The exact location of the Heidelberg course – or courses – is generally accredited to be at the Heidelberg Cricket Ground and one report from 1880 has jockeys weighing-in in the cricket pavilion, but whether this represents today’s layout of Warringal Park is uncertain. .
Today’s cricket ground is to the north of the Warringal Parklands, Warringal Park used for football in winter just to the south-east.
“The Heidelberg racecourse” was a more common reference rather than “cricket ground”, but the doubts as to the location come as there are references to parts of the course “alongside the river” with today’s cricket ground separated from the Yarra by swamplands.
The first inkling of a racing scene came in June, 1853 when in an advertisement when “subscribers and friends” of the Heidelberg Race Fund were requested to attend a meeting at Henry Baker’s Old England Inn to make arrangements for the ensuing races“.
(“Race funds” were common at the time – members paid a subscription, and in some cases, races were restricted to their horses, in others, an additional entry fee was payable by “outsiders”).
Mr James Day was listed as secretary, but sadly, there is no surviving documentation of the ensuing meeting …
Through the late 1850s and 1860s, the course hosted two-day meetings, one report in The Argus in February, 1860 on the second day (the Saturday, and generally attracting many more spectators from inner Melbourne) comprised three heats of the Hurdle Race, three heats of a Selling Stake, an impromptu cricket game which continued in the centre of the course throughout the afternoon, several private racing matches of somewhat inferior quality and entertainment value “and a scrimmage between two turfites which while it lasted was very edifying, although not conducted under the strict principles of the Pugilistic Benefactors Association“.
Rather than a set public holiday, the races were usually scheduled between late February and early May, although like most of the semi-rural course, Heidelberg was regularly use for private matches, one in particular for £100 per side between Mr Greenaway’s Slick Sam and Joseph Smith’s black mare, Kitty.
Regardless of the location, it appears the track was very small, one slightly (presumably) tongue-in-cheek account suggesting that jockeys sometimes went an extra lap to ensure that they had completed the full distance!
A new Heidelberg Racing Club was formed in 1876, with a suggestion that Mr. Martin (a local barrister whose private residence was shown in directories as Viewbank) had given the club permission to extend what appears to have been a small track on Council property thought his paddock.
Throughout the next few years, the cricket ground was used in winter months by the Heidelberg Hurling Club
A report on the 1880 meeting suggested that jockeys weighed-in in the cricket pavilion and the course “wound round the fields and among houses “to such an extent that stewards had to show them around the course before the meeting commence for fear that they would get lost!
The course was not without criticism.
A rather long letter to The Argus in 1878 signed only as “STEEPLECHASE RIDER” suggested “the jump by the river” was extremely dangerous, even going so far as to claim that on the slippery ground at the previous meeting “even money was freely given that no horse would get round; perhaps this is what the stewards connived at to save the £50 prizemoney and in addition pocket the owner’s nomination and entry fee”.
There is no sign of racing continuing on a regular basis past the 1882 meeting, although there three races noted at the Heidelberg Easter Sports in 1888.
Regardless of the equine sports, the grounds were always a popular haunt for Hunt Clubs pursuing quarry north to Eltham an for organise picnics for parties from inner Melbourne.
Horse racing returned to Heidelberg in a limited form in 1947 when a trotting track for training and trial purposes was built around the football oval just prior to post-war resumption of the sport in Melbourne with the opening of the track for night meetings at the Showgrounds.
The Warringal Park track, although not utilised for many years, still appears in directories now used at football matches for car parking.
