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Long Gone Victoria's First Trotting Track
Is the Grandstand now at the Junction Oval at St Kilda ?
Although the racecourse at Elsternwick Park did not survive for long, it did hold a unique place in Melbourne’s sporting history as Victoria’s first track dedicated to trotting.
The Australian Trotting Association (later changed to the Victorian Trotting Club) applied in 1881 to Brighton Council for the use of the land at Elsternwick Park, then largely swampland and with little resemblance to the well-preened parklands of today.
The Association was in something of a race with the Australian Trotting Club to establish the first track for trotting, the latter having purchased land in Northcote, the latter’s aims target scuttled when the Railways Department compulsorily acquire their land for part of a planned (but never built) line from Spencer Street to Heidelberg.
The application for the land was initially refused by the Council as they did not believe they had the authority, but later granted after the intervention of the Minister for Lands.
This is believed to have been the first more-or-less permanent trotting track in Australia, but squabbles over the rights and wrong of the park being used in part for racing continued for another decade, the Trotting Club being later denied use of the track.
The matter was finally put to the vote of Brighton ratepayers in September, 1893, the usually conservative district voting nearly four to one in favour of parts of the Park being leased as a racecourse.
After the meetings were abandoned, the Elsternwick Park grandstand was taken down and re-erected at the St. Kilda Cricket Ground (Junction Oval).
Just where in today’s complex the racecourse was situated is uncertain - the cricket ground in the northern section was in use at the time and the likelihood is that the track was the site of today’s golf links.
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John Wrren's Richmond Track.... the crowd !
Richmond, just a short distance from the CBD in Melbourne was the home of trotting early in the 1900s.
Tram to the gate, or walk from the neighborhood.
And the crowd came...
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The Ghost Tracks of Ballarat
One of the three Ballarat (Vic) tracks ..Miners Racecourse first raced in 1861
Dummy ( Grattan Bells from Florrie C) one of three Bendigo Cup winners in 1924 wins under saddle ridden by Bill Forthington from Horsham, at the Ballarat Miners racecourse.