[AusRace] Tarcoola - The Horse and the House

[Phil Buckland]

Interesting Read Tony

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From: Racing [mailto:racing-bounces at ausrace.com] On Behalf Of Tony Moffat
Sent: 29 August 2017 11:06 PM
To: 'AusRace Racing Discussion List'
Subject: [AusRace] Tarcoola - The Horse and the House

Tarcoola - The horse and the house.
Tarcoola won the 1893 Melbourne Cup, at a good price, and had run well in
Carbines Cup in 1890 also.
In winning Tarcoola recorded 204.5 seconds which was amended that afternoon
to 210.5 seconds. The first mentioned time would have had it winning 40 of
the first 40 runnings, then 29 of the next 40 runnings,
5 of the next 40, and 1 of the next 18 (to end at the year 2000
running)
As an aside it is interesting to see the race time improve through the
years, it was not until 1925 with King Ingoda, that the recorded time was
bettered, 204.25 seconds. Yes, the race distance has been shortened, by 61
feet, but you get the gist.
The naming of the horse has caused some conjecture, Tarcoola (SA) claim it
as theirs. Tarcoola, a sheep station at Dalton, claim ownership. 
Tarcoola is a house in Goulburn and Dad and Mum owned this from 1956 until
moving  in 1970. The house was designed by the architect Manfred senior,
whose firm, a father and son show, designed many houses in the area. It was
built for a Mr Connelly however the first occupant was Alexander Romula
PARRISH. Parrish was born on Melbourne Cup day 1862 at Bowral. His middle
name coincides with a Cup runner also, some years after his birth date. 
A biographer told Dad that Parrish won money on the Cup and other races and
bought this house, and some shops, but further information is lacking. If
so, this may explain the Tarcoola nameplate at the front door.
The council records are incomplete, actually they are out of place having
not being returned correctly after perusal and use by a previous biographer,
so early data has not been verified.
The house is situated on the corner of Verner and Cowper Streets.
Cowper Street is the continuation of the Hume Highway. Verner Street comes
up the steep hill from the main street, past the cathedrals and goes onto St
Patricks, or more importantly, the swimming pool. 
The area was once a blue and green stone quarry and many houses and
buildings have those rocks in their foundations. The bricks were made
locally. The architects designed 16 houses that were built around so there
is a uniformity to the area. The walls are not cavity constructed but
interlocked. Essentially the house is a very strong brick rectangle. The
timber formwork is mountain ash. Dad had the place re-wired and the plumbing
updated.
Tarcoola the house has as a feature a very large, long and wide upstairs
veranda, unusual for the time and the house occupies two blocks, there was
formerly a large kitchen garden and staff quarters and stable downstairs in
the grounds.. There is an ancient grape vine there, the grape bunches are
enormous, with perhaps 500 berries on each, as big as your bar fridge. The
foundation blocks from the quarters are used in the garden now as retaining
walls, the bricks were cleaned and taken to be used in the scoreboard
building at the cricket oval near the pool. There is a space for tieing up a
horse and cart on the side fence, the rail for that is still there, the
fence gap or gate has been closed over now, but the baker and iceman left
their horse there while they did their deliveries, maybe.
There was a quantity of steel on the ground in the yard, some of it formed,
rolled, as in yacht hull curves and perhaps a former occupant had
aspirations of building a boat, there is a 3 phase power pole board nearby
too. We sold that steel and I put my share towards a trail bike, a Cooper
250.
Two of the sizeable downstairs rooms have been taken as garages, there is
still a  kitchen and other rooms downstairs, a dumb waiter, a stairway built
around the dumb waiter space, and a proper stairway nearby, both lead up
from the kitchen.
Upstairs there is a long and wide hallway from the front door to the smaller
kitchen at the back. You can play ping pong in that hall, it is that wide,
Dad suggested carpet bowls, but we changed the subject and the feeling
passed. There are three bedrooms, a dining and a lounge and library. The
windows upstairs are from ceiling to floor, a design feature of other
Manfred houses nearby. There are fan forced gas heaters, monsters, in the
lounge and kitchen. It’s Goulburn, it is cold there. There are servant
callers installed in each room upstairs, levers which actuate wires that
cause bells to ring in the kitchen.
The wires run on installed wooden paths in the roof cavity, these paths
