The site for a village at Eltham was first gazetted by the Colonial Secretary’s Office in Sydney on 9 January, 1851.
The first race meeting noted came on 24 December, 1855 – like most of the early meetings, prizemoney was determined on the sweepstake basis with the entry fees providing part of the prize and the organisers making up the difference to a total stake of between £7 and £15. A proviso (as in most cases) was that at least three horses must be entered for the event to protect the organiser’s exposure in making up the prizemoney.
"ELTHAM RACES -For the first time there is to be a race meeting at Eltham this year. At a meeting held recently, stewards were appointed and subscriptions liberally entered into. The races are to take place on the 24thDecember, and will be followed by a number of old English sports, which cannot fail to prove attractive to the number of farmers and agricultural labourers in the neighbourhood. A flat near the township is well adapted for the formation of a three-quarter-mile racecourse and may be sufficiently cleared at a very little expense". The Argus, 24 November 1855
The Victorian Colonial Government in August, 1857 authorised a temporary grant of 58 acres of land at Eltham for a racecourse “and other recreational purposes”, the Trustees appointed being Messrs Henry Stooke, John Brown and John Bell.
The 1856 and 1857 meetings were held over two-days – typically three races (some with heats and a final) and a pony event on the opening day, and a steeplechase, Publican’s Purse, hack race and a Consolation Stakes for horses that had been beaten in earlier events on the second.
Bell’s Life in Victoria (21 November, 1857) noted the meeting :-
“… on land recently granted by the Government for a racecourse, situate quite in the bush and formed with a course over 1/2 mile in extent … the attendance was numerous, comprising many sporting men from the district, and gentry and farmers from the neighbourhood, and we are happy see so many of the fair sex present, the majority of which were mounted and did credit to the pigskin“.
The early meetings appear to have continued until February, 1877 when it was noted that the reservation of land of Eltham was about to be revoked; the meetings were predictably very much local affairs, The Age in December, 1869 that there were no horses from the metropolitan area and all but two were locals.
The revocation was in name only; the land was simply reassigned from Government control to a proclaimed public park with the Council of the Shire of Eltham assigned as the Committee of Management (it was noted that the former co-trustee of the racecourse, John Bell was by then the Shire President).
Racing at Eltham was revived in 1887 with a six-race meeting with stakes ranging from 7 to 20 sovereigns, the conditions somewhat changed with two races expressly restricted to horses from the district.
The new Eltham Race Club was granted permission by Shire of Eltham to lay out a track at Eltham Park – given both the earlier racecourse and Eltham Park (from 1877) were public lands, they were almost certainly one and the same site.
The early organisation seems to have some way to go, the local Evelyn Observer noting “certain difficulties”, the meeting not under the protection of the V.R.C., a number of “welshers” among the bookmakers, a number of frivolous protests and a number of racehorses under assumed names.
Later meetings suggest that the racing club had established a strong presence in the district with meetings advertised “no person allowed to enter a horse unless the bona fide property of a subscriber to the Eltham Race Fund of not less than two sovereigns”.
The last meeting appears to have been in January, 1904 under trying conditions with the temperature reaching 105 degrees and with some adverse publicity after a young man was fined in Eltham Court for being drunk and disorderly – police had arrested him after he was refused permission by stewards to ride in the pony race – in his defence, he claimed that the stewards had backed another pony “and were frightened the pony he was riding would win”.
(He was fined five shillings, the magistrate took a rather more serious view of two men selling fake jewellery without the appropriate hawker’s licence and fined both £10, or two month’s jail in default).
“Eltham Park” now shows as a normal suburban-size football and cricket ground, but with the much larger Alastair Knox Park to the south, the two separated by the extension of today’s Hurstbridge railway from Greensborough to Eltham in 1902.
END
Admin note: The area is now known as Eltham Lower Park. See references online via historical newspapers
Image: A visit to a stud farm: Bundoora Park via State Library Victoria Digital Pool
