25/06/15
She’d waited what seemed an eternity for this moment – and for that matter so had I. Both weren’t getting any younger. As their journey was about to reach its climax, her eyebrows flickered like those of a love-struck M for Minnie Mouse in a W for Walt Disney classic. Her breathing suddenly became more shallow and desperate and her pupils dilated. An exhaustive sigh of both joy and relief departed her lips. She looked at me with a raw intensity that only lovers know. She didn’t need to say a word. We both knew she was over the moon to reach the end of her journey. As excitement encapsulated her entire body her hand quivered with excitement and she reached out and grabbed me, seemingly clinging on desperately. “Geez that was good. It’s so unfair that I have you to myself, as fair dinkum every woman ever born should be able to experience a great ride like that with you. Just need to hang on tight and you’ll take them there”.
Her wink of appreciation and loving smile over what had just happened were, to a male, as momentous as writing a novel and calling it Fifty Shades of Grey.
Yes folks – my besotted and breathless bride and I had just arrived at the “Welcome to Dingo” sign on the Capricorn Highway, which stretches some 573 kilometres, all the way from the coastal city of Rockhampton to Longreach, on what was our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary.
Most of the world couldn’t care less about the word “dingo”, but to Australians the word conjures up all sorts of notions and emotions. After all it was the word “dingo” that left a nation reeling when a baby called Azaria Chamberlain went missing near Ayres Rock way back on 17 August 1980. The saga dragged on – and on – for three decades. Then there’s a town called Dingo as per the above sign and it’s a tiny outpost on the Capricorn Highway in Queensland. In fact you have to actually turn off the Capricorn Highway and cross over a busy railway line to get to the town. Dingo is sort of off the beaten track a bit, so when you live in Dingo and want to advertise something, the Dingo Race Club barrier stalls will do the trick. Shove them out on the Capricorn Highway and whack a big banner on them and Bingo – the town can advertise its upcoming “dingo trap throwing competition” to all passers-by. It’s due in August – according to the banner. There’s no specific date on the banner – out in the bush, the bush telegraph works so well that everyone will know what day in August it’s happening. Specifics like the exact date don’t matter.
And the Dingo barrier stalls may as well be out on the Capricorn Highway helping the local community out, as they are only needed once a year, for that’s how often the Dingo Race Club conducts a race meeting. One day a year – Dingo Cup day and it’s coming up in August according to the barrier stalls.
Dingo is 46 kilometres Rockhampton side of Blackwater and the latter is the self confessed “coal capital of Queensland.” So all the Blackwater coal on its way to the port city of Gladstone has to pass through Dingo which is why the railway line is so “busy.” And if you’re in a car or truck and are on the wrong side of the tracks when the boom gates come down at the Dingo railway level crossing, one has to wait a considerable time for a slow moving coal train to pass. And out here the coal trains are so massive that they have over 100 carriages.
But then again Dingo is big when compared to the little town that I grew up in and you might take the kid out of the bush for work purposes, or whatever, but you’ll never take the bush out of the kid. So best enjoy spending time in Dingo and little hamlets like it along the highways and byways. There are so many stories to tell that it’s hard to get the time to absorb them all before you have to keep moving along – or we’d never get home.
Strike up a conversation out Dingo way and you never know what amazing stories you might come across. Just up the road at Duaringa I met a very interesting lady. She’d probably acknowledge that Father Time is catching up with her physically, but she’s 79 years old and mentally sharp as a tack. But by my reckoning, she’s currently doing it a bit tough. It’s just that she doesn’t let that thought come across via her conversation. She has a walking stick to help her to get around and that’s never a positive sign. Things aren’t headed in the right direction when you need a walking stick. She volunteers to me the information that she’s had one knee replaced and “the other one needs doing one day”. Then she advises me that her husband is not in a good way, as he’s in a Rockhampton Hospital. But even with all her movement restriction and things that could be going a whole lot better with her hubby’s health, she manages to smile as she spends her day volunteering at the next town down the line towards Rockhampton from Dingo, at Duaringa, at that little whistlestop’s information centre.
She sees the Justracing car and tells me that her husband once won three races in the one day with the same racehorse at the now defunct track at Duaringa. Asked what the name of the horse was she tells me after pondering for quite a while that she “can’t remember, as it was so long ago”. But she gave me her home phone number so that I can ring her husband in a couple of weeks when he’s hopefully out of hospital. She then took me inside the information centre and showed me a photograph than adorns the wall. Her husband donated it. What’s it of? Well to be honest I’ve been involved in racing for 48 years and I’ve never seen the likes of the photo. It’s of a thoroughbred winning a race at Emerald one day. Nothing unusual about that I guess as the Emerald Race Club is only about 115 kilomtres up the road towards Longreach. But what is amazing is that the winning horse is believed to be the only piebald horse to ever win a registered thoroughbred race in Australia.
I fancy nearly everything in life is fated. Had that particular man, who is also the same age as his wife, 79, not been in Rockhampton Hospital, I would have still been in the area penning the amazing story on him training that horse that won three races on the one day, or on the only piebald to ever win a thoroughbred race in this country. These are the truly great stories of racing that need to be written and preserved – and there’s a million of them. You just have to strike up a conversation with the right person and suddenly we are off and running – and not in the last of five races at Dingo.
So I look forward to penning that amazing story for website readers in the coming weeks.
My wife and I left home last Sunday morning and travelled just over 2000 kilometres in three days and photographed quite a few tracks up in that Central Queensland area that most readers will never get to see in their lifetime and thanks to the wonder that is the Internet I can bring them to your home. How amazing is that? We are blessed to live in such an advanced technological age, albeit in 20 years time “they” will probably think we were technologically illiterate in 2015. Tracks like Gladstone, Duaringa (now closed), Dingo, Bluff and Emerald were all photographed. Unfortunately we were too late to photograph Springsure track, as it was dusk when we came through that town – and then when I went to photograph the Eidsvold track, unfortunately its front gates were padlocked at 11am on Tuesday morning, so I can’t photograph something I can’t get access to. I’ll put all those photos up publicly over the next few weeks.
Today on www.brisbaneracing.com.au there’s a big montage of photos from Dingo racetrack. On www.sydneyracing.com.au there’s the story on the international breeding of 2015 Ipswich Cup winner, Danchai, whilst on www.melbourneracing.com.au there’s the story on Let’s Elope still going strong at age 27 whilst her son is still at stud at just over half her age.