Racing and other Equine Sports in West Torrens

Most of the early races in South Australia were between horses owned by various large local landholders. Surprisingly, relatively few of West Torrens’s estate holders seem to have taken much part in these events. The most active was probably John Morphett who, according to one of his biographers, kept ‘a stable full of thoroughbreds’ at his Cummins property from the late 1840s.

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But even then Morphett enjoyed only moderate success as an owner. The mares Brenda and Minna were in the late 1870s two of his better-performed gallopers.

Among other large-scale nineteenth century landowners, John White (1790-1860) kept horses at his Fulham Farm – however he rarely if ever raced them officially. His interest may have been more in the breeding side of the industry.

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When Samuel (1835-1880), one of White’s sons, established his nearby Weetunga property from the mid-1870s he included space for a thoroughbred breeding facility.

The business continued after White’s premature death. Samuel Albert White (1870-1954), the son of Samuel White, owned and maintained racehorses at Weetunga until around 1920. Clonard, a horse reputedly bred at Weetunga, ran third in the Caulfield Cup, in 1891-92. (8) White retained the Weetunga grazing paddocks for agistment purposes until the late 1940s.

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One reliable source suggests that Dr Charles Everard (1794-1876) bred horses on his Ashford estate – but again, there is no record of his ever having raced them. (9). There are more tangible records of other trainers.

It is for example very likely that William Harper Formby  (c1818-1892), James Jenkins and James Watson had training establishments in West Torrens, near the Thebarton racecourse, from the 1860s or thereabouts. (10) Also, Thomas Keily (d.1937) ran his successful Moseleyville Training Stables for several decades until around 1920. Keily’s stables were situated on the eastern corner of the Bay Road-Cross Road intersection. His home on the site, Moseley Hall, was named after Henry Jackson Moseley, the original developer of the area. Keily was one of South Australia’s leading trainers over many years. Among other successes, he trained three Adelaide Cup winners: Jericho in 1892, Port Admiral in 1894 and Kooringa in 1909.

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Thoroughbred stallions and broodmares were imported to South Australia from around 1840. The Lockleys stud, which developed from later in the decade, was probably the first of the great South Australian studs. (11) (Other prominent early local studs included Joseph Gilbert’s Pewsey Vale property in the Barossa Valley, P.B. Coglin’s Rapid Bay stud, and William Malcolm’s Reedbeds stud, directly to the north of Lockleys, across the River Torrens). It should be noted however that generally the South Australian horse industry was slower to develop than in the eastern colonies, particularly Victoria. This was because the South Australian economy was based to a larger extent on mining and farming than the more pastorally based – and therefore more horse-dependent – eastern economies.

The role of the Fisher family in the early organization of South Australian racing has been noted. Charles Brown Fisher and his brothers James (1816-1913) and Hurtle (1831-1905) also rode in many early events. It is therefore not surprising that the Fishers should be involved in the development of the South Australian horse breeding industry. James Hurtle Fisher owned or co-owned sections 144 and 97, a total of around 107.2 hectares (268 acres) for most of the 1840s. From about 1840 C.B. Fisher farmed the property, which was known as Lockleys. 

By the middle of the decade almost 80 hectares (200 acres) of Lockleys was under wheat cultivation and over two hundred sheep and cattle were kept on the property. C.B. Fisher, assisted by Hurtle Fisher, developed the Lockleys horse stud and training facility from about this time. By the mid-1850s C.B. Fisher owned Lockleys, which over the next few years expanded to include most of sections 97, 99 and 144, and a small part of section 162, a total of approximately 128 hectares (320 acres). The area was now known as the Lockleys Estate.