double as walkways up there as well. There is a radio aerial in the roof
cavity and there was an aerial on the roof outside, if insulators are any
guide. Those big valve radios needed quarter and half wave aerials to work.
There is a phone, all Bakelite and bronze in the roof cavity too.
To get to the roof, and the cavity before that, you entered the wall space
downstairs and there was a ladder built there, attached to the wall, you
climbed upwards, in the wall space, to a door way to the roof cavity, and if
you continued upwards you removed a fitted and locked hatch and came out in
the sunshine on the roof, where there was a walkway.
There is a downstairs hallway too. The ceiling there, near the front, has a
bullet hole but no projectile, this is also the floor of the upper level
too, and the cupboard at the other end of the hall also has a bullet hole,
again no projectile. Ok, perhaps there was a duel and they both missed,
shook hands, and had a  Pimms, but that was the thinking of a 17 year old
youth, without a girlfriend again, back then.
The garage was two rooms made into the garage, plenty of room for my
motorbike and Dads HR Premier (with spats which he did not like). 
There was a dental college next door, with fat rabbits running rampant, we
netted them in the sweet pea patch and returned them. They had perfect teeth
though, nice smiles said Mum, sniggering.
Over the road was a novitiate, a religious college, with stern Nuns and
smiling girls who waved and declined the offered strawberries.
Next to that was a training college, for something, it was American owned
and run, with flash long American cars outside that scraped the driveway
when coming and going. Down the hill was a locked ward hospice.
There were 5 sp bookmakers that I was aware of in the city, two of those
were shop fronts. One was where you walked down the aisles of shoes and
handbags, and knocked on a counter and a woman took your bets. You had to
know your bets and betting ended an hour before the advertised starting
time. Other sp may have let you on until the off, so to speak. Paying was on
Monday afternoon and there was a limit of
$35 each outcome. On Saturday afternoon you entered through the café next to
the shop or there was the telephone. The payout limit was increased for
telephone bets.
 I never used them, those SP,  nor did I have a code pass or telephone
number.
The TAB was on the other side of the road at thr opposite end of the street,
3 blocks away, and was plain to the extreme, two lines on the floor leading
to a buying window, there was a centre table although the race field charts
were on the walls, as you would expect. So you chose your bets, wrote a
slip, checked the details from the charts again, then waited silently in the
line for your bets, $0.25 cent multiples. Friendless places, then and now.
I worked for Winchcombe,Carson in the woolstore, the best pre season
training for me, lumping hundreds of wool bales into storage positions and
display spots for the auction. They closed shortly after, moved to Melbourne
for auctions and Geelong for storage. I was there to the end, with stalwart
Elaine, did an audit of the assets, swept the place, turned off the lights,
locked the door and left. I then moved to Sydney, to Neutral Bay for
accommodation and to Kings Cross for school, a commercial college, six
floors of that on Darlinghurst Road, with a brothel in the rear lane, I
heard. I had completed and passed my HSC but was not permitted to do Trig at
school, a story in itself, so I re-did the Leaving Certificate, the last
year of that, and passed that also, with the Trig component included which I
needed for Uni, engineering, specifically surveying. Again, this was another
story in itself, and I did not become a surveyor as a result. 
The Tarcoola link continues though. In a year or so I was working for a man,
doing straight line surveying and driving his dozer doing pads for houses
and sheds out near Cobbitty, near Oran Park, and the third job was in
Tarcoola Place, and to get to Tarcoola Place you had drive down Moffitts
Lane. 
On the day of Tarcoolas win in the MC, Police raided the  ‘tote’
building in Johnson Street Collingwood, number 148 now but 102a (or
something) back then, owned and operated by John Wren. The tote building
backed up to Sackville Street, where there was a secret entry/exit, it is
said. The streetsigns for both Sackville Street and Johnston Street are on
the wall in the downstairs lobby of the house ‘Tarcoola’ – as is the
expression ‘due to a lack of interest today has been cancelled’. I don’t
know why, or how or who but interesting coincidences anyway. There are, or
were, other collectibles there too.

Cheers

Tony


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