11/06/15
With the Brisbane Winter Carnival in full swing, I thought that there would be no more opportune time than today to pen a story on one of Brisbane’s past Winter Carnival heroes, an affable long retired Brisbane farrier named Gary Jaenke – and a horse that he was given a half share in, provided he could fix his feet and win a race with him.
Gary Jaenke first saw the light of day in the Central Queensland beef capital of Rockhampton on 21 February 1939 as the eldest of three children to his parents Loase (call me Dick) and Valma. Gary had two siblings – Loretta and Faye. Loretta sadly passed away some years ago whilst Faye lives in Maryborough in Queensland.
Gary initially went to school at Rockhampton but was transferred to Hamilton State School upon his family moving to Pinkenba in Brisbane when he was 11 or 12.
“I was very dumb at school, so I finished up leaving school when I was 13, well I was nearly 14, I suppose, and I remember the old fella that I had to get a clearance from (to leave school) said to me ‘well you might as well be doing that (blacksmiths apprentice) as being here at school, you’re dumb’”. But by the time I was about 20 I would have bought and sold him twice, so shoeing horses was a good job for me. I was apprenticed as a blacksmith but I didn’t sign the apprenticeship papers till I was 15. I shod horses for 43 years, mostly racehorses. Never shod much else, no ponies or the like”.
Asked the best racehorse he ever shod, Gary pondered for a while and replied, “Well the best racehorse I ever shod would have to be Tulloch. He was a damn good horse. I shod him when he came up here to Brisbane. I did all (Tommy) Smith’s horses that he used to bring up (to the Winter Carnival) for three or four years. But I chased him (Tommy Smith), because of different things. Tulloch was a bad horse to try to shoe by yourself. He could kick you, or bite you, he’d do everything.”
Questioned as to why he severed his relationship with Tommy Smith, Gary advised, “It was over Tulloch, because the fellow who was looking after him was on the drink and he was supposed to be there to catch the horse (and hold him for me) and I tried to catch him but couldn’t catch him in his box. He was a bad horse to try to do anything with.”
Gary named 1960 Stradbroke winner “Mullala, dual Stradbroke winner Daybreak Lover for Danny Duke, horses like Charlton Boy for Tommy Dawson, all Fred Best’s horses, he had a terrible lot of good horses and all Harry Hatton’s good horses like Prunda and Basalt,” as some of the best horse he’d shod over the years. Gary also confirmed to me, as others have over the years, that “Prunda was blind in one eye, but they got away with it back then, they wouldn’t get away with it now.”
Gary plied his trade “in a blacksmith shop with his boss Stewart Kelly in Dobson Street nearly opposite Fred Best’s stables and just up the road from Hatton’s – and another one in Hendra near where the feed bin shop is now.” He continued “the trainers would line their horses up and most of them got hot shod in those days. Later on they brought in a union rule for the strappers that they had to finish work at 9am then nobody would want to bring a horse to the blacksmith’s shop, so we finished up having to go to the stables to shoe the horses. That’s how that trend started. I suppose I was about 25 when we started going to the stables to shoe horses.”
Asked what top trainers and jockeys he’d seen in his over six-decade involvement in the industry, Gary stated, “Noel Best, Jim Standfield and Chris Munce would be the best three Queensland jockeys I saw. And the best trainers I saw would be Fred Best and Eric Kirwan.”
Queried as to what the best qualities of those three jockeys (Best, Standfield and Munce) that he named were, Gary replied, “They were down to earth people. They’d go out of the way to come and talk to you and they just knew their business.”
When asked what Fred Best’s best asset was Gary noted, “Well I’d say he was just a great trainer. He won nearly 16 premierships straight and as for Kirwan well he was a good trainer. He had top horses like Zephyr Zip and dual Magic Millions winners Brave Warrior and Sunblazer and they were good horses.”
Quizzed as to how many horses he’d shoe a day or a week in his younger days, Gary advised, “You’d average say between six or eight a day, some days a bit more – some days a bit less. In the hot shoeing days you’d do more. In those days all the horses had to have their steel plates off and the aluminiums and tips put on, on race days. So on race morning you’d go around the stables that had runners in that day to do all the shoeing. A trainer like Fred Best could have up to 12 horses racing on the one day.”
In his private life, Gary married his first wife Erin when he was 21 and the union produced five children, in descending order of age, Stephen, Joanne, Graham, Chris and Jason.
Gary married his current wife Kay back in 1985 and they celebrated 30 years of marriage on Valentine’s Day this year. Today the happy couple still make their home at Boondall, not far from Brisbane’s two racetracks of Doomben and Eagle Farm.
