Wallabadah Cup meeting ends after 169 years of local racing

Written by Jessica Owers

Cover image courtesy of Wallabadah Jockey Club

It was just five weeks until the annual community raceday that was the Wallabadah Cup meeting, but now 170 years of community racing in this small hamlet near Quirindi, in the Hunter and Northwest racing region of New South Wales has ended.

Traditionally held on New Year’s Day by the Wallabadah Jockey Club, the meeting had kicked along since 1852, but the track failed to meet safety standards this year. The issue was the steep decline from the top of the course to the last bend.

“From the top of the track to the bottom corner, it’s a 14-metre fall in about 150 metres,” said Peter Jenkins, who is the Secretary of the Club and a 48-year veteran. “It would take a lot of work to be able to flatten out a track like that, so it’s highly improbable we’d be able to do anything to improve it.”

Jenkins said the song and story associated with the Wallabadah races was this very steep decline of the track, where all sorts of high jinks happened in days gone by, but the modern safety issues associated with it were imminent.

“We appreciate the current work health and safety issues,” he said. “You’ve got to have those sorts of things in place these days, and we appreciate why they have them.”

History at its best

The Wallabadah meeting was one of the longest-running community races in New South Wales. It didn’t fall under the definition of ‘picnic meeting’, but it was an annual event of huge local importance.

Like the Bong Bong Cup meeting in the Southern Highlands, and many others of that ilk, this once-a-year picnic-style race meeting drew people from far and wide, tripling the population of the township on New Year’s Day.

Initially, the track circled the township itself, but it relocated to its present site in 1897. A handful of years later, the Club bought its first starting machine.

The Wallabadah track is sat on a hillside on the southern fringe of town, located on crown land with plenty of tree shade and open space. Its location was what drew people to the meeting each year, and it’s unlikely that the Club will accept an offer by Racing NSW to relocate to Tamworth or Quirindi.

“The community is sad that’s it’s going,” Jenkins said. “This is only a little town with a couple of hundred people, and we’ve been able to keep going with this meeting for so long. We would get anything from 1000 to 1200 people these days, and they came from all around, from Scone, Gunnedah, Tamworth and further. It was always surprising where people would turn up from.”

The Wallabadah races had enormous significance for history because it was straight out of the era when race meetings often popped up ahead of banks, roads and local infrastructure. They were a lifeline for rural communities coming together and, in remote regions lately gripped by drought, they were often the only excuse all year to come together and forget widespread woes.

The Wallabadah Cup outdates even the Melbourne Cup by nine years, but its very last meeting will remain the 2019 event. The 2020 races were cancelled because of savage drought, and the 2021 races fell victim to COVID-19.

Modern considerations

Jenkins said the Club had done its diligence with having the track in good order each year.

“We’d met all our requirements all along the way, but just in the last month we’d learned the track wasn’t in proper condition to host a race meeting,” he said. “Along the way we hadn’t known the meeting was in any danger. We’d just kept going along doing what was requested of us to meet requirements.”

Jenkins said no one expected the decision from Racing NSW, but equally none are contesting it.

“We knew that small clubs all have a certain lifetime, I suppose,” he said. “We had just kept poking along. In 170 years, we’d never been told we weren’t going to be racing. You expect those things one day, but there was no indication it was just going to stop like that.”

Local reports suggest that, after a hiatus of two years from racing, local jockeys were reluctant to return. That steep decline from the top of the track had undone many a horse and rider over the years and, with welfare and public approval so important to the modern sport, Racing NSW looked into things a bit further.

“Relocating to Quirindi or Tamworth just wouldn’t be viable,” Jenkins said. “People come to the Wallabadah races for the significant atmosphere under the trees, so we’ll just have to sit down and think about what we’re going to do. We’ll bring the Club together in the New Year and work all that out.”