WARD: Sunday Sun Sydney 4 October 1931
Famous Racehorses Linked with vivid Australian Dramas
Look past the eager, excited thousands who throng Randwick. Look down the years. The racehorse is patterned in our history’s tapestry. We can trace one rough and glamorous thread that links that phenomenal racehorse Phar Lap, through scenes of the ‘sixties, with two Australian bushrangers.
Phar Lap has had only proud jockeys on his back. Pasha, a Phar Lap of the ‘sixties, of the same famous Stockwell blood, nearly had a bushranger. That was Ben Hall. A stablemate of Pasha’s actually did. Bushranger Thunderbolt himself.
Our Phar Lap. In Australia today the name is so well known and full of meaning that a youngster who shows a turn of flying speed at his school sports gets the nickname — Phar Lap. And back in the years before Phar Lap took charge of the “straight,” when the punters who marvel at him were the schoolboys, a great game was “bobbies and bushrangers” . . . “I’ll be Thunderbolt and you be Ben Hall” . . . Punter fathers and grandfathers sat by and puffed their pipes, and they talked of a horse named Pasha. . . . “Those were the days for racing,” mused grandfather, who never knew our Phar Lap, but who remembered the bushrangers.
Out of the past, where their smoke- rings have faded, linked to the lives of Australia to-day, rises this story, starred with old glamorous names. Stockwell, “Emperor of Stallions” from whom Phar Lap is descended in a direct paternal line — Pasha, of the same famous-blooded family — Thunderbolt — Ben Hall.
THE name behind all these linked names is that of Patrick Ward, gentleman, of Merriwa, N.S.W. Everyone who knew racehorses in those days
knew of Patrick Ward. He had a string of racehorses with the “longest noses in Australia.” That is what they said, because Patrick Ward’s horses usually had their noses in front of all other noses at the winning posts throughout the country. Patrick Ward owned Pasha, and other horse of Stockwell blood, too. Look up the files of old Maitland newspapers, and you’ll find his name linked also with such favorites of the day as Grecian Queen, The Snake, Lord Raglan, Mystery, The Egg, Daughter o’ the Regiment, Sultan, Sappho, Jack the Giant Killer. He was King of the Turf, was Patrick Ward. He was a czar of sports men then, a great gambler of the gold his horses won him, and rather the Beau Brummel and Beau Nash of the race track, too. There Is a picture of Patrick Ward on this page. It is a rare old photo, a week ago unknown.
A woman, at present living at Hornsby, Sydney, is a grandchild of Patrick Ward. Recently she was having a thorough spring-cleaning of the home. Tucked away in one of those drawers of forgotten things, such as we all have, she came upon this photo. It was grandfather. It was Patrick Ward, the man who had the Phar Laps of his day, of our Phar Lap’s family. The man who beat one bushranger and was beaten by another.
BEN HALL was the first bush ranger to appear in Phar Lap’s pedigree of great racehorses and vivid villainies. How Ben Hall would have coveted the Phar Lap we know. But it is too hard on the imagination picturing the flash little “townranger,” sometimes called “gunman,” by reason of his automatic, getting away with a racehorse from Randwick or Rosehill to-day. Bush ranger Ben Hall seems a not-so-bad, dramatic, even romantic fellow beside the petty bandits with us now.
Thankfully, racehorses are as good as ever they were. Better, in fact, the stop-watch figures prove. Phar Lap can be proud of his pedigree, and his pedigree of Phar Lap. Ben Hall started bushranging as a soured man who believed that the world was giving him a “rotten deal,” had a grudge against him, owed him a living. He soon turned from a saturnine outlaw to a desperate dare-devil, racing down the ranges with his gang, ready to fight an escort for its gold, a brazen Turpin on the stage coach route, and reckoning the worth of the horse that bore him as Dick Turpin reckoned on and loved his Black Bess. They were connoisseurs of a good galloper, the bushrangers.
