Man & Beast Read online

  I’d fallen in love with a thing that had a terminal addiction. Dad and I walked miles of bush calling her name, longingly, angrily, half-heartedly. You only ever lose one duel. She’d lost hers. I forked my fingers and whistled whistles as artful as prayer out through the box forest, hoping to reincarnate her. Knowing the whole time if she could come she would have come by now. Hack her kennel to kindling. Chuck her collar to the back of the outside cupboard among the junk. Hard to kill a missing dog, though. For long weeks the bush around our place held her live presence. And I whistled her when there was no one else around to hear.

  Until, two summer months later while riding my bike, I glimpsed a swatch of jerked hide wearing telltale tufts of black and tan in the table drain by the wooden bridge over the Sevens Creek. I turned away so it never got to be more than that. A glimpse. A question. Not an answer. I told no one.

  Because … because great warriors die in combat. Great beings wander off to an elephants’ graveyard and sink slowly to the earth, their tasks fulfilled. They don’t lie in ditches with their backs broken by Monaros. Bindi wasn’t knocked over by a car. Bindi lies coiled in the infinitely ribbed helix skeleton of her enemy. Its throat is in her jaws, its fangs in her hide, and the fur-raising frisson of battle sings in her young bones.

  The Horse Whisperer

  Les Carlyon

  Trackwork is ending at Caulfield. Carefully, for he is a methodical man, Robert Edward Hoysted picks up the badges of his trade: Thermos, flyspray, two ballpoints, clipboard, silver stopwatch, binoculars. In the distance, a farrier’s hammer rings out its lilting song. The faithful are being called back to the stables.

  In his sea-green jumper and old jeans, Hoysted strides off to groom his horse. His head is down, as though he’s trying to figure something, and the summer breeze ruffles his grey hair. By choice, he’s now a one-horse trainer, although he also helps Tony Vasil with his big string.

  Seventy-one he is, and the number throws you because he looks and talks the way he always has. His hands are calloused, yet horses, an inordinate number of them champions, have always found their touch soft. With his pink cheeks and chapped lips, he looks like a farmer who has spent his life in the sun and the rain.

  Suddenly, he snaps out of his trance. A group of youngsters has been watching trackwork from a stewards’ tower. Now they clamber down the stairs, leaving the iron door of the box open.

  ‘Boys,’ Hoysted calls. ‘Boys! Would you close the door, please. It frightens the horses when it flaps in the wind … thanks.’ Then he says to a girl whose horse crow-hops at the sound of the slamming door: ‘They’re not horse people.’ It’s as though he’s sorry for them.

  The man is a perfectionist. Always has been. Every good horse he’s trained has been treated as if it is the only horse in the world. His magnificent obsessions read like this: Scamanda, Rose of Kingston, Love a Show, Spirit of Kingston, River Rough, Sydeston.

  And the big one. Manikato.

  Now we go back sixteen years. It’s Australia Day 1981, early morning and hot, too hot, 27 degrees already, a northerly teasing the dust. The right day for a bushfire, not a horse race. At his Mentone stables, the perfectionist has seldom been more nervous.

  He’s training this champion called Manikato—except now he isn’t entirely sure what he’s got behind the pink-and-blue door of stable No. 6. Oh, the red horse looks formidable, as a heavyweight champ should: big and thick, loaded up in the shoulder and with lots of bad disposition.

  But something has gone wrong inside.

  At his last start, ten months back at Randwick, Manikato bled and had a heart attack. Bagpipes frightened him in the mounting yard before the race. He played up badly. Briefly he looked as if he might barge into the jockeys’ room. Maybe the heart attack started there, because as soon as the gates opened, Manikato tried to run out. He’d never done that before. Maybe he was swallowing blood then. No one will ever know.

  They wrapped his head in cold towels and took him back to his stables at Rosehill. He bled all over the float. Soon, sundry experts, some of whom had even ridden on merry-go-rounds, said the horse would never come back. Mal Seccull, his owner, rejected a big offer from the United States, where bleeders are allowed to run on medication.

  So here they were, on Australia Day, trying to win the William Reid Stakes at Moonee Valley for the third successive year, and more than a little trembly. As Hoysted said last week: ‘It worried me that if he raced again, bled and dropped dead, you’d be castigated by all the people who loved the horse.’

