Peter Pan by Jessica Owers Sample Chapter

Copyright © Jessica Owers 2011. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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An Ebury Press bookPublished by Random House Australia Pty LtdLevel 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060www.randomhouse.com.au

First published by Ebury Press in 2011

Copyright © Jessica Owers 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

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National Library of AustraliaCataloguing-in-Publication Entry

Owers, Jessica. Peter Pan/Jessica Owers.

ISBN: 978 1 74275 021 7 (pbk).

Melbourne Cup (Horse race) – History. Peter Pan (Race horse). Race horses – Australia – History. Horse racing – Australia – History.

Dewey Number: 798.400994

Cover design by Adam Yazxhi/MAXCOFront cover image: Peter Pan and Darby Munro after winning the 1934 Melbourne CupBack cover image: Peter Pan and Jim Pike winning the 1933 AJC St Leger at RandwickInternal design and typesetting by Xou, www.xou.com.au Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, an Accredited ISO AS/NZS 14001:2004 Environmental Management System printer.

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Alwina

A slow drizzle fell on the roof of the sale ring like a thousand dripping taps. It made raincoats limp and umbrellas heavy,

and it had settled in for the afternoon. Men ducked from it in all directions, into the already crowded auditorium. They shook themselves under the shelter, cursed the blasted Easter weather, and settled down for the business of horse trading.

It was Wednesday 16 April 1925, the second-last day of the yearling sales in Sydney. Auctions had begun a week earlier, divided between the bloodstock firms of William Inglis & Sons and Harry Chisholm & Co. The Inglis yards were at rest today, but here at King Street, behind the tram depot north of Randwick Racecourse, a good crowd had gathered for the Chisholm sales. Rodney Dangar huddled in the middle of the packed auditorium, his umbrella propped between his knees. He clutched the H. Chisholm & Co. catalogue, his fingers wedged in one of its pages. He was here to buy a horse, and one filly in particular. She was Lot 276: a chestnut by the ageing, imported stallion St Alwyne out of Formaliter, daughter of the unbeaten New Zealand racehorse Boniform.

Dangar was 53 years old, tall, with broad shoulders and a smock of silver hair. He was a pastoralist, the son and heir of an old English family in New South Wales, and he was one of the wealthiest men in the state. He peered out at the world through privileged eyes, and being of good breeding, moved in all the right social circles. But he possessed few airs and graces. He would shake the hand of any man, and lived his life by rules of humility. He feared growing stodgy and unimaginative, and so, despite his wealth and status, that morning in the Chisholm pavilion he fitted right in.



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Dangar lived in the opulent mansion Arlington in Woollahra, east Sydney, and ran his businesses from 4 O’Connell Street downtown. But he also had a vast estate in the Hunter Valley, some 2000 acres outside of Singleton. He had been born there, at the grand homestead Baroona in the tiny hamlet of Whittingham, and nowadays it was the home of his small thoroughbred empire. He hoped to add to it this afternoon.

Dangar glanced around the ring as bidding began for the afternoon. Auctioneer Harry Chisholm was reciting pedigrees with wild, babbling enthusiasm. Dangar flipped to Lot 276 in his catalogue and stared at the page, though he knew it almost by heart. The filly was on account of Mr John Hudson Keys, whose property Bengalla was in Muswellbrook, in the heart of the Hunter Valley. Keys had purchased the filly, at foot to Formaliter, at the dispersal of Arrowfield Stud the previous year. The sale had been the most prolific event in breeding for decades, for the stock sold had been the highest quality horses there was. The stallion Valais had set a record price for a thoroughbred in Australasia, some 3000 guineas more than the record sale of Carbine 35 years before. Keys had purchased the filly and her dam for 150 guineas, and if Dangar could get her for that price today, he would consider it a bargain.

Dangar believed he had here a thoroughbred with all the right building blocks. If a man had Melbourne Cup pretensions, this was the filly for him. Lot 276 was from a proven racing family, which had as many wins as runners, but she was also impeccably bred. She had some of the finest colonial lines in her, horses that had run all day and come back for more the next morning. The youngster was a full sister to the racehorse Sir Alwyne, an early fancy for the West Australian Derby. She was a lovely type, a solid filly with clean conformation, but it wasn’t her looks that appealed to Dangar. It was her pedigree.

