What was once an institution and a ritual – a night at the trots at the Showground – will officially be a thing of the past after the Wagga Harness Racing Club’s farewell meeting at the venue on Saturday night.
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The curtain will come down on 65 years of harness racing history before the club’s move to a new custom-built home at Cartwrights Hill in the new year.
The air will be thick with nostalgia. But reality too.
“I think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened, at last they’ve got their own ground,” former president Mick Mullins said.
“It’s progress,” added former secretary, Graham ‘Curly’ Ion.
A quarter of a century has passed since the committee led by Mullins and Ion oversaw the sport’s last ‘new era’, a new 810m track which opened in November 1992, nearly 40 years after the club’s opening.
“A lot of work went on. We had to do it all without much bloody money. We battled through and I had a damn good committee that kept working, people like Ian Walsh and Brian Parsons and Ron Ducie,” Mullins recalled.
Mullins (who, along with wife Alice, is a life member of the WHRC) thanked MP Joe Schipp for his help. He still remembers their overall takings on the night, $92,000.
Ion thanked a community with an ‘all hands on deck’ attitude, doing as much as they could themselves to save every dollar.
There were politics and arguments in the process but they got the best track they could and stand with pride above it 26 years later.
It’s an effort that current WHRC chief executive Graeme White pays tribute to.
“It reinvigorated harness racing,” White said.
“If it wasn’t for their foresight to have a new track built here in the first place, you’d be falling behind the times 30 years ago.
“You went from a very small 680m track to an 810m track so it was bigger, and bigger turns. Now we’re moving to a new complex that’s 200m longer again, and about 10m wider. And the facilities at the new complex are first class.
“So you’re just moving with the times, and our new track is purpose built for harness racing.”
White has been CEO for seven years. But he has fond memories of the sport’s heyday, with 20 to 30 bookmakers fielding out the back, and a heaving crowd, including plenty of families.
Admission is free for the 10-race meeting. He’s hoping for a fitting farewell.
“There’s a lot of memories here so we expect a pretty big crowd,” White said.
“It’s the Saturday night before Christmas, a lot of people around, and a lot of people coming back to Wagga will remember harness racing when it was the go-to thing to do of a Friday or Saturday night.
“The good times are coming back with the new harness racing complex (at Cartwrights Hill) but we’ll farewell this track in a way it should be.”
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