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The Lockleys stable was successful from the beginning, producing many local winners; the C.B. Fisher-owned and trained filly Midnight won the first St Leger Stakes in 1860 for example, while Fisher’s Tyro won the race the next year. Because South Australia’s racing industry was small, the Fishers relied upon Victoria as a potential market, both to sell Lockleys progeny, or to race them under their own colours. For instance, Hurtle Fisher’s Lantern, winner of the 1864 Melbourne Cup, was sired by the English import Muscovado, one of Lockleys’ most successful stallions.  South Australia was another influential Lockleys stallion. In 1860 Hurtle Fisher, acting on behalf of the stud, paid a world record 3000 guineas for an eight-year-old entire, Fisherman, at an English bloodstock sale. Though it was intended the horse should stand at Lockleys, in 1863 Fisherman was sent to Hurtle Fisher’s new Maribyrnong stud in Melbourne. (Fisherman, incidentally, sired the dual Adelaide Cup winner, Cowra).

Fisherman’s premature death in 1865 put Hurtle Fisher under severe financial pressure. He disposed of Maribyrnong in 1866, though it was soon bought by C.B. Fisher. Fisher sold most off his South Australian property – thus bringing to an end the most successful years of the Lockleys stud – to finance the purchase of Maribyrnong. C.B. Fisher sold Maribyrnong in 1867, then owned it again briefly in the mid-1870s. Fisher became a prominent figure in Victorian racing, including a term as chair of the Victorian Racing Club in 1883-95. He returned to South Australia in the last years of his life.      

Fisher had sold the Lockleys Estate to James Scott of Para River Darling, New South Wales, in July 1867 for a total of £8,928. (12). In the 1870s and 1880s the stabling portion of the property was leased to Gabriel Bennett, a local trainer. Thereafter the facility was gradually wound down. The former site of the Lockleys stud was used for residential subdivision from around 1920.

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William Blackler (1829-1896), for many years a successful publican, in February 1868 bought sections 192, Hundred of Adelaide, and 431, Hundred of Yatala – a total of almost 118.4 hectares (296 acres) – from John Reedie, farmer of the Reedbeds, for £2500.

Initially intending to establish a farm, from 1874 Blackler set up a horse stud on the land. He named it Fulham Park because of its proximity to the White’s family’s Fulham Farm to the west.

In England in 1874 Blackler bought three well-credentialled stallions and a broodmare to serve at Fulham Park. Of these the stallion Countryman went on to become the most notable success siring, for example, The Assyrian, winner of the 1882 Melbourne Cup, and Lord Wilton, the 1885 Adelaide Cup winner.

In 1876 Blackler returned to England to buy broodmares to further strengthen Fulham Park’s breeding stocks. One of the mares bought by Blackler, Instep, went on to become one of the most successful nineteenth century Australian broodmares. After Countryman’s death in the early 1880s Richmond took over as the by now flourishing Fulham Park’s major stallion. If a Fulham Park yearling failed to achieve what Blackler regarded as a fair sale price he would sometimes race the horse himself. Blackler profitably raced Fulham Park progeny Port Admiral, winner of the 1894 Adelaide Cup, as well as Footbolt, Footmark and Duke of Richmond.

After Blackler’s death in 1896 and several years in which the property was held in trust by his executor, in 1904 Blackler’s son William Allen Blackler assumed ownership of Fulham Park; he had been managing the stud for several years. Two of his more successful sires over the next ten years were Port Admiral and Ganymedes.

Like his father, W.A. Blackler occasionally raced Fulham Park stock. The mare Phaedra was probably his most successful performer, while Goodwill won the South Australian Derby in 1897 and Ganymedes in 1904.

In 1913 Blackler sold Fulham Park to pastoral leviathan Sidney (later Sir Sidney) Kidman (1857-1935) for £16,500. (15) (Kidman transferred ownership of the stud to his son Walter on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday in 1921).

Silvius, an English-bred stallion, was one of the Kidmans’ better performed Fulham Park-based racehorses, winning a range of staying events including in 1927 the Moonee Valley Cup and the C.B. Fisher Plate, and running second in the Melbourne Cup that year.  Silvius went on to a successful stud career at Fulham Park. Sylvandale, a son of Silvius, won the Australian Cup and the V.R.C. St Leger Stakes, and ran placings in the Melbourne and Sydney Cups. Silvius also sired Port Adelaide Cup winners Silvado and Baycades.  St Spasa and Sir Simon were other successful Fulham Park stallions during the Kidman era.