She was by St Alwyne, now an old stallion in Victoria, who had sired Melbourne Cup winners Night Watch and Poitrel, and



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Sydney Cup winner Moorilla. On the dam side, Lot 276 was an exciting cocktail of old blood. Formaliter, a New Zealand-bred mare, had Carbine’s sire twice in her fifth remove. She traced through to Chester, Yattendon and Goldsbrough – the corner stallions of Australian breeding – but the real gilt in her pedigree came from her fifth dam, the New Zealand mare Mermaid. Mermaid had been the great grand-dam of Wallace, champion son of Carbine and a brilliant sire himself. On her sire side, Formaliter was by Boniform, who was a half-brother to Martian, the sire of the legendary winners Rapine, The Hawk, Star Stranger, and 1916 Melbourne Cup winner Sasanof. These were extraordinary staying lines, lines that Dangar hadn’t seen for a long time.

The sky outside hung very low, and the rain had not stopped drumming on the roof. Harry Chisholm was singing above the drone of droplets, and he was more than halfway through his schedule when he arrived at Lot 276. He would sell 139 horses that day, but this filly was the only one by St Alwyne. When she stepped into the ring beside her handler, few men bid her any attention. They hadn’t looked deep into her pedigree as Dangar had, and there was nothing immediate in her. She came in without as much as a hush from the crowd.

The filly was up for sale for the second time in her short life. It was on the very same date the year before that she had been sold at Arrowfield. She was familiar with the hordes of people, with their animated chatter and the clang of the gavel, and she was more relaxed than most of the other yearlings. Dangar watched closely as horse and handler walked around under Harry Chisholm’s calls.

‘Who’ll give me 50 guineas?’ the auctioneer boomed. ‘Fifty guineas for this well-bred daughter of an unbeaten stallion.’ Bidding was slow on the filly, and Dangar glanced nervously around the sale ring to see where the money would come from. A spotter’s call punctured the silence, and Chisholm tickled the bidding to 100 guineas. Into triple figures, a few more buyers joined the fray. The



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filly went to 160, 170, then 180 guineas. Dangar raised his catalogue to signal 190. Immediately, a call came from the other side of the sale ring. ‘At 200 guineas,’ Chisholm called, and he hung there, his gavel suspended above his podium. Dangar thought quickly. He could afford the price, but whoever was bidding against him was as keen as he was, and he couldn’t guarantee the man would not go higher. He wondered how much the filly was worth, and wondered if two bidders had just pushed her price over her value. He shook his head at Chisholm, and the gavel clattered down on Lot 276.

The filly had been sold to Elwyn Darworth Bloomfield, the secretary of the Bong Bong Picnic Race Club. He was a distinguished man, with as much in his pocket as Dangar, the type who dined with prime ministers and governors and played golf every other day. But he was a racing man, not a breeder, so when he purchased Lot 276 he had paid little attention to her potential powers of reproduction. He had wanted a racehorse, not a broodmare, and he had become the official recorded buyer for 200 guineas.

Dangar left the crowded auditorium and walked out into the rain. He was agitated, struggling to see the good in what had just happened. He pitched his umbrella and strode towards the shed rows, looking for the chestnut filly. He had made a decision during bidding, but he couldn’t tell himself it was the right one. It galled him that he had surrendered the youngster for the silly sum of 10 guineas. When he looked at her in her stable, she looked better than he remembered. She was so solidly built, so square and straight, a perfect complement to her pedigree. Dangar regretted his decision immediately and went in search of Elwyn Bloomfield.

He was familiar with Bloomfield through the Southern Highlands district. Dangar had a country residence at Sutton Forest called Rotherwood, which wasn’t far from Bloomfield’s home at Moss Vale. It was an intimate locale, populated by wealthy graziers, governors and the Sydney noblesse, and because Dangar spent



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Christmases at Rotherwood, he usually attended the annual Bong Bong meeting in January. Bloomfield greeted Dangar like an old friend, and Dangar explained his situation. He said he would pay a good price for the St Alwyne filly, and Bloomfield nodded. A man is always curious about the value of his stock when another man comes knocking for it. But the Bong Bong secretary didn’t press the matter. He had traded racehorses for much of his life, and this filly was just another that someone else wanted more than he did. He happily accepted 210 guineas from Rodney Dangar, a profit of a little more than £10 in as many minutes, and exchanged the sale papers with his neighbour. Lot 276 was bound for Baroona.

—

The train carrying Lot 276 from Sydney eased into Whittingham railway siding shortly after seven in the evening, when the light had all but faded across the upper Hunter Valley. There was a subtle April breeze, and Rodney Dangar’s new filly stepped from her boxcar into the crisp country air. William Shade was waiting for her, ready to walk her home to Baroona.

