The Ivanhoe Racecourse is noted from the late 1850’s, one report suggesting the course was on the Heidelberg-road, then a rough affair built by convicts, Heidelberg itself along with Brighton one of the first settlements established outside of the early Melbourne settlement.
Most of the early references to the “Ivanhoe racecourse” actually refer to hunt club gatherings rather than race meetings, and more specifically, Bell’s Life on 11 February, 1867 place the course as adjacent to the Ivanhoe Hotel with “a steeply ascending hill opposite the steward’s office”.
The hotel was constructed in 1855 and it appears to have had a somewhat unhappy birth with a court case in December of that year over when the builders claimed he was still owed £89/11/- “on account of work and labour done and materials supplied for the construction of the Ivanhoe Hotel at Heidelberg”.
This appears to be the first time that “Ivanhoe” was used in relation to the area and it may well be an odd case of the district deriving its name from the hotel (from the historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, first published in 1820), rather than the almost universally opposite of hotels bearing the local name- all the early references are to the “Ivanhoe Hotel, Heidelberg”).
The hotel – which remains in reconstructed form – was just south of the corner of Heidelberg and Waterdale roads, and very much in the heart of the village of the time. References to the course itself suggest it was immediately west of the hotel in the area bounded by Livingstone Street to the north, Abbotsford Grove to the south and extending from Heidelberg Road west to perhaps Shaw Street – it appears to have embraced Donaldson Creek, one description of a steeplechase event noting horses have to negotiate a natural water jump on both the outward and inward runs.
The first meeting appears to have been held on 1 May, 1857 with the Ivanhoe Plate at weight-for-age run in one-and-a-half mile heats for 25 sovereigns; a Farmer’s Purse, again one-and-a-half mile heats for 20 sovereigns; a steeplechase “over about two miles of such country as the stewards may choose” run as a sweepstake, the prize the total of the 2 sovereign entry fees with another 25 sovereigns added by the organisers; a Hack race, again a sweepstake with a sovereign entry, with 5 sovereigns added, culminating with a trotting match over three miles, same conditions as the Hack Race.
All this was combined, as were many of the annual meetings held adjoining hotels, with a Grand Ball an Supper commencing at nine o’clock, admission 5 shillings.
The earlier annual meetings were relatively small affairs attracting little interest in the press, but September, 1863 saw the first running of the Grand Ivanhoe Steeplechase, the course described as opposite the hotel and “within some paddocks of uncultivated land which had kindly been placed at the disposal of the stewards for the occasion”. The “fences” were literally that – three-railed cross fences that subdivided the paddocks, with the additional hazard of a “blind creek” (Donaldson Creek?) which formed a water jump in the centre of the course.
The report on the meeting suggested the roof and a few floorboards of the only booth on the course acted as the grandstand, but were unnecessary as all points of the course were visible from the starting post :=
“The dark foliage of the trees in the paddocks contrasted beautifully with the green crops in some of the adjoining fields. In front, and to the left as far as the eye could reach, rose the dark towering ranges of Dandenong, and at a short distance off were to be seen the sloping banks of the River Yarra, that encircle the Yarra Bend, the whole forming one of those picturesque and lovely scenes which are rarely to be witnessed, and which a painter might well love to portray” The Argus, 7 September, 1863
The report has the first quarter-mile to the water jump as downhill, indicating that course ran clock-wise (or “the Sydney way of going”), then climbing to the north, slightly downhill to a second crossing of the creek and then ascending to the finish.
The race was held over four miles or three laps of the course, and carried prizemoney of 120 sovereigns, a considerable sum, as was the fifty sovereigns for a second steeple and 25 for a “Scurry”, nominally a short race on the flat, but in this case held over two miles and something of a mystery as to how the flat course managed to avoid the fences and natural hazards.
There appears to have been a general depression in the racing industry shortly afterwards, and while the Grand Steeplechase was run again in 1864, the prizemoney had dropped to 40 sovereigns, that of the main supporting race, the Ivanhoe Handicap to 25, and with two other events at ten sovereigns.
The final meeting at Ivanhoe appears to have been in February, 1867, The Age noting “the racing was extraordinarily poor, there not being one of the events on the card properly contested”, although continued to comment favourably on the setting and the views from all parts of the course.
The Steeplechase appears to have been abandoned by this time and the meeting was marred by a fall in the hurdle race that resulting in serious injuries “to one of the boldest an best of all cross-country riders, Mr. Geo. Watson’s well-known boy, Joe Gregory”. It took some twenty minutes before a doctor arrived on the scene, and Gregory after treatment on the course was taken to the Old England Hotel in Heidelberg and thence to the Melbourne Hospital “in a very precarious condition”.
Gregory died in the hospital on the following Thursday without regaining consciousness.
Other than the tragic accident, there is no immediately apparent reason why racing at Ivanhoe closed down – maybe for financial reasons given the drop-off in the quality of the meetings, perhaps given that the “racecourse” appears to have been lent each year for the occasion, the lands were developed for further cultivation or even possibly subdivided for “gentlemen’s villas” given the outstanding panorama obviously offered by the site.
