I have taken this story from the one posted by Warren Nunn. Warren wrote about how Winx had triggered memories of two bush horses – Picnic in the Park and Bororen.
Bororen was my father’s horse so it was quite amazing to have the horse mentioned in the same article as Winx!
Warren wrote:
Picnic In The Park
Picnic In The Park did something that Winx could never do. At the time of publication Winx had won 21 races in a row and back in the 1980s Picnic In The Park likewise won 21 straight on various tracks around Queensland.
While in no way trying to compare the achievements, Rob pointed out that Winx could never do what Picnic In The Park did and that was win two races on the same day! That’s because Australian racing rules now prohibit a horse racing twice on the same day.
Bororen
Bororen was not flashy nor a headliner but rather was a solid, dependable, tough-as-teak bush horse which did not have his first start until he turned four. Seven years later in 1983, as a rising 12-year-old, he won his second Mackay Cup, a race he contested six times.
In July 1983, he was heading to Townsville for his seventh attempt at that race in which he had only one placing.
That might seem fairly mundane and unspectacular in the world of horse racing but one of the interesting things about Bororen and his connections was the extraordinary distances they travelled to these events.
Bororen’s owner-trainer Tom Broughton was a shearing contractor based in Barcaldine, western Queensland, about 700 km (420 miles) from Mackay and 880 km (540 miles) from Townsville.
Tom, his wife Pat, and their jockey Ian Stenhouse mostly raced around western Queensland at tracks such as Barcaldine (of course), Longreach, Blackall, Emerald, Isisford, Jericho and Aramac but also went south to Toowoomba which is 945 km (595 miles) away. As well, they also took a trip to Brisbane (1000 km/660 miles away) where he had two minor placings.
Bororen was gifted to Tom and Pat as a two-year-old but did not race until he was four and averaged about a dozen starts a year thereafter.
There was obviously no drop off in his abilities as he aged because when he won the 1900m Mackay Cup in 1983 as a rising 12-year-old, he ran the distance in almost the same time (1 minute 58.8 seconds) as he did in 1980 when he stopped the clock at 1 minutes 58.6 seconds. And in 1983 he was handicapped to carry 3.5kg more than three years earlier.
The Broughtons and jockeys such as Ian Stenhouse are representative of the great horsemanship that exists out in the bush away from the glare of publicity in the flashy metropolitan areas where all the glitz and glamour of the racing game is played out.
And in many ways the Picnic In The Park story is similar as Malcolm Raabe was based at Kingaroy which is 215 km (133 miles) from Queensland’s capital, Brisbane. So the Raabes were faced with long drives such as the 484 km (300 miles) to Rockhampton and also the 1200 km (745 miles) trek to Townsville, in the state’s far north. Picnic’s regular rider Chris Smith, like Ian Stenhouse, was from the far west at a place called Muttaburra only 153 km (95 miles) from Barcaldine when Ian was based.
As someone who no longer ‘follows’ racing but who spent almost a decade reporting and being involved with the sport, bush racing has always appealed. Not that I haven’t been to metropolitan racetracks, but the atmosphere is something else.
So Bororen’s story (and Picnic In The Park’s) resonates as much with me now as it did 30-plus years ago when I first wrote about those gallopers.
My Memories
Bororen was named after the town on the Bruce Highway. As they drove through it on one of their road trips following the race meetings, Tom said to Pat that he was going to name his new horse Bororen.
Sadly, Bororen ‘disappeared’ from Barcaldine Downs after he retired from racing. His remains were never found, and it took many years before Bororen’s name could be mentioned in my father’s presence. Until Tom died, he never talked about Bororen, or what might have happened to him.
The newspaper article covering the 1980 Mackay Cup win mistakenly referred to Pat and Tom Haughton, who had ‘made the long-haul from Barcaldine with their plain looking bay gelding‘. Tom was the ‘battling Barcaldine owner-trainer ...’ .
It also mentioned the $7500 first prize money and the $100 bet that ‘landed’ them $4000. The race was declared ‘one of the most exciting in Cup history and before the biggest Cup crowd for many years‘.
Patricia Broughton
Pat had a reputation for timing her foray into the betting ring to ‘place the bet’ to get the best odds on Bororen’s races.
She was also the one who looked after ‘the horses’ when Tom was out of town at work – feeding them etc.
She was also the one who sewed the silks, put in all the nomination forms and other paperwork associated with training, owning and racing a horse.
She also made sure they were suitably attired – more often than not sewing her own outfit – in their ‘racing clothes’ to receive the prizes when the horses won and photographs were taken for newspapers.
It’s very gratifying to me that she was included by my father as part of his activities as a horse trainer in the Central West.
Women were not in the forefront of racing in the 1970s and 1980s.