Shade was a thin man in his early fifties, an upright fellow with a wiry moustache. He was kind with horses and a stellar farmhand. He had worked at Baroona since 1896, and tonight, tucked into the pocket of his trousers was a telegram from the boss: new filly arriving. goods train to muswellbrook. dangar. The filly had been put on the freight train from Sydney, so the only people that joined Shade at the station that evening were those expecting merchandise. The unloading dock was a little further along from the passenger platforms, and from here the goods and livestock were dispersed to waiting parties. Shade collected his jittery cargo as crates and cattle scurried in all directions, and he hurried her gently off the platform.



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Shade led the filly away by lantern. The pair headed along the road west for a short time, then crossed the open paddocks towards Baroona. They climbed the long driveway towards the house, an extravagant avenue lined with elm and pine trees, jacarandas and thick oleander plants, and they skirted around the back towards the stables. Shade turned the filly into a spacious loose box, settling her with a manger of sweet lucerne and hot mash. Then he shut the stable door, and left her alone in the pallid silence of the night.

—

Nearly a month after the Easter sales, on 11 May 1925, Dangar stepped off Bligh Street, Sydney, into the offices of the Australian Jockey Club (AJC). He was here to collect his new filly’s registration papers. He had named the chestnut ‘Alwina’, and whether Dangar intended to race her or not, her registration was a compulsory element of her ownership. The registrar was the custodian of all identifying information pertaining to racehorses in New South Wales, and that included broodmares and stallions. Dangar had fronted to the registrar many times before, and he would do so many times again.

Dangar left the AJC offices and swung north. He looped around Bent Street and into the financial district of O’Connell Street. It was a lively part of town, and today was a Monday, so there were motorcars tooting and people rushing about. He could hear the rattle of trams on nearby Castlereagh Street, could feel the rush of Sydney skywards. It was the roaring twenties and progress was everywhere. Dangar was excited about it, even embraced it, despite his age. Electrical poles had replaced gas lanterns, and telephones were on the way. The tender for the Harbour Bridge had been granted last year, and the construction was a never-ending subject in the newspapers. Nothing quite so grand had ever been planned in the colony, and pictorials tracked its progress at least every week.



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Dangar walked into the Pitt Son & Badgery building at 4 O’Connell, and slipped up the stairs to his office on the top floor. It was at this time of year that his senses came alive, when his English roots began to crave the country air again. He missed the pace of rural life when he was in Sydney, the smells during harvest and the willowy whiffs of cattle. About this time every year, as the trees began to toss their leaves around glorious Hyde Park, Dangar craved a passage to Baroona.

—

Whittingham was 145 miles north of Sydney, on the railway line that ran between Newcastle and Muswellbrook. When Dangar was born here in 1873, Baroona had belonged to his father, Albert Augustus Dangar, only three years. Then, it was a humble homestead, a compact little residence of untold potential, sitting on a hillside overlooking the east and the rich flats of the Hunter River. By the time Dangar was 13, Baroona had become the grandest home in the district. It had rich, Italianate features, a piazza out the front and an imposing watch tower. There were servant wings, a tennis court and greenhouse, and 1400 acres surrounding the house. Albert had even created an artificial lake in the front paddock. There were 16 boxes in the stable yard, gas lighting throughout, and four windmills pumping water. It was a palace, a pastoralist’s playground, worthy of the family that lived inside.

Albert Dangar was the fourth son of Henry Dangar, the first pioneer of the Hunter region. He was a famous man, decorated by queen and country, and his children grew up similarly distinguished. Henry Cary Dangar, Albert’s older brother, became the longest-serving AJC committeeman in memory, one of a long list of Dangars tied to horse racing. Albert was a wildly successful pastoralist. By the age of 22 he was managing some 300,000 acres of Henry Dangar



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land, runs that extended from the Hunter to the New England districts and northern Queensland. When he married, in 1866, Mary Phoebe Rouse of the Rouse Hill family, he forever interconnected two of the finest families in New South Wales.

Albert and Mary’s home at Baroona was a family one. They had three sons, the first of whom was Rodney Rouse Dangar, who grew up under the moral wisdom of his father. Albert was a fair and honest employer, a man of thick and proper code. ‘No man in Australia has more sympathy with the real, honest, straightforward worker,’ wrote the Pastoral Review of Albert in 1910. ‘Few have worked harder than he himself.’ Despite thousands of men in his employ up and down the country, Albert had never found himself in a court of law with a single one, and that was a rare attribute of the times. He was also a generous philanthropist. Because of him, Singleton could boast the Dangar Cottage Hospital and the All Saints Anglican Church, and when he died in 1913, he was buried under the altar he had paid for, only after the funeral cortege choked the streets of Singleton for many hours.