Gary had a fascinating story to tell of how he got into racehorse ownership and he takes up the story by explaining, “I was shoeing horses for (trainer) Henry Davis. I grew up with Henry and we were good mates. He had 45 horses in work at Eagle Farm and this horse, Pelican Point, came up from Tasmania to him and Henry said to me, ‘Have a look at this horse. He just pulls up on the track, he won’t go.’ So I had a look at him and his shoes were bad, so I said to Henry, I’ll shoe him up and you give him a week’s break. That was on say the Tuesday then two days later on the Thursday he galloped him again, but he pulled up again. So Henry came to me and he said, ‘He pulled up again that horse’. I said I told you to give him a week off and he said, ‘Mate you can’t have a week off here, they pay too big a money’ (to have them trained). So I said well what are you going to do with him and he said, ‘I’m going to send him down the bottom stables because he’s no good’. So I said who owns him and he said, ‘Don’t waste your money on him, but I’ll tell you the fella’s (owner’s) name and where he lives.’ The owner lived down the Gold Coast so I went down to see him and he said to me, ‘What are you’ and I told him I was a farrier or a blacksmith. He said, ‘That’s what I need with that horse. Put it this way, if you can win me a race with that horse I’ll give you half of the horse and I’ll draw up the (transfer) papers now if you can win me a race’. I said I’ll win you three or four races and we finished up winning a Queensland Cup, a Doomben Cup and five or six other races and he ran second in an Ipswich Cup to Golden Rhapsody. So the fella (owner) finished up with a lot more than he ever thought he would. And he stuck to his word and signed my share over as soon as he won his first race for new trainer Bill Wehlow. When Pelican Point won the Doomben Cup though he wanted to keep the Doomben Cup and he paid me for half the value of the Cup, even though I said he didn’t need to because I couldn’t eat a Cup. He’s about 80 years old now and we still keep in touch.”
Asked if he won good money backing Pelican Point, Gary said, “(Deceased bookmaker) Chubby Holloway’s brother-in-law, Teddy Brown, used to get me to shoe his horses. He was Billo Brown’s (long time Brisbane Clerk of the Course) brother. Teddy Brown came around to our house one day and he said to me, ‘I’m not trying to spy on you or anything, but that horse of yours (Pelican Point) he’ll win the two mile (3200m) race on Saturday (Queensland Cup). I clocked him (at trackwork Tuesday morning) and he’s going really well.’ So I backed him in that race, but only had about $500 each way on him and he won. But when it came up to the Doomben Cup, Teddy Brown said, ‘You ought to get on to Chubby (Holloway) and back Pelican Point with him.’ I said well I would if I could, but he’s got a silent phone number and he said, ‘He’s my brother-in-law and I’ll give you the phone number and I’ll tell him you’re going to ring and you do the business.’ So I rang Chubby and did the business and Chubby said to me, ‘Whatever you put on, you pay me whenever you’ve got it but if you win, give me 10 or 15 minutes and I’ll have your money counted out for you and you can take it.’ I think I collected $35,000 or $38,000 off Chubby and I put it inside my shirt and I walked over to my mate who was shouting beers to everybody at the bar. And he said, ‘What have you got stuffed in your shirt’ and I said money. He said, ‘Are you going to put it in the safe here at the club and I said yeah, but I went out to the car and shoved it in the boot”.
But the bet with bookie Chubby Holloway was not the only money that Gary Jaenke had on Pelican Point in the Doomben Cup. He takes up the story by saying, “I was shoeing a horse for a bloke from Sydney and he said to me, ‘I can get you onto this bookmaker Bruce McHugh and you can have a bet with him.’ So he rang Bruce and told him I wanted to have a bet and I got on the phone to him and I had $2,000 on with him. He said, ‘Do you want starting price, or do you want some other price? Anyway by then Chubby Holloway had been on the wire to Sydney to lay off some money and Bruce McHugh told me I wouldn’t get any price like Chubby bet me and I said that’s okay. I asked him how we’d settle and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, if your horse wins I’ll send you the money to the address (I’d given him). And sure enough within five or six days after the race a cheque arrived in the mail.”
Asked how much he won backing Pelican Point in the 1981 Doomben Cup, a broad smile, akin to a carpet snake in a chook coop, encapsulated Gary’s face as he said “about $75,000 or $80,000.”
Gary owned a couple of cheap buys since Pelican Point but neither had better than country ability.
And Gary told me that he still follows the races and “has a bet now and again.”
Given the amazing financial windfall he was able to achieve for himself simply by having enough faith in his own ability to fix the “he’s no good” galloper Pelican Point, I asked what importance a farrier is to the racing industry and Gary stated, “If they can’t walk, they can’t run. You’ve got to have a good farrier. A tin-pot farrier is no good to a horse.”
Asked what the biggest changes are that he’s seen in his 60-odd year involvement in racing, Gary said he thought “the older jockeys were better than the current jockeys in my opinion, because if you watch them on TV they’ve got their toes in the stirrups, whereas you see a lot of (younger) jockeys hit the gates coming out and they lose their iron because they’ve only got their toe in the stirrup. I think when jockeys used to ride with their foot in the stirrup they had much more control over the horse”.
Nowadays Gary Jaenke would be the first bloke to tell you that at age 76 his mind may not be as sharp as a tack like it once was, but he’s certainly a fascinating man to sit down and chew the fat with whilst absorbing his tales of the racetrack that span over six decades.
On my Brisbaneracing website today there is a big photo montage of the life and times of Gary Jaenke and the horse that he part owned – Pelican Point. This is the thread:
http://www.brisbaneracing.com.au/article.php?current_article=7104