After his father’s death Walter Kidman continued to operate Fulham Park as a stud for many years, though on a progressively smaller scale as the property was sold off for residential subdivision. (The stud effectively ceased to operate in the late 1960s). Anne Abel Smith, Walter Kidman’s daughter, later recalled in reference to her father’s time as owner of Fulham Park:

‘Dad always said … that he’d never come to grief – either by burglary or foul play with horses – because a ‘king of the Underworld’, ‘Treacle’ Fimeri, kept his horses there. Treacle always had a big, black car and bodyguards that got out and Dad would always say, ‘Hi there, Treacle…’ and they’d check out the horses’.

Several streets in the area of what was once the Fulham Park stud carry the names of former Kidman pastoral properties – Arcoona, Clyde, Durham and Strathmore Avenues for example. Horsley Street, Lockleys, is named for John Horsley, manager of Fulham Park for approximately thirty years from about 1908. The Riverway home, built by Blackler on section 431 in the 1870s and still standing (though substantially altered), was in the hands of Kidman descendants for many years.

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Brothers John and James Chambers purchased 14.2 hectares (35.5 acres) in section 50, an area known as South Richmond, for £800 in December 1857. (17) After James’s death in 1862 pastoralist John Chambers (1815-1889) became sole owner. With additions to the property, by the early 1870s Chambers owned almost twenty hectares (50 acres) in South Richmond. The land became the site of Chambers’ Richmond estate.

Although Chambers was a keen racegoer it was after his death in 1889, and the purchase of the property by James Henry Aldridge (1849-1925), that the renamed Richmond Park became one of the most successful studs in South Australia. (18)

Aldridge had started working life as a surveyor and later became a publican, his hotels including the Globe Hotel, Rundle Street, and the Grand Hotel, Broken Hill. Already the owner of several well-performed racehorses, upon to deciding to begin a stud at Richmond Park Aldridge bought the stallion Carlyon in Sydney for 1000 guineas. Among the many successful horses sired by Carlyon at Richmond Park from the early 1890s were Newmarket Handicap winner Carlton and Adelaide Cup winner Gunga Din. After 1905 the English-bred Pistol replaced Carlyon as the major Richmond Park stallion. Pistol was South Australia’s leading sire over several seasons, his progeny winning, among many other races, four South Australian Derbies and three Goodwood Handicaps. He was also a successful sire of hurdlers and steeplechasers.

The last two of the great Richmond Park sires were the English horses St Anton and Lucknow. St Anton, a former champion sprinter, sired the winners of five Goodwood Handicaps, a V.R.C. Newmarket Handicap and an Australian Cup. Though Aldridge bred horses mainly for sale he did race some Richmond Park progeny. Antilles, for example, won the City Handicap – Birthday Cup double in 1904. Successful stallions Manfred and Whittier, though not owned by the Aldridge family, also stood at Richmond Park.

In 1907 Aldridge’s home at Richmond Park, originally built by John Chambers, probably in the 1860s, was razed by fire. Aldridge almost immediately had the home rebuilt to its original design. The feature film A Woman Suffers (1914) was partly filmed at Richmond Park.

Aldridge died in November 1925. In 1929 Aldridge’s son Leslie, along with Daniel Cashiel Cudmore, grazier of Edwardstown, developed the Richmond Park site into a 221-allotment residential subdivision (although most allotments were not offered for sale until the late 1930s).

The best of Richmond Park’s stallions and broodmares, including St Anton, were transferred to Leslie Aldridge’s Kismet Park stud at Sunbury, Victoria. The subdivision created from the former Richmond Park retained at least some small memory of the area’s equine past: the streets in the development included Aldridge Terrace, Lucknow Street and St Anton Street.

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It should be noted that in addition to the three major studs mentioned above, another – the Morphettville stud – lay just beyond the southern boundary of West Torrens. Established adjacent to the racecourse on the western side of Morphett Road by Thomas Elder in 1875, the stud operated with varying levels of success until around 1930. The most successful Morphettville stallion during the Elder years (1875-85) was probably Gang Forward, for which Elder paid the then massive sum of 4100 guineas in 1876.