Rodney Dangar was 40 years old when he finally inherited Baroona. He had waited a long time for the homestead, and had lingered for years in his father’s long shadow. But Albert, though an imposing and often daunting role model for young Rodney, was an excellent and generous father. Rodney was well-educated and well-travelled, and had spent most of 1905 in England. He had learned, during his time in the motherland, all about the ‘empire and her dominions’, and royalism became a strong part of his character. He began to swear by it, and it would later influence his racing career. He adored Australia, but Australia was a servant of England, and he rarely saw it otherwise.

Though Dangar resembled his father in looks, with the same tall stature and deep eyes, it was in character that he was most like Albert. Dangar was upstanding and honourable, a man of excellent manners,



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and a rather dashing sort. When he met Elsie Winifred Macdonald in Sydney, the daughter of a respectable Double Bay surveyor, he was smitten. She was a patron of the arts, a conservationist and an independent, forward-thinking young woman. He married her during the war in 1914.

When Baroona came into Dangar’s hands, he was a wealthy man already, but he possessed the intelligence to protect his fortune. He rarely gambled (even though his interest in horse racing was extensive), and he invested a large chunk of income in mining and tobacco shares, and large Australian businesses such as the Colonial Sugar Refining Co. He sat on the board of directors for the Australian Mutual Provident Society (later AMP), and was a founding member of the Royal Geographical Society. Like his father, he never forgot the charitable cause. Though he was rich beyond the wildest dreams of the common man, he never flaunted it. Character rarely deserted Dangar. He was always the English gentleman.

Dangar and Elsie bought Arlington in 1920 as a city home when they weren’t at Baroona. They lost an infant son at this time, a child that didn’t live long enough to be named, but in 1922 Elsie gave birth to a little girl. They named her Roslyn, and Dangar was devoted to her. He named horses after her, as well as the little lane that ran alongside Arlington, and he took her everywhere. As his father had been, Dangar was a wonderful role model. But he differed heavily from Albert on one single issue. Thoroughbreds.

For decades, the districts of Singleton had produced Melbourne Cup winners. Glencoe, Lord Cardigan, Poseidon, Lord Nolan and Piastre had all come from local breeders. But at the bottom of the hillside from Baroona, on the flanks of the Hunter River, the original homestead Neotsfield, the home of Dangar’s grandfather Henry, was where it had all begun for the racehorses in the Dangar family. Henry’s sons, including Albert, had stood Positano here, one of the greatest stallions ever in Australia, and racing in Dangar



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colours, Positano won the AJC Spring Stakes and VRC Veterans’ Stakes before retiring. At Neotsfield, he sired four Melbourne Cup winners, a record that would stand for a long time. In 1869, Albert and his brothers imported an English colt called Grandmaster, an extravagant son of the English Triple Crown winner Gladiateur. They stood Grandmaster at Baroona for three seasons, but Albert was an impatient man. He sold the horse before the winners arrived – and arrive they did, in the form of 39 stakes races.

In addition to Positano and Grandmaster, the Dangars were also responsible for Welcome Jack, a New Zealand champion and the winner of 11 stakes events. They stood the horse at Neotsfield for many years, producing the winners of the AJC Derby and Epsom Handicap near the turn of the century. Such was the success of the Dangars that their colours became as famous as any on Sydney racecourses. But Albert was not a man to wait on horse racing. Convinced that his luck lay elsewhere, exeunt the thoroughbreds from Baroona, replaced by Arab and Suffolk Punch breeds.

Rodney Dangar was frustrated at his father’s shortsightedness, but Albert’s word was law. It would not be questioned. Nevertheless, young Rodney couldn’t understand why the successes of Neotsfield could not be duplicated at Baroona. The land was rich with limestone, good for breeding bone into horses, and there was plenty of space to rotate stock. But it was only in 1913 that he was finally able to test his suspicions. After Albert died, Dangar began to sell off the Arabs and draughts and collect a small band of thoroughbreds. By the mid-1920s he had a select string of broodmares, and a racehorse here and there.

He was also the last Dangar standing at Whittingham, for Neotsfield had been dispersed in 1924, subdivided into various estates. Local breeder Percy Brown had set up his Randwick Lodge stud on part of it, and Dangar and his neighbour became good friends. By 1926, in the autumn after Alwina arrived at Baroona,



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Dangar was looking for something for his pretty new filly. He wanted a stallion, a match that would produce another Poseidon or Positano, but he couldn’t choose which one. In the end, fate refused to leave him scratching around in the dark. It presented him, in 1928, with a horse called Pantheon.



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Peter Pan by Jessica Owers Sample Chapter