Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/421

 was a difficulty in transporting horses; but it was overcome. Petrel, the property of Mr. Colin Campbell, a popular Victorian squatter, ran a great race on the Melbourne Course with Mr. Austin's Bessie Bedlam, a beautiful daughter of Cornborough.

Gordon's description might have been written for her. She was, to my thinking, the handsomest mare ever stripped on an Australian course. Petrel won, and Mr. Campbell gave a ball at the Prince of Wales' Hotel in Melbourne on the strength of his winnings, at which I was a guest—and a very good ball it was. The same year saw Emerald and Tally-ho (from New South Wales), Coronet and Hollyoake (of Tasmania), beaten by the Victorian horse Bunyip, a big powerful bay. He won the Town Plate, Publicans' Purse, and Ladies' Purse at the same meeting; and starting for fourteen principal races that season, won them all—a truly phenomenal animal.

By this time the gold 'boom of booms' had occurred. There were no more £50 Town Plates. In 1856 Alice Hawthorn won £1000 for Mr. Chirnside, beating Mr. Warby's Cardinal Wiseman; in her turn losing the three-mile race with Veno—an intercolonial duel—for £2000. In 1859 I saw Flying Buck win the Champion Melbourne Sweepstakes for £1000, eighteen starters, and may have heard the late Mr. Goldsborough offer a thousand to thirty against him after the start, and Roger Kelsall call out 'taken.'

The pageant of Flemington on Cup day was yet a visionary forecast. Mr. Bagot had not appeared above the horizon. First King, Briseis, Archer, and Glencoe—much less Carbine and Trenton—were in the dimmest futurity. I was to see Adam Lindsay Gordon win the steeplechase of '69 upon Viking, with Babbler half a length behind. Glencoe the same year bore the coveted Cup trophy to New South Wales.

What a wondrous change had taken place in a few short years between the primitive racing and rude surroundings of the old Botany Course and the shaven lawns, the flower-beds, the asphalt walks, the immense grand—stands, the order, comfort, and perfect organisation of Randwick and Flemington