  And now the weather bureau was forecasting 42 degrees, better than 107 in real weather. ‘I rang the vet when I realised it was going to be hot,’ says Hoysted. ‘He said the hotter it is, the greater the risk of bleeding—said something about the thinning of the blood.’ Hoysted laughs. ‘That made me feel better.’

  For months, Hoysted had been testing Manikato for faults, looking for signs. And worrying. Extracts from his diary:

  November 25, 1980: One-and-a-quarter miles, last four furlongs strongly—really well today. Weighed 1278 lbs [580 kgs approx.].

  November 29: One-and-a-quarter miles quietly … feels wonderful.

  December 2: First gallop after bleeding attack … last two furlongs in 27.25 … pulled up clean in wind.

  December 23: Last three in 36.25 easily … no sign of stress.

  January 6, 1981: Passed by Dr John Bourke.

  January 8: Fastest work yet … seems a much better horse.

  January 15: Sandown—4 in 50.5. Gary [Willetts, his race jockey] very pleased—me so-so … blew a bit and seemed distressed—may be due to very hot weather.

  January 24: 3 in 34.75 … brilliant work … inspected thoroughly by vet. ECG, blood, etc, all well.

  January 25: looks to have tightened up nicely. Very hot.

  Yes, very hot and getting hotter, and Manikato was famous for sweating.

  How to stop him melting on the way to the races?

  Another trainer rang with a tip: turn the two-horse float into a Coolgardie safe. The perfectionist loved it. ‘We hung wet hessian bags on the stall divider. The wind hits the cold bag and comes off onto the horse.’

  And the burly horse won his third William Reid easily, his neck wet with sweat, his hoofs throwing up puffs of dust. No pain. No blood.

  The champ was back. The saga would go on. And on.

  Extract from the diary entry for that day:

  Hosed he and Shilo [the stable pony and Manikato’s best mate] before loading, put wet bags in trailer. Good at races considering heat … Won …

  They’re running the William Reid again today—except, in a small travesty, it’s been renamed the Sunicrust Australia Stakes. Some flash horses are entered. But compared with Manikato, they’re just handy.

  Manikato would win the William Reid for five successive years, a feat comparable to Brown Jack’s six wins in the Queen Alexandra Stakes at Ascot, England, and almost up there with Red Rum’s three Grand Nationals at Aintree. Manikato is probably the best sprinter to have raced in Australia. And if he isn’t up there with Carbine, Phar Lap and Tulloch, he managed one thing that they didn’t. He was a champion for six seasons.

  As a youngster, his stride was carefree. He’d come bounding around home turns with his ears pricked and win on sheer talent. As a seven year old, his stride had become ragged. Sometimes he’d try to hit the ground with both forelegs at once to spread the shocks over his worn legs.

  Now he’d lay his ears back and grind home on courage. And on towels, plastic shopping bags, ice and bandages.

  After Manikato had worked, Hoysted would wrap towels around his forelegs.

  Ice was tipped into shopping bags. The bags, which assumed weird shapes, were bandaged onto the legs. A stranger coming upon the pair might have thought the horse had hopelessly crooked legs and that the grey-haired man kneeling in the straw was praying.

  Hoysted first saw Manikato at the Adelaide yearling sales in 1977.

  He didn’t m
uch like him. Seccull had Manikato’s half-sister in training with Bob’s older brother, Bon. Bon had told Bob to buy the colt ‘if he didn’t have any faults’.

  ‘If he’d said: “Buy him if you like him,” I wouldn’t have,’ Hoysted says.

  What was wrong?

  A pause. ‘He just didn’t look like an athlete.’ Hoysted gives that shy laugh of his and looks down. ‘He had a big boofhead and he was very heavy bodied.’

  The experts, it seems, agreed with Hoysted. The colt who would be gelded and go on to win $1.1 million was knocked down for $3500, half of what Seccull, a Melbourne businessman, was prepared to pay.

  Bon would train him to his 2-year-old triumphs, the Blue Diamond and the Golden Slipper. When Bon died in 1978, Seccull gave Manikato to Bob, who would win another twenty-five races with him.

  Chance had come into it too. ‘If the sales had been two to three weeks later, Bon probably wouldn’t have bought him,’ Hoysted says. ‘His half-sister became very hard to handle. She picked up a strapper in her mouth and threw him over the door of the box.’ Manikato wasn’t easy either. ‘Even towards the end, we couldn’t take him out for a walk in the afternoon. He’d just march you wherever he wanted to. When we were in Sydney, at Rosehill, I couldn’t walk him from the stables to the course, even though it was only 200 yards away. I had to float him. There was nothing outrageous about him—he’d just march you about. He was so strong.’

