[AusRace] Tarcoola - The Horse and the House

Fri Sep 8 21:10:06 AEST 2017

The last 7yo entire to win the Cup. That is a long drought. Good luck to
this season's 7yo stallions in behind a 5yo gelding breaking their own
age/sex dry spell (Doriemus, 1995) Cool Chap?

On 8 Sep 2017 20:14, "Phil Buckland" <phil at buckland.id.au> wrote:

> Interesting Read Tony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> 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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