This is well worth reading to the end.

[Chief Stipe]

Opinion

Spending Father’s Day with the late, great Les Carlyon

 

 

By Bruce Clark
05:38pm • 06 September 2021

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Pandemic lockdowns offer opportunities that are sometimes ignored in the previously swift movements of a life around racing, perhaps “stop and smell the flowers” type moments, even if those have to be within 5km of your home base.

As does Father’s Day, which is why another collection of the writings of the late great Les Carlyon – “A Life In Words” – is more than just a thoughtful present, but a powerfully remindful treasure of the power of writings and observations from one of Australia’s greatest ever journalists and writers.

Carlyon, who dismissed his unique storytelling and writings as merely “pushing words around a page” was as comfortable and ridiculously detailed in the fields of War, “Gallipoli” and “The Great War”, as he was at his favourite place, the racetrack, regaling his meetings with the likes of Vic Rail, of Vo Rogue fame, and Bart Cummings, who he would write a mightily personalised memoir “The Master”.

Les Carlyon with then Prime Minister John Howard at the launch of Carlyon's book ‘The Great War' in 2004. Picture: AAP – Alan Porritt

He loved them both, as they were racing people, unique and good copy.

Of Victory Robert Rail, he once described his face as alike to “an aerial shot of the channel country in flood”. Match that!

Of Bart, he thought those familiar eyebrows could be observed as “creepers looking for a trellis”.

Neither of those selections when written appear in this collated book from the vastness of his trove of work across history, war, politics, satire, sport, literature, business and of course racing, but if you sometimes seek inspiration or simply a good read, Les is timeless and your man.

So, I could wake up with a blank word document (for him it was a page), wondering how to fill a weekly column that might be of some vague interest to you the reader.

I could muse if I indeed could have got Zaaki home on Saturday as J-Mac suggested anyone could, then consider that the training wheels and seatbelt required, not to mention the utter fear flowing through the reins may have even slowed him down a touch before the worry of weighing in is over.

Or if I should push Portland Sky again for a slot in The Everest, as I have done here many times before (though I haven’t sought asylum just yet), only to watch a Singapore sleuth ‘The’ Inferno, perhaps burn that dream and ignite his own reality on a similar path.

Maybe, is there any more life in that Airbnb fallout story, as the judicial system fallout drags the headlines further into spring focus, and it was wondered “they were reading the room” and I wonder what Les would have made of an Airbnb, as he would have been chugging away on an always handy cigarette in consideration.

Or why would you call your horse Nervous Witness when you knew there was never a moment to worry about on debut in Hong Kong and think I’ve got another Sacred Witness right here. (Mmmm, maybe I could have won on it?)

Or should I follow up and find out if anything was happening at Racing Australia, knowing the answer was exactly the same as last time I checked, and even so, that basically you couldn’t care less and prefer some banter as to where the next winner may come from.

Herald Sun Senior Writer and columnist Patrick Carlyon with his father Les at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Both wrote books on Gallipoli.

One thing Les would have cared about though was “The Pattern”, a stickler for tradition, or what had made racing tick, as much as a champion for change and a new audience by the various characters that made it interesting to him and then to us.

And so no point me giving you my pontifications on who was good and bad from Saturday or who is the best three-year-old prospect, or if our weight-for-age ranks are thin or thick. You already have your thoughts on such.

In these immediate social media days scribblers and dribblers already abound, some hidden in anonymity, some serial assassins, and glad to have all aboard, so let me take you back, via Les, to what matters to all of us and where this all starts, racing, the sport, the industry.

But just let me drop one in first from a simple two paragraph piece from the book called “Brilliant and Original” stemming from a Carbine Club revelation that Andrew Peacock regaled against himself about some interaction with Sir Robert Menzies.

On delivering a parliamentary speech, Menzies was said to have told Peacock it was “brilliant and original”, the only trouble was “the brilliant bits weren’t original, and the original bits weren’t brilliant.”

It was followed up with Peacock’s maiden parliamentary speech having taken over Menzies seat of Kooyong, to which the former PM told his young suitor that it was too long – “The English is very good. I’d cut it in half – and it doesn’t matter which half.”

I hope you can see here where I am coming from re Carlyon’s writings. It’s sharp, precise, involved and takes you to the real story and reveals much more, through relationships and craftsmanship. No click-bait nonsense from a man who loved not just the sport but for those who were part of it.

Les once wrote re then modern journalism the observation on the news of a mass shooting in Melbourne, the reporters were more likely to head to a seminar on gun control than the scene of the crime.

*****

So in “The horse as prose” Carlyon writes: “They call it an industry, but we shouldn’t take them seriously. Industries are rational and ordered. Racing is neither,” he wrote.

“That’s why it’s interesting. Whoever saw a piece of share scrip maim itself on a fence, then stand bewildered as a vet pushes stitches through with bloodied fingers and says, yeah there might be a chance?”

And then adds, written in 2007: “Who could imagine the Sydney Futures Exchange being locked down because of an outbreak of influenza.”

Les Carlyon was awarded a companion AC “for eminent service to literature through the promotion of the national identity as an author, editor and journalist, to the understanding and appreciation of Australia's war history, and to the horse racing industry.” Picture: David Caird.

