[AusRace] Over Wheeo - Form study back in the day - a system

[Tony Moffat]

OVER WHEEO - long and not much connected with the punt.

Uncle Bill* and his punting ways - 

Form Study back in the day

* He wasn't an Uncle either, a school mate of Dads, but they had been
through a lot together, boarding school, rowing, 1stXV, running, a war (and
10 years of that as well- Dad was a Lieutenant, paid as a Captain, acting up
as a Major, and Bill was a W/O, Construction/Support, so he got shot up,
bombed, strafed, V2'd, the first construction at a new site was a hole in
the ground, way deep, out of sight)

What Bill did, most times, was manipulate the form figures against a horses
name in the race book. He started with a base line figure of 9, hopeless he
called them. Argus may have 4515 as it's previous form and Bill worked that
as 4 minus 9, = minus 5, then minus 5 minus 5 =0, then 0 minus 1= -9, then 5
less (minus)9 = -4 - and there was probably an easier example around also.
Later, he changed (simplified?) this calculation to 9 minus 4 = 5 plus 9
minus 5 = 4 plus 9 minus 1 = 8 plus 9 minus 5 =4 so (5+4+9+5 = 23) the
horses value for this race and essentially the number of horse lengths this
runner had beaten to get here, again assuming nothing had a value of greater
than 9, in any event he bought them all back to that, hopeless he said,
again. This last sum/equation was a secret divulged by a bookie analyst. I
have not seen it since, and again, essentially, it shows the number of
runners this runner has beaten to get here..  Later, in his ever changing
world due to impulsivity, he just multiplied the form figures together then
divided that sum by the biggest number (allowing for one bad run in a stream
of 4) and went with that - I told him about this. It went 4*5*1*5 =100
divided by the 'worst' multiplicand (a 5) = 100/5 = 20 as a form value for
that runner.

Bill was ex RAAF/RAF, but not a pilot - he came to that later when gliding
popularity peaked. 

His glider plane was a Blanik (I think) which was devoid of all markings
anyway, it was a preparatory silver paint before the final colours were to
be decided, and those were maybe silver too. Nearly there he said,
paintwise, although the whole thing was a work in progress. A gliding
association annoyed him, with their insistence on him registering both,
himself and the aircraft, and how are they going to know who he was, whose
plane is it. Bill solved this by writing his name on the thing, near the
hatch catch, and he always had his scapular, it got him through the war so
why wouldn't you, and Grandmother had embroided his number and name on the
tag anyway. He never knew his parents, and told me he was raised in a
circus, but this was not true. He was raised by a matriach, one of
many/dozens of children similarly cared for (as was my Mother dear - she
said Ashtons had bigger tents but they had better clowns, meaning comedic
episodes, so may be Bills assertion of a childhood in a circus is true!!)

He flew from, to, and over Wheeo where he owned acres, a sheep station
amongst others, and where there was a strip, again Ex Airforce and due north
of Fairbairn, and you could see that aerodrome, 60 miles or more away, with
the continual coming and going of aircraft there. 

Where Bill flew, glided then, was high too, his strip was probably 3000 feet
ASL, and he was 900 to 1000 feet above that, not that you could tell because
there was a hole for an altimeter, and in fact there were 4 holes for
various guages, indicators, displays and all four were in a Reschs box in
the back of his Landy, down there somewhere.

The tow plane came to him, either on the place, or at the Council strip, and
up and off he went, sometimes for several hours some days then he would try
to circle back, spiral up and down, across and to and if he didn't land at
home, he tied her down and rang Dad, and Dad rang me, and off I went on my
motorbike and brought him back to his Landrover, or sometimes, to our house.
A shower to warm up, food because he rarely ate otherwise, beer because it
is thirsty work for all adults, living, and off we went to get his Land
Rover, glider trailer, and many times at midnight or later, by the loom of
headlights, we took apart his airplane, put it into the trailer, and away he
went for another week or so, some meals included. 

It wasn't dangerous, nor would it be coming down to ground as he did, a long
drift then a gentle flair just before the end and a tender run of less than
100 feet to a stop, more often on the strip, sometimes not but decided upon
from up on high. Once he had to stop his descent to clear a train and once
he had to scramble out to scare away cattle, bulls at that, and those bulls
were fruity, whatever that is.