In 1862, at Mudgee races, Ben Hall tried to get away with Pasha. Patrick Ward was there, with his horses. Mudgee was a big country race-meeting in those days. Picture the scene. A few top hats from the city, the more solid country sportsmen in high bowlers. Crinolines moving over the uneven sward, worn by ladies whose gently eager eyes looked out from bonnets daintily tucked. They held up sunshades that were little jokes to the big sun that glared and grinned above the gum trees around the racecourse. There were men from the town and from the selections farther out. There were miners who had ridden in the 20 miles from Hargraves, great fancy fellows with red flannel shirts and neckerchiefs fluttering up against the backs of their wide-brimmed felts. Out on the edge of the clearing, moving around, behind the first line of gums, unsuspected, was the bushranger, Ben Hall.
THERE were no stables on that country course. While the horses waited for their races, they were simply tied to the fence rail. Pasha was standing tied to the fence. Ben Hall knew which was Pasha, smiled, then set his lips. A few boys stood around, in charge of the horses. But a race was on, and the boys were at the track fence, watching. All eyes were on the course, except those of Ben Hall and a few bushranging trusties he had with him. They quickened their horses, and rode up as though they were latecomers. Ben Hall himself started to untie Pasha. For some reason, one of the boys looked around. What was he doing, this stranger, with his shadow falling across the finest horse there? “Hey!” the boy yelled. Hall looked around. His cool recklessness wavered. Others were looking his way, too— advancing. Somebody recognised him. “It’s Ben Hall, the bushranger!” A long- snouted pistol appeared, cracked out a bullet that went over Ben Hall’s head. The bushranger fired back. Tall hats fell off, the crinolines were in commotion.
Ben Hall saw that he hadn’t a chance in a thousand of riding away on coveted Pasha. A couple of troopers were coming through the crowd. There were more shots. Hall and his men mounted, bolted through the bush. Men clambered on their horses for the pursuit of the notorious gang. They came back later, excited, flushed, and dusty. The bushrangers had got away. But Pasha was safe.
The outlaw figure of the next brazen episode, when success did crown a bushranger’s daring, is another gentlemen whose name was Ward. Frederick Ward was no relation of Patrick Ward, the owner. Frederick Ward was Thunderbolt.
Fast horses were Thunderbolt’s mania. Fast horses made one big reason why Thunderbolt bushranged so long. When, mistakenly, he took a horse that was not one of Phar Lap’s ancestors, his bushranging came to an end. Patrick Ward was on his way to Uralla with his horses. Not far from Uralla they stopped at an hotel. The horses were left tied outside. Down the street came riding a big, bearded man on a horse that was a good horse — but a hack beside these thoroughbreds. There were six horses outside the hotel. Thunderbolt made his selection as he reined up beside them. Leaping to the ground, he got to his choice, untied its lead from the post, sprung on his ‘horse again, and took the thoroughbred at a gallop up the road beside him.
It was all so swift that Patrick Ward and his men in the hotel never sighted Thunderbolt. They emerged from the hotel to find five racehorses instead of six. A mile away, deep in the bush, the bushranger was changing his saddle from his former mount to the back of a distant relation of Phar Lap.
The stealing of well-known Patrick Ward’s horse freshened the hue and cry after Thunderbolt. But the bushranger had a scorn of police troopers that was fatal in the end. With his latest exploit still stirring, he went into Uralla. They say that he swaggered in the town, although he must have known that there were a few people there who might recognise him. “Thunderbolt is in Uralla,” the police heard. The bushranger saw them coming. He was there because he believed Patrick Ward was still there with racers, and his belief was strengthened by a fine-looking gelding tied to a verandah-post. Though it was saddled, it looked a racer.
