allotted twelve race meetings per year by the Victoria Racing Club (VRC), the same number of meetings held at Mentone and Epsom at Mordialloc.
The complex included a large and well planned “pleasure garden” for patrons to stroll through with garden landscaping designed by William Guilfoyle, the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne who has been described as ‘a landscape architect of genius’. Jockeys Mick O’Brien and Bob Ramage, who each rode Carbine to victory in the 1889 and 1890 Melbourne Cups were involved in planning the new track.
By the turn of the century the course had become a popular spot for summer picnickers and holiday makers with a steady stream of vendors selling fruit, ice cream and other refreshments. It was reported that the vendors who ‘take up their stand[s] at the entrance gate to the park’ should be challenged by the Council for unfair trading practices. Many school children travelled long distances with their escorts to Aspendale Park being conveyed to their destination by trainers. The Moorabbon News reported in March 1906, that a group of students from Fitzroy had enjoyed a picnic in the park.
Aspendale Park was one of four courses in close proximity to one another catering for the entertainment of the race-going public in the early 1890s : Mentone, Epsom, Aspendale Park and Sandown. Like the tracks at Mordialloc and Mentone, the Aspendale track was handy to the beach for horses to take recovery sessions and its sandy loam was not hard on the horses when they raced.
Aspendale or Aspendale Park racecourse, Kingston opened for its inaugural meeting on 14 April 1891 without a gala opening taking place. The five race programme was held on a track reported as good. There was no special ‘Cup’ race at the first meeting however the last race of the day the Aspendale Park Handicap was worth 110 sovereigns (100 sovereigns to the winner, 10 sovereigns for second). Mr S.G.Cook’s bay gelding The Commodore ridden by W.O’Neill won, Mr H Wood’s bay filly Conceit ridden by R.Finnigan was second with third place filled by Mr J.Heryet’s grey gelding Little Shamrock ridden by J.Flood. Trotting races featured on Aspendale Park programmes through its years of operation.
The Aspendale Racecourse closed in 1931 with its last recorded horse race meeting registered as Wednesday 29 July. It is interesting to observe that the racecourse at Aspendale both opened and closed in depression years. Although times were difficult in the 1930’s there was strong opposition to the closure from the Aspendale Racing and Coursing Club Ltd as well as many trainers who argued that the course should not be closed. A racing club deputation led by the chairman Mr Shillabeer met with the VRC Chief Secretary Dr Argyle to protest the closure proposal. It should be noted that several other tracks including Sandown Park (31 July 1931) were closed at a similar time.
After the course was closed for racing Robert Crooke allowed only one trainer to use the track privately for training his horses and that was Mr Louis (Lou) Robertson from Mordialloc, training his horses at the course until early 1951.
Robert Crooke was also a motoring enthusiast who built Melbourne, Australia’s and the world’s first ‘commercial’ (purpose built) motor racing circuit on the Aspendale Park site. In 1904, the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV) held its first automobile demonstration/car rally at Aspendale Racecourse. This was the beginning of many car rallies at the park. A report in the Moorabbin News dated 28 October 1905 stated that “the steam roller was at work on the motor cycle track on Mr Crooke’s prettily situated and popular race course. The path is in excellent condition and the motorists should be able to put [in] some fast [times]”.
A motor racing track was built inside the horse racing track in 1905 opening for its first meeting in January 1906. The pear shaped track close to a mile in length had slightly banked curves and was made of a gravel surface of crushed cement. Following two car race meetings in January and November 1906 the circuit fell into disuse.
A banked track constructed in 1923 over the original saucer shaped track also fell into disuse by 1930. The circuit was briefly revived again after the Depression but its use had ceased again prior to World War II. Motor racing continued after the war ended until the late 1940’s when the track closed with the area now residential housing. This occurred in early 1951 when the land was subdivided for housing, shops and a CSIRO research station.
Robert Crooke retired to Narbethong in country Victoria in 1911 and was the Shire President of Healesville from 1914-1918. His name was still recorded as controlling owner of Aspendale Park in 1931.
Fitzroy Park –
Northcote an inner suburb of Melbourne located 6 kms north-east of the CBD in the local government area of the city of Darebin.
The “old” original Croxton Park track operated between 28 October 1865 and 12 July 1873. The new Fitzroy racecourse on the western side of St Georges Road, between Woolton Avenue and Gadd Street in Northcote was a mile or so south of the original Croxton Park in Thornbury. Initially known as the Croxton Racecourse, opening for its inaugural pony and trotting meeting on 29 October 1891 after being established by two entrepreneurs named Byrne and Callahan. Located on the property of Charles Colbath, Fitzroy, was later the site of the Croxton Park pony trotting club.
In 1893 under the operation of the Fitzroy Pony, Galloway and Trotting Club the track was renamed the Fitzroy racecourse although its actual location was in Northcote. During the time of Fitzroy Park’s operation the first newspaper trotting column in the “The Sportsman” (Victoria), trotting by “Lightfoot” appeared in the issue of 5 May 1902. The first trotting paper “The Victorian Trotting Record” was published on 5 September 1906 with its name later changed to “The Australian Trotting Record”.
The track was approximately 2500m long and had a grandstand that accommodated 500 people. Meetings were generally conducted weekly with the last trotting race held at Fitzroy Park run on 27 October 1919. The track was purchased by John Wren and his partners in 1919 and renovated in 1925 but the Government eventually forced the closure of the track for racing in mid-1931. The site remained vacant until it was sold for housing in 1942.
Next Time : Melbourne Metropolitan tracks – Part Three
Peter Craig
8 September 2021
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