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F.J. Bailey (West Hilton);

W.H. Brown (Clifton Street, Camden);

R.S. Burgess (Anzac Highway, Morphettville – several trainers had their stables on the southern side of the Bay Road/Anzac Highway, just west of the Morphett Road intersection);

V. Duller (Fulham);

A.H. Gillies (Cromer Street, Camden);

A.A. Graetz (Curzon Street, Camden);

J. Hanford (Morphett(ville) Road, Morphettville);

John McGowan (West Hilton, Brooklyn Park);

C. Quinn (Bay Road, Plympton);

M. Quinn (Bay Road, Plympton);

Thomas Rogers (Lockleys);

Thomas Ryan (Clifton Street, Camden);

Edward Shadrick (Anzac Highway, Morphettville);

W. Warming (Brooklyn Park);

Martin Whelan (eastern end of Creslin Terrace, Camden) – Whelan was a champion jumps jockey who went on to have an outstanding career as a trainer, particularly of hurdlers and steeplechasers. Fiscom, a brilliant jumper of the 1920s, was probably Whelan’s best-known horse. Whelan also trained two Adelaide Cup winners, Destinist in 1908 and Cape York in 1936;

Edward (Ted) Williams (Anzac Highway, Plympton – north side, near coursing track) – Williams was a prominent South Australian trainer over several decades. Pistolier, winner of the Port Adelaide Cup in 1915 and the South Australian Grand National Steeple at around the same time, was one of his better horses. Williams also trained Parallana, winner of the 1929 Adelaide Cup.

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L.M. (Mick) Armfield (Carlton Road, Camden Park); 

David Balfour (Carlisle Street, Camden Park);

R.R. Burgess (Crossley Street, Plympton);

R.G. Burrows (Padman Street, North Plympton);

Carole Gellard (Carlisle Street, Camden Park);

F.L. Cilento (Curzon Street, Camden Park);

J.T. (Joe) Hall (Carlisle Street, Camden Park);

L.P. Hunt (Curzon Street, Camden Park);

T.A. (Tom) Jenner (Edward Street, Plympton);

Geoff Kragten (Capper Street, Camden Park);

John Letts (Carlisle Street, Camden Park);

Arthur Mooney (Chapel Street, Plympton);

Ricky Moore (Carlton Road, Camden Park);

F.C. Oakey (Curzon Street, Camden Park);

Philip Read (Anzac Highway, Plympton);

Jim Smith (Morphett Road, Camden Park);

J. Wood (Raymond Street, North Plympton). 

The above lists do not contain details of the numerous small trainers who based themselves in West Torrens for only brief periods, or those trainers who were based just outside the boundaries of West Torrens – for example, the J.B. (Bart) Cummings stables at Glenelg North, the Jolly stables on Morphett Road at Morphettville, and the John Hawkes stables at Cliff Street, Glengowrie.

Further, it should not be overlooked that in addition to trainers and stud farms, twentieth century West Torrens sustained a range of related horse industry workers: horse dealers (notably Barker Brothers on Marion Road, Brooklyn Park), fodder merchants (the Goble family business, based at Richmond or Marleston), blacksmiths – there were at least forty blacksmiths living in West Torrens in the late 1920s – stablehands and jockeys for example.

Hunts took place in South Australia from the early 1840s. (19) The open spaces offered by the Reedbeds area made it one of the favoured hunt locations along with, among other places, Glenelg, Willunga and the Adelaide Hills. In the early years Adelaide hunts were usually ‘drag hunts’, with the hounds pursuing a scented trail – although occasionally dingoes, kangaroos and emus were hunted.

Many of those individuals who were prominent in horse racing extended their interest to the hunt, including West Torrensians John Morphett and the Fisher and Chambers brothers. Hunts were sometimes conducted on the latter’s Richmond Park property.

However, Fulham Park’s William Blackler was the most influential local in early hunt activities. In 1869 Blackler with others re-established the Adelaide Hunt Club – its organization had been haphazard during earlier years – and was Master of the Hounds in 1869 and 1871.

