Mahogany was one of the most versatile horses to race in Australia since Malua, a century before. In the 1990s he won the Victoria and AJC derbies, was nutted short head by Octagonal in a Cox Plate, and then sent back to sprinting, winning successive Lightning Stakes. A high rollers’ playground at Crown Casino is known as the Mahogany Room (Kerry Packer had a share in the horse). More modest punters can now get aboard a mechanical Mahogany as they enter Champions, the Australian Racing Museum and Hall of Fame.
Originally the Victorian Racing Museum, it was established at the Caulfield Racecourse in 1981. Recently it moved to Federation Square. For $8 visitors get an outstanding audio tour of the eclectic exhibits. The grey background highlights the brilliant racing silks and, as well, the hats and costumes of long-forgotten Fashions on the Field. Turn any corner and there will be video footage—of Harry White guiding us through Sobar’s stellar year of 1972, which included his controversial loss to Dayana in the Victoria Derby; of the crowds milling into Flemington on Cup Day in 1930 to see Phar Lap let down at the furlong and win by three with his ears pricked and Jim Pike up in the irons.
The remains of this horse are elsewhere, but Carbine’s skeleton is on show and behind it a hologram of the horse galloping with a thumping red heart. Nearby jockey George Moore shares a panel with trainer Tommy Smith. The former opines: ‘If there had been no racing, both Tom and I would have been out on the roads digging holes.’ Across the way is a shelf with 11 small trophies—won by Bart Cummings as the trainer of 11 winners of the Melbourne Cup. There are old horse paintings, the mounted hooves of Wakeful and Malua, and advertisements featuring the Capstan Cavalcade of Famous Winners. No doubt the fag of choice for many trainers and jockeys long gone.
Listen to poetry about the horse in Australia, and to famous race calls. Jim Carroll’s 1934 Melbourne Cup is polite and leisurely—until Peter Pan dashes away. Ken Howard bemusedly calls Vain’s triumph in the 1969 Golden Slipper when he showed the Sydney hope to be anything but a Special Girl. Then there is the incomparable Bert Bryant, calling the two-horse race in 1970 between Rain Lover and Big Philou. In a tight finish, Bert plumped, rightly, for Big