  What if he hadn’t been so good?

  ‘You’d have thrown him out of the place—too much trouble.’ Strong words from Bob. He considers them, then—perhaps unwittingly—tells you one of his secrets.

  ‘I think with great horses like him you’ve got to go along with them a bit and not break their spirit. You break that and you break what makes them great.’

  When Manikato came in from the paddock on 18 December 1981, to prepare for his fourth William Reid, Hoysted had a new problem. The horse’s legs had begun to go. At his last run, he’d pulled up sore and beaten.

  Vets told Hoysted he was wasting his time. Manikato’s offside suspensory ligament (the elasticised band of fibrous tissue that helps hold up the fetlock joint) had puffed up. From now on, he would race in bandages.

  Extracts from Hoysted’s diary:

  December 24, 1981: Percy Sykes [the Sydney vet] not happy with leg prospect.

  January 1, 1982: Leg not 100 per cent to look at.

  January 12: Cantered from five furlongs, last two in 27.35. Action excellent … leg a bit blown later but better at night.

  January 13: Good work at track. Seemed seedy—left feed. Temp. and leg up.

  January 26: 4 in 52.5 … leg holding up fairly.

  January 28: 4 in 48.14. Superb … leg excellent after ice treatment.

  Manikato won the Reid easily, his legs a blur of white bandages. Hoysted had pulled off the nicest balancing act. He’d given the horse enough work to get him fit—but not so much that he hurt. He told everyone it was his biggest thrill in racing. He also told his diary. William Rd. Travelled well, won well … My best effort.

  The Hojsteds emigrated from Denmark to Ireland. The Irish couldn’t pronounce the ‘j’, so they became Hoysteds. About 1859, Frederick William Hoysted and his wife settled at Wangaratta. ‘They had nine kids and were three months on the boat,’ says Bob.

  So you’re a fourth-generation trainer?

  ‘Fourth generation here, yes, but it could be sixteenth.’ How?

  ‘Well, one of our ancestors was the groom for Birdcatcher [the crack Irish racehorse of the 1830s].’

  Bob is the son of Fred (1883–1967), who won seventeen Victorian trainers’ premierships and turned out the champions Redditch, Rising Fast and True Course. ‘Father’, as Fred was known, took up jockeying at twelve.

  Once, the Melbourne stewards called him in for failing to ride a horse out. He told them he would rather whack them with the whip than ride a tired horse. They gave him a month.

  ‘My father was a very highly principled man—as I can be when I get my dander up,’ says Bob. ‘And he was terribly loyal. When Bon and I were kids working for him, we used to bet.’ He laughs. ‘We had to—there wasn’t a lot of wages.

  ‘Harold Badger was the stable jockey. He’d had a bad fall and wasn’t riding too well. Which meant Bon and I were losing. We suggested to Father that Badger would have to go. Father took it very badly. “Harold Badger is my jockey,” he said. “He will be my jockey as long as I want him to be. You boys be patient.” Sure enough, Harold came good.’

  Bob, too, inspires loyalty. When Manikato bled, the Americans offered Seccull about $250 000, a lot for a horse who might never race here again.

  ‘In the end,’ Seccull says, ‘I said to Bob: “It’s very tempting.” He said: “He’s your horse, it’s up to you.” To sell him, I thought, would be unfair to Bob, who loved him more than life itself.’ When Bon died, Seccull received offers from big-time trainers wanting to take Manikato. He ignored them. ‘I just liked the humanitarian aspect of Bob. I’ll never forget when we won the Rothmans 100,000 in Brisbane the following year. We’re all at restaurants and drinking up. Bob’s gone to the greengrocer. Gone to get the horse a lettuce. “Manikato likes lettuces,” he said to us.’

  For his fifth win in the William Reid, Hoysted had to train a horse with two bad legs. Now the nearside suspensory was puffy, too. Extracts from the diary:

  December 10, 1982: Came in from paddock. Looks a treat, legs fairly good.

  December 19: Tendon swollen.

  January 13, 1983: 600m in 36.9 … going really great but legs only fair.

  January 14: Legs not good.

  January 30: Stung by wasp, neck swollen.

  Returning from trackwork on race morning—31 January—Hoysted wrote:

  Really well, but legs do not look good. Very worried about him.

  In the evening, he added this:

  William Reid. Won beaut.