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From the 1870s the Hunt Club attracted a growing membership, including some of the horsemen of West Torrens, notably J.H. Aldridge and W.H. Formby. In its early years the club’s point-to-point steeplechase races were often conducted in the Fulham area because of Blackler’s substantial holdings in the district. The club’s stables and kennels were based at Thebarton for several decades from approximately the 1870s.

As the twentieth century proceeded the specifically West Torrens influence in the club faded.

South Australia’s first organised game of polo reputedly took place on the slopes of Montefiore Hill in 1877. (20) The Adelaide Polo Club was formed three years later. From the beginning the sport was very much a minority pastime, mainly attracting members of Adelaide’s wealthier families. Games were played during summer at some of the large estates around Adelaide, for example Sir Thomas Elder’s Birksgate property, and at Adelaide’s racecourses.

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The main connection between West Torrens and polo was that from early 1902 the Adelaide Polo Club leased from the South Australian Company twenty-six hectares (65 acres) on the Bay Road at Plympton (section 104) on which to establish its first permanent home. (21) The club chose Plympton as the site for its polo field because the land was cheap, flat, close to Adelaide and transport links, and there was ample stabling nearby. The club bought the Plympton site in 1907 for £1000. For much of its time at Plympton the polo club (which was sometimes known as the Birkalla Polo Club) shared the site with the Adelaide Plumpton Coursing Club. In the 1950s the polo club had a stabling complex on nearby Mooringe Avenue.

The polo club sold its Plympton site in 1959, two-thirds going to the Education Department – as the site for Plympton High School – and the rest to the Myer company for a recreation reserve (the club had been leasing the land to Myer for about ten years). The Myer land in turn was subdivided in 1963. A portion went to developer N.L. Stokes for residential subdivision, the remainder eventually to the Education Department as the site for the Plympton High School oval.

Regular, competitive trotting began in South Australia in the 1870s with horses pulling carts and drays in races held during galloping meetings (22). The sport became more formalized from the early 1880s: the Adelaide Trotting Club was established at the Old Course in 1880 – William Blackler was among its first committeemen – and another club began at Port Pirie at about the same time. Over the next thirty years trotting clubs came and went in Adelaide and in country areas. The Adelaide Pony Racing Association conducted trotting races at its Bay Road, Plympton, venue briefly in the 1890s. (There continued to be numerous private trotting tracks in the Plympton area until the 1960s). In the period 1880-1920 trotting was generally stronger in country areas than in Adelaide.   

The South Australian Trotting Club, formed in 1919, brought more uniformity to the sport, including the introduction of light sulkies for racing. In 1920-25 the S.A.T.C. held successful night meetings in summer at the Jubilee Oval. A number of rival suburban clubs were established in Adelaide at this time, including the Port Adelaide Trotting Club, based at the Alberton Oval, and the Adelaide Trotting Club, which held night meetings at the Thebarton Oval briefly in the early 1920s.

However, both clubs were superseded by the South Australian Trotting Association, which based itself at the Wayville Showgrounds from 1925. Trials continued to be conducted at Thebarton Oval and the Weigall Oval, the former being used for trotting training until the 1950s, while Weigall Oval continues to be used. (Over two hundred horses were regularly training at the Weigall Oval in the 1950s.)

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Trotting experienced an upsurge in popularity from the mid-1930s when for the first time bookmakers and the totalizator were allowed into the sport. The period from the 1930s to the 1960s – apart from a four-year hiatus during the second world war – is generally regarded as the golden era of South Australian trotting. The presence of the Thebarton and Weigall Ovals, in tandem with the availability of relatively cheap land and the district’s horse industry credentials, made West Torrens an attractive base for trotting trainers during the period.

Owner-trainers such as Bill Shinn, Kevin Brook, Tom Butterworth, Bill McNamee and the Bailey, Goble and Huelin families came to the district at or around this time.

From the 1970s West Torrens gradually lost favour as a training hub. The main reason for this was probably the opening of Globe Derby Park, north of Adelaide, as the headquarters of South Australian trotting. Land in Adelaide’s northern areas consequently became sought after within the trotting industry. The profits to be made from residential subdivision accelerated the loss of trotting stables from West Torrens.