The sight of a trooper far down the street sent him to this horse. He was in the saddle and away, confident thathe had all the pace he needed under him. The trooper was mounted, too. The chase began, but the bushranger’s horse was not of the Stockwell- Pasha-Phar Lap blood, and Thunderbolt learnt it soon. Constable Walker, well-mounted, was gaining on him. By the time they had reached the Lagoon, outside of Uralla, the outlaw’s stolen horse was panting to exhaustion. He had to draw rein or expect a bullet in his back. Thunderbolt was off his horse with his pistol out.
The duel is famous in Australian history of bushranging. Constable Walker won. Shots rang amid the trees there. Thunderbolt sank down wounded, mortally. His grave is practically on the spot where the police bullet ended his life. [25 May 1870]
There are many tales of bushranger Thunderbolt and racehorses, grown dim and confused in the years since he died. But it is certain that Thunderbolt once stole a horse and raced it audaciously on a country racecourse, and won. The Turon racecourse, now overgrown with scrub, but once the sportsground of the miners who worked that early goldfield, is said to be the course. Thunderbolt brought his horse to this, track, where no one recognised him, rode it himself, the story goes, and was first past the post.
Thunderbolt and Ben Hall and Patrick Ward, Stockwell and Pasha— they are all long dead. They are ashes of the burnt-out years. Perhaps, from those ashes, a kind of wonderful phoenix will always rise. To-day it is the racehorse Phar Lap.
[Sydney Sunday Sun October 1931.]
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Another account of the attempted Ben Hall Robbery
Ben Hall Incident Recalled.
(By “Old Timer” in Mudgee Mail)
The description in a recent issue of the ”Mail” of the attempted sticking up of the bank at Mudgee is correct, in reference to the bushranging gang, with Ben Hall as leader, who were foiled in the attempted bank robbery. I might add that the highway men had been in the locality for some time, and had camped at different parts of the district, on one occasion near the race course. It appears that on being informed of police being concealed near the racecourse waiting for them, the robbers altered their plans and held up the mail coach as stated. They then returned to Mudgee and camped on the Cudgegong River, near Guntawang, knowing that a three days’ race meeting was set down for the 24 May and the two following days.
The Ben Hall crowd numbering about half a dozen, had been doing some hard riding in the Forbes and Grenfell districts, and the horses they had used, not being of the best, they decided to make a raid on one or two well-known racing “nags” that were entered at the meeting. That was in the year 1862. Besides the local horses a good number came from Maitland side. I might here mention that Mudgee folk at that time did all their business with West Maitland and Newcastle-in fact, the first telegraph line was built to the north.
Well, to resume. A Merriwa landholder, named Patrick Ward, had a large nomination, among which was a champion horse (Pasha) that had won numerous races at Maitland and other northern towns, hence the visit of the gang to the Mudgee races for the purpose of stealing the best horse on the course. There was no grandstand paddock at that time, so trainers tied their charges in different parts of the ground. A bush telegraph had been installed at the races during the morning and kept Ben Hall posted as to where the champion was tied up with other members of Mr. Ward’s string. About 3 p.m. just before the Mudgee Handicap was to be run, four men rode to the course, two making towards the visitors, while the other two made straight for the horses, which at that time was unattended as the stable lads, who were supposed to be watching the racers, were some distance away, interested spectators of a “two-up” school.
The owner-trainer of the horses was walking towards where the horses were tied up, with the idea of getting them ready for the big event of the day. To his surprise he at once saw that an attempt was being made to steal the champion, and that the thief was none other than the notorious Ben Hall, whom he immediately recognised, having met him on a previous occasion up north. Highwaymen in those days were very numerous, which was the cause of almost every traveller being armed. The owner at once fired a couple of shots from a revolver he carried, and this at once attracted the attention of the police and the public. Hall and his assistants made off for their lives, and got a long start before the police were able to take up the pursuit. They got clean away, and a few days later turned up in the Goulburn district, where they robbed the Royal Mail going towards Braidwood
If the owner had not arrived on the scene just in the nick of time the thieves would have been successful in their objective, which was the stealing of one or more of these valuable horses.
[Muswellbrook Chronicle 24 Dec 1931]