  He did, too. It was the fastest of his five wins. And he had done it all on courage. Three starts later, in Sydney, Manikato ran his last race. He lost his action and turned his head towards the rail when leading in the home straight at Rosehill.

  He returned for a sixth try at the William Reid, but the dream was doomed from the day the horse came in. ‘I didn’t like his hind legs,’ says Hoysted. The horse had a mystery illness, nothing to do with his heart attack or wonky front legs. Because he was public property, everyone wanted to help. Hundreds of remedies arrived by post. Hoysted read them all—just in case. At one stage, he was driving to Cranbourne each morning to obtain milk from newly calved cows because it contained colostrum, a natural antibiotic.

  Hoysted was sure—and he was probably right—the horse’s immune system had failed. He tried painkillers and antibiotics. Pills and medicines were imported from the United States and Switzerland. Doctors from Melbourne’s Mercy Hospital tried to help. Always the result was the same. Given a new drug, Manikato would improve—then go backwards. ‘Sometimes, when I think about it, I could kick myself in the bum for keeping him alive that long,’ says Hoysted. It’s almost as if he’s talking to himself.

  ‘But … but I kept hoping. In that eight-to-nine months he was sick, the longest I was away from him was seventeen hours. I went to Adelaide to pick up a horse, booked into a motel, ordered a steak while I had a shower, ate the steak, and drove straight home.’

  In the second week of February 1984, the horse’s eyes said he was dying. Ian McEwen, then Moonee Valley’s chief executive, offered a gravesite behind the tote building. Hoysted went to box No. 6 about 5 a.m. on 13 February and found his horse ‘in a bad way’. The skin had started to peel off his body. The decision was taken to put him down and take his body to Moonee Valley that evening.

  ‘The vet gave him a dose of stuff and said he’d lie down and wouldn’t feel a thing all day,’ says Hoysted. ‘At one o’clock he was up and running—or stumbling, really—around the box. We took him out to the sandroll and he went down.’

&n
bsp; The vet came and put him down. It was painless, bloodless. Hoysted remembers one thing. ‘It took a double dose to put him to sleep. The vet gave him what he thought was enough—and it wasn’t.

  ‘I’m concerned we never got to measure his heart. It would have been enormous. But that would have involved taking him to Werribee Veterinary Clinic, and they burn bodies afterwards and I didn’t want him burnt.’

  Manikato’s body arrived at the Valley about 6 p.m. ‘Bob’s wife, Iris, came, too,’ says McEwen. ‘They were pretty upset. I took them up to the house and we had a few short ones.’

  So here lies Manikato, grump, loner and world-beater. He lies under petunias of pink and white, his racing colours. Nearly always, there are flowers on the grave, little posies like those you see wilting in the heat of country cemeteries.

  Hoysted sends flowers every 13 February. He used to send them through a florist. One year he went out and didn’t like what had been delivered.

  Now he takes his own.

  And people who don’t know what they’re talking about will tell you the game has no heart.

  Bird Brains

  John Clarke

  There’s an old joke about a New Zealand farmer who turned up at the local hospital one night suffering badly from exposure. Once he’d been treated and was warm and comfortable, the doctors tried to piece together what had happened.

  ‘I was just in my paddock,’ said the farmer.

  ‘Your condition was terrible,’ they said. ‘You were in a bad way. How long had you been there?’

  The man thought for a moment and said, ‘About three days.’ ‘But why do that?’ they said. ‘Your house is only a couple of hundred yards away.’

  ‘I was trying to win the Nobel Prize,’ said the farmer. ‘I read about it in the paper. It’s awarded annually to someone who is outstanding in his field.’

  I was attempting to win the Nobel Prize at Phillip Island one afternoon last year when a large bird flew over the trees and swooped low over me and went up the paddock, gliding silently and effortlessly. It looked to me like a swamp harrier and in its claws was some small prey, about the size of a young rabbit. I was fumbling to get a camera out of my bag and work out what I was looking at, when a second raptor arrived and gave chase. They flew to the top of the paddock, both of them picking up speed until suddenly they were going straight up in the air, climbing almost vertically. There followed a World War II dogfight; very close encounters, tight turns, buzzing each other and veering away, changing angles and then soaring up again, and then, out of nowhere, the first bird, higher up now and apparently almost floating, dropped the prey in midair. The second bird turned and dived across the sky, gathering speed, and headed directly at the falling object, then grabbed it and took off, low and fast and deadly, back over the trees and away.