Re-assembling the aircraft was the obligation of Onions and Stodge, his
neighbours, retired, who lived on opposite sides of the same road, 12 miles
apart with Bills station in-between. Both were JPs, or had been,
councillors, or had been, one was Ex Army, one was Ex Navy, one kind of
believed he deserved a Knighthood, because others of his had been so
deserving, and both their properties,stations, or all three perhaps, were
accessed by military persons-in-training. 

Bill had married well, several times.

He leased his station to a hereford heifer breeding and fattening company.
Others, his radial neighbours, stuck with their sheep. Cows he reckons have
a Union, they can only eat for a set number of minutes and hours each day,
and in that individual time they consume what feed they can. More than
enough, fat cow, just enough, store cow, some calories less than that, dry
cow, and no matter what you do to entice them to eat more, or less, they
won't, union rules you see. If its good grass, which it rarely is, all of
them prosper. They don't starve, don't worry, but they do spend all of their
waking hours, and some of their sleeping hours, trying to kill themselves.
Poison from bacteria, or getting bogged, or drowning while getting bogged,
lightning, getting caught and cut in a fence, dogs, dingos, sunlight, rain,
wind, jumping at shadows, anything and everything is detrimental. What Bill
found, not just once either, were sneaky cows hidden in the crooks of the
creeks, down out of the way, out of sight, while their sisters were rounded
up and trucked off, calf full most of them. The company counted out an
acceptable number into the trucks, I'm guessing, and knowing the ability of
cattle to die may have concluded they had in fact met their demise as
expected. These 'cleanskins' became the property of Bill, by rote or by the
application of that good old country rule, possession is nine tenths of
something. Anyway, neighbours, friends, associates, but not us by agreement,
shared in a butchered feast, if they weren't to be mothers, in which case
they were sold off with calf at foot.

He had his house, friends, female and male, and a good life, on country that
was all slopes, all underlain by granite which grew through the green often,
and always a breeze between gentle to double or more of that. It was the
breeze that worked here, when the leading edges of the wing turn into it
everything got lifted and aloft you went, quietly although not silently, the
wind noise remained, the occasional bang of a line working an elevator or an
aileron, and an ability to sneak up on birds, likewise soaring, and to look
down and see your shadow moving at walking speed over the slopes. The
granite was in stripes and showing where folds of it struck on to the
north-west. There was basalt too, but this was leaving with the wind and the
rain, and its red soil was caught up in the lines and dimples of the
granite. Granite is formed in the deep earth, 12 miles in at least, and
basalt gets vomited onto the surface to decay and leak as it does, as I
said. Either way erosion in all its facets had removed a lot of rock
overall. The Lachlan River helped there, as did The Fish, The Reedy, The
Orb, The Crooked, Thompsons, Rugby, and The Dill, Dry, Wet, Wide, Gneiss,
Lyons, Parkes, Pontifica and Catholic Creeks, Presbyterian and Latin
Gullies. Naming of water features did not involve consultation with the
early inhabitants, apparently. Bill referred to his place as Episcopalian
Ridge (Pleurisy Plains was more apt!). Eastern Australia grew from west to
east it seems, gradually accreting its rocks in stripes as it did, some of
it beneath a sea to be pushed up into the air, and exposure, by compression,
again from the east now. 

Bill went to the Carnivals, not Melbourne so much, but certainly in Sydney,
and yearly to Brisbane when drinking was done and sleeping was optional.
There was punting information given out freely, every owner may have a
winning belief in theirs, but Bill never listened, and nor was he a big
punter, but he enjoyed form study and particularly enjoyed the proof of his
decisions when his decision won, or at the least beat home the choices of
others. 

There seemed, to me, to be a different girl too, every time, and always the
steady Connie who had been a constant for 18 years or so and Mums choice.
But Connie went, as did the others also, and really the only constant was
Bills philandering, which he didn't think was a problem, and he remained
unaffected from his singularity, which never lasted long anyway.

Nobody, other than Bill, worked the place too. Every post on his road
frontage was concrete, and these same posts formed the lines rising up off
the creeks so that a fire, expected from the north most often, would not
affect anything much. The fire lines were renewed yearly in a great circle
around the house, sheds, yards and the oil laden gums removed to be replaced
by Yarrans, Coobas, Ironwoods in contoured placements until the Forestry
Commission used his home paddock picture on its calendar. 

Good bloke, living the good life.

Cheers

Tony



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