When the First Fleet arrived in Australia in 1788, it brought something the vast continent had never known before: horses.
It is a striking thought. This was a land filled with extraordinary wildlife, from kangaroos and wallabies to wombats and emus, yet there were no native horses and nothing quite like them roaming the landscape.
Just seven horses arrived with the First Fleet.
From that tiny beginning, Australia went on to develop one of the world’s great horse racing cultures.
Only 73 years later, the first Melbourne Cup was run.
How the First Horses Arrived in Australia
The First Fleet reached New South Wales in January 1788, carrying convicts, soldiers, supplies and livestock for the new colony.
Among them were seven horses bought at the Cape of Good Hope: one stallion, one colt, three mares and two fillies.
They were not Thoroughbred bloodstock. They were useful riding horses.
Transport was difficult, distances were considerable, and horses were still scarce.
That made them expensive. In 1795, Elizabeth Macarthur reckoned a good horse in New South Wales was worth around £140 to £150, roughly £22,000 to £23,500 in today’s money by purchasing power.
Importing replacements was slow, costly, and risky, so horses were valued as working stock as much as personal property.
Stealing one was treated accordingly. Colonial punishments for theft could be brutal, with serious property offences still capable of carrying the death sentence in the early years of New South Wales.
More horses arrived from the Cape, India and Britain, and numbers gradually increased.
By 1800, New South Wales had only a few hundred horses. By the 1820s there were several thousand.
Once there were enough around, somebody was always going to race them.
The British had brought that habit with them too.
Parramatta Gets There First
Match racing needed very little infrastructure.
Two owners, two horses and enough spine to put some money behind one of them would do.
British military officers were already familiar with the format, and informal contests almost certainly took place around the colony before anyone bothered keeping a record.
By 1810, racing had become organised enough to leave one.
On 30 April, a sporting gathering at Parramatta included a race between two horses named Parramatta and Belfast.
Parramatta won.
There was also a trotting match involving a mare called Miss Kitty, with wagering already part of proceedings.
Australian racing had started in much the same way racing had existed elsewhere for centuries: somebody owned a horse and somebody else thought theirs was quicker.
Later that year, things became considerably more formal.
When Hyde Park Became a Racecourse
In October 1810, Sydney staged what is generally regarded as Australia’s first approved race meeting.
The venue was Hyde Park, then open ground on the edge of a settlement barely two decades old.
Officers of the 73rd Regiment organised the meeting with Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s approval. Racing took place over three days on a course of roughly a mile and a quarter, with a grandstand provided for the ladies of the colony.
There was no modern inner ring or ticketing system, but the social divide was already there. Race week included two subscribers’ balls, while major prizes were worth 50 guineas.
Macquarie also wanted proceedings kept respectable. Gaming, drunkenness, swearing and fighting were all prohibited.
The structure was already recognisably British: prizes, betting, spectators and a social scene around the racing.
The horses were another matter.
That was about to change.
Better Bloodstock Changes the Game
Australia’s earliest horses had arrived because they could work.
Racing demanded better stock.
As the colony grew, better-bred horses began arriving from Britain, India and through South Africa.
Rockingham, an English Thoroughbred stallion, was shipped to New South Wales from South Africa in the late 1790s. Hector followed from India a few years later and became an important sire on the New South Wales Turf.
Then, in 1825, came Manto.
She is generally recognised as the first General Stud Book Thoroughbred mare known by name to reach Australia.
More Thoroughbred bloodstock followed, giving local breeders access to established racing pedigrees and a much better foundation for producing horses specifically for the Turf.
Australia was no longer simply racing whatever horses it had.
It was beginning to breed racehorses.
Flemington Finds Its Ground
The first meeting at what became Flemington Racecourse began on 3 March 1840.
Melbourne was not yet five years old.
The new course occupied rough river flats beside the Maribyrnong River and was initially known simply as Melbourne Racecourse.
It was basic, but it worked.
Racing continued there, and the growth of Melbourne did the rest.
Then Victoria found gold.
The gold rush of the 1850s brought a huge influx of people and money. Racing suddenly had bigger crowds, wealthier owners, stronger betting markets and more money available for good bloodstock.
Intercolonial competition grew with it.
A good horse from New South Wales could travel to Victoria looking for better prizes. Owners had reason to compare their stock against horses from elsewhere rather than simply beating whatever happened to be running locally.
Flemington was becoming the obvious place to do it.
The First Melbourne Cup in 1861
On 7 November 1861, 17 horses lined up for the first Melbourne Cup.
The race was a two-mile handicap.
Archer, brought down from New South Wales, won by six lengths and came back to win it again the following year.
The famous story that he walked all the way from Nowra to Melbourne has since been put to bed. He travelled south by ship.
A little less romantic, perhaps, but considerably more sensible.
The Cup caught on.
The handicap brought different sorts of horses together, the two miles demanded stamina and the prize encouraged owners from beyond Victoria to have a go.
Three years later, the Victoria Turf Club and Victoria Jockey Club merged to create the Victoria Racing Club.
The VRC took over Flemington and the Melbourne Cup.
Racing had gone from improvised matches to major intercolonial competition in barely half a century.
Australia Starts Breeding for Australia
The Thoroughbred still owed its pedigree to imported blood, but Australian racing placed different demands on the horse.
The ground could be harder. The heat could be fierce. Distances between towns, studs and racecourses were enormous.
Soundness, constitution and the ability to cope with firm conditions mattered.
The Waler showed that most clearly outside racing. Australian-bred Walers became known for toughness, stamina and their ability to travel long distances in hot weather with little water.
The Thoroughbred had a different job, but it was being bred and raced in the same country.
Over time, Australian breeders produced horses increasingly suited to speed, firm ground and the demands of their own racing programme.
Then the traffic started going the other way.
Australia had once imported every horse it possessed. By the modern era, it was exporting Thoroughbreds across New Zealand, Hong Kong and wider Asian racing.
And occasionally, one went all the way back to Britain.
From the First Fleet to Black Caviar
Few did it better than Black Caviar.
Peter Moody’s mare had dominated Australia’s sprinting ranks when she travelled to Royal Ascot in 2012, unbeaten in 21 starts.
The Diamond Jubilee Stakes was tighter than expected.
Luke Nolen eased down too early. Moonlight Cloud came at her late. The margin was a head.
But Black Caviar had won.
Again.
She returned home, added another three victories and retired unbeaten in 25 starts, including 15 Group 1s.
In 1788, Australia had to buy seven horses at the Cape of Good Hope because there were none on the continent.
Two centuries later, it was sending an unbeaten Australian bred champion back to Britain and winning at Royal Ascot.
Not bad work in a couple of centuries.