He nods to local ghosts like Banjo Patterson and Adam Lindsay Gordon and American literary giants Red Smith or Joe Palmer and storytellers like Damon Runyon, but Les was simply himself.

“There is the beauty of the thoroughbred itself, the nearness of death on the track and the hint of larceny in the betting ring. Aesthetics and grubbiness, tycoons and deros, sport and commerce, life and death, losers, lots of losers, a way of life that doesn’t make much sense but keeps calling people back, the hunger for one good horse or one big killing. All of this is sweet ground for writers.”

*****

So to some snapshots.First back to Vic Rail in “The Vic And Vo show comes to town” – October 1987: “In financial terms, the game has never been kind to him, but it is the only game he knows, and he refuses to let it grind him down. He just looks worn. He has a mop of curly hair, crow’s feet around the eyes like a middle aged jackaroo, and a bulging midriff that he refers to as a dropped chest and blames entirely on his decision to give up cigarettes.”

Vic Rail with his champion Vo Rogue.

You didn’t have to be there did you and here is the lyrical reverse of a picture painting a thousand words.Or on a Hong Kong meeting with David Christensen, a part-owner of the then unknown Schillaci in “Why we came to love Schillaci” – October 1995: “Dragging on a fag, he first looks around for hidden cameras, then leans forward and intones – ‘I think I’ve got a really good horse back home.’“Yep it is the big one. And me thinking it would merely be some tittle tattle about Macau acquiring a nuclear arsenal. He looks again and takes another drag. Before I suggest we use the show phone, he goes on, ‘they say he could be something special.’ Why do ‘they’ always say these things?”

Or on champions of their era in “Black Caviar: Unbeaten “– March 2013: “Each champion is famous for a different reason, a singular achievement that sets them apart from other horse and puts them in a different category of their own. Black Caviar has won 23 in a row, nearly all of them high class events and never been beaten. No horse has ever done that here before. Maybe no horse ever will. Bart Cummings was right: we should recognise and celebrate champions, not compare them.”

*****

Can I pick out some of his Bart witticisms from “A Eulogy For Bart Cummings” – September 2015 when his wife Valmae noticed a cobweb in the Brisbane stables. “Look Bart, there’s two spiders fighting.”

“Probably means they’re married,” said Bart and walked on.

Noting Bart’s shyness or not liking to give things away, he recalls his biographer Malcolm Knox in a conversation starter asked Bart: “What did your father look like?”

“Normal,” said Bart.

“That was it, no-one could create dead air like Bart.”

Those familiar eyebrows could be observed as “creepers looking for a trellis”. Les Carlyon’s The Master: A Personal Portrait of Bart Cummings.

Or in later years when Bart arrived at the trainer’s hut in the middle of Flemington with a copy of the Herald Sun and suggested to his fellow trainers to try the paper’s daily quiz.

“As the questions were read out, Bart always seemed to know the answers.

“Everyone knows that Richard II was the last of the Plantagent kings,” he’d say. “Didn’t you blokes go to school.

“What Bart was doing of course was picking up the Herald Sun at Crown Towers at 4am, memorising the answers which were printed upside down, then pretending to be Barry Jones.”

And if you are talking Bart, you are talking The Cup, as Les does in “The Cup at 150” – October 2010.

“The Pope usually turns up. For the rest of the year he works as a plumber in Yarraville.”

“How do you explain to an outsider that the Cup nods towards egalitarianism, that its Shakespearean, a saga about horses and human conditions, about dreamers and schemers, well bred horses and urchins with legs of steel, toffs and desperate and ordinary people who are encouraged to that they are part of it all.”

There is much more that runs in true Carlyon style across the full gamut of society through his writings, or dare I say, words deftly pushed like no other. IN these lockdown times or any other times the prose of highly recommended.

[nomates]

Was one of the historians that were part of " The Track " documentary  about the history of the Australian Turf . An absolute must see if you get a chance , a 6 part series , seen it on Trackside years ago , back when they actually showed product worth watching . There was a few old time Aussie journalists and they all had fascinating insights into the history . A must , must see .

[Rangatira]

13 minutes ago, nomates said:

Was one of the historians that were part of " The Track " documentary  about the history of the Australian Turf . An absolute must see if you get a chance , a 6 part series , seen it on Trackside years ago , back when they actually showed product worth watching . There was a few old time Aussie journalists and they all had fascinating insights into the history . A must , must see .

Saw it a couple of times. Was a Christmas Day or significant (non racing) Public Holiday highlight for sure.

[Joe Bloggs]

One of my biggest regrets whilst training at Flemington was I never got to have a long conversation with the late great Mr Les Carlyon. I was lucky enough to have met and chatted several times to the late great Bert Lillye who was Les's contemporary in SYD. I used to drive a St George cab in the early 70's and got to drive Bert home to Sutherland down in the Shire, he spoke in glowing terms of Les, and to this day I rue an opportunity missed. His writing is evocative, it takes you there, and few journalists/Authors can do that........

[Chief Stipe]

I just love Bart's wit.

[curious]

3 hours ago, Chief Stipe said:

I just love Bart's wit.

Got a favourite one liner?