THE SPORT OF KINGS AND FAMILY

My uncle, Jack Bell,as an amateur jockey.  

The Bells and the Clarks were devotees of the sport of kings. Describing them as devotees is too mild; they treated horse racing as a religion. They would have gladly raced horses full time rather than run cattle stations.

I think I’m the only one of my family that never owned a race horse.  Even my father raced a horse and he once told me that the racing fraternity were the lowest form of human life. My father and all of his seven siblings (three females and four males) owned horses.  Then it was my grandparents, Jane Florence and Richard Bell who raced horses, largely in North Queensland. 

My grandfather had an unfortunate incident with one of his purchases from Melbourne.  The stallion had raced in several major races in Melbourne including an unplaced in the Melbourne Cup. On its arrival in Charters Towers from Melbourne, he was showing it off down the main street when it grabbed him by the seat of the pants, lifted him up and dumped him in on the ground.  The resulting injury was enough to put him in hospital.  My grandfather still kept the horse and it lived a long life.

My great grandfather, John Clark, regularly attended the Sydney and Melbourne yearling sales and raced winners in North Queensland.  My grandfather’s brothers and cousins were also heavily involved in the racing industry as owners, jockeys, farriers and stewards.  It even goes down to the present day when my father’s first cousin, Doctor Kevin Bell (Veterinary Science), founded  the Australian Equine Genetic Research Centre in 1986. It is located at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

Some of the most notable family horses and racing wins are:

Grosvenor Downs ( owned by Minnie and Cosmo Gordon. Minnie was a sister of my grandmother) owned  My Man who was a grandson of Assyrian. Assyrian won the 1882 Melbourne Cup. They also owned Nonette who was bought as a breeding sire. During his racing career, Nonette won the equivalent of seven million dollars in today’s money.

My grandfather’s brother, John Bell, who owned Cardigan Station, bought Eastcourt as a breeding sire.  During Eastcourt’s career he won the equivalent of five million dollars in today’s money. Some of his wins are the VRC Handicap and the Sydney Tattersalls. Eastcourt also ran second in the Sydney Cup and a third in the VRC Derby and the Australian Cup.

Eastcourt.

A first cousin of my father named Simon Lynch, won the Grand National Steeplechase in Victoria in 1932.

As you can see, horse racing is in the blood.

  

THE BLOODY FRONTIER

http://www.australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/index.php/conflicts/chronology/qld

I have been looking at the above website which details the list of massacres of Indigenous Australians in my home state of Queensland. Many are focused from 1860 onward in the northern region of the state which is where I was born and raised. It's a sobering and heart- breaking read.
 If you don't know much about Australian history, Indigenous Australians were locked in conflict with Europeans soon after settlement in 1788. It is estimated that the pre-1788 population of the Indigenous people across Australia was between 500,000 to 750,000. At the start of the twentieth century, the population had been markedly reduced to about 93,000 due to European diseases, massacres and conflict.
Why I took particular interest in this website, is that it mentions the cattle station of Grosvenor Downs as an area of conflict in 1868. No details are mentioned.
I knew that Grosvenor Downs belonged to my great grandfather, John Clark and prior to that his half-sister, Isabella Clark and her husband, Alexander McDonald. John Clark later gave the station to his daughter as a wedding present.
I was hoping that my family weren't involved in such a heinous crime. Further research indicated that in 1868 a Frank Bridgman owned the cattle station. It was sadly a massacre of local Indigenous people; sixty in total.  No reason is given why this massacre occurred. I can only surmise that a European or cattle were speared causing the settlers to retaliate.  
Sadly, it was not an isolated incident. The list of conflicts between Indigenous people and Europeans in Queensland goes right up to 1929.
 It is history that was conveniently overlooked. I don't think that should be the case anymore.

FROM THE BUSH TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE

RUPERT AND KING GEORGE V. Source: lighthorse.org.au

You couldn't have more different worlds than the Australian bush and Buckingham Palace but a horse named Rupert experienced both of them.

Rupert was born in 1894 at Grosvenor Downs, a 550 square mile cattle station in the Australian outback. He was also the horse that carried King George V of England (the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II) around during ceremonial duties for over ten years.

Before my great grandfather, John Clark, bought Grosvenor Downs, the station was owned by Alexander McDonald (a Scot) and his wife Isabella Clark (Isabella was my great grandfather’s half- sister).

For the horse enthusiasts, Rupert was a black Australian Waler, a horse breed renowned for their endurance, who stood at 15.3 hands. Walers are a combination of Arab, Thoroughbred and Timor Pony. Many were exported to India as cavalry remounts. The Waler became legendary in the Middle East during World War One when they were used as horses for the Australian cavalry. It wasn’t uncommon for them to go two days without water and cross hundreds of miles of desert with little rest then having to charge Turkish gun emplacements at the end of it. Truly amazing horses.

Thankfully Rupert avoided military service. He was exported to India in 1903 from Grosvenor Downs and was sold to a Lieutenant Boyd in the Horse Artillery. During a visit to India in 1906, the Prince of Wales (as King George V was then), took a shine to Rupert and offered to buy the horse. In the letter I have from the Royal Archives, the Prince bought Rupert but in the story I heard, the Lieutenant thought he would be breaching royal protocol if money was exchanged, and instead he gave Rupert to the Prince as a gift. Rupert returned to England with Lieutenant Boyd and was accommodated at the Prince’s London home, Marlborough House.

King George rode him in the funeral procession of his Father, King Edward VII and a review of Australian troops during World War One. The story is that he rode Rupert in the funeral cortege of his father, as he could sit higher in the saddle than his despised cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Families—don’t you love them?

Rupert lived a long, distinguished and comfortable life, and was sadly put down at the age of 26 on the 28th February 1920.