(Anyone familiar with famous post-war Australian race callers will have a fair idea who Harry Trump is based on.)

 

Harry Trump had been a race caller for more than thirty years. He’d started out in the days when broadcasters were banned from racecourses, and had had to rely on their own inventiveness to call races from the outer. He had called the 1937 Melbourne Cup from half way up a tree on the far side of the Maribyrnong River, and in the excitement of the finish had fallen out and almost hanged himself on the microphone lead. He’d called from the top of removalists’ vans, mounted on fire-engine ladders, lowered from a French aviator’s dirigible airship, and on one memorable occasion on a trampoline, when he’d had to time his bounce so that he was in the air as the horses passed the post. He’d called camel races in North Africa with the Second AIF. During a fact finding tour of world racing venues in 1957, he’d outraged the British by falling down the grandstand steps blind drunk at Royal Ascot (his dislodged top hat landing in the lap of the Queen Mother), and bemused the Americans at the Kentucky Derby, on spotting the dirt track, by commenting that he’d never seen a racecourse in worse condition, even in Woop Woop.  He advised any who cared to listen (and many others who would rather have not) that they should transfer the Derby to another course until the grass had had a chance to grow back.

 

Harry’s manner of speech was colourful and dotted with turf metaphors, and he invariably addressed his interlocutors as ‘sport’, or ‘brother’, which saved him the bother of remembering names. His clothes were equally idiosyncratic, whether observed at the bar of the local RSL or the races; two-tone shoes with pointy toes, voluminous bottle green trousers, vest and hound’s-tooth sports jacket with red rose buttonhole, felt hat turned down at the front. From beneath the hat wafted the elusive scent of an exotic hair oil. He had a glossy art-deco haircut like Bill Ponsford, the twenties cricketer, that reflected the light like a wet road at night.

 

On race days Harry was preceded through the entrance to the commentary box by a battered old Gladstone bag. The bag contained the four tools of the trade to which he attributed his great success. These were a set of ancient but excellent binoculars, a little battery operated fan, a facecloth steeped in Eau De Cologne, and a bottle of Black Label scotch.

 

As the years passed this last item increasingly diverted Harry’s attention from the first three. It would perhaps have been going too far too describe Harry as a booze hound—he would have scoffed at the idea himself—but a lot of listeners came to feel that Harry’s first call of the day usually had much greater clarity than the last.

 

One Thursday morning in the late 1960s Harry was not particularly surprised to be summoned to radio 2RAW station manager Joe Jones’s office. Though he was seriously hung-over, he had some recollection of an unfortunate incident the previous day at Randwick, something to do with the last race, maybe…

 

Joe Jones quickly provided the forgotten details. ‘You called the wrong horse the winner, Harry!’ he said, pointing at the photo-strip of the finish in the racing paper.

 

‘Oh, yeah—I remember now. Sorry, sport. You know it was that bloody silly old ‘Crasher’ Gates’s fault. If a trainer’s goin’ to start two horses in a race, why doesn’t he make sure that their colours are different? Where’s the sense in using the stable colours on both and puttin’ a white cap on one jockey, and a yellow cap on the other? Eh? Askin’ for trouble, I reckon. But look—sorry—I’ll be more careful here-on-in.’

 

‘It’s not that easy, Harry. Do you know who owns that horse you called the winner?’

 

‘Nope—enlighten me.’

 

‘Never noticed a bloke being chauffeur-driven to the front door here in a silver Rolls Royce?’

 

‘Little shifty lookin’ bloke with beady eyes in a homburg hat?’

 

‘That is he. Sir Reginald Barry is his name—ring a bell? He happens to be the owner of this station. Yes, he’s the man who’s been covering your gambling losses these last twenty years. He also happens to be the owner of that nag you called the winner of the last race. However, as the morning paper reveals, it did not win, but rather ran twenty-eighth in a field of twenty-nine.’

 

‘Big field, that,’ Harry pointed out.

 

‘Big mistake, I’m afraid, Harry.’  Jones sighed as he opened a drawer in his desk and withdrew a sealed envelope. He handed it to Harry. ‘Sorry to do this to you, old boy.’

 

‘What’s this—tickets to the opera or somethin’?’ asked Harry, looking with distaste at the envelope.

 

‘No, it’s your final cheque, Harry. You’re fired.’

 

‘Fired!’

 

‘Effective immediately. Please clear your desk and be off the premises within the hour.’

 

‘Hang on, don’t I get a second chance? This is the first blue I’ve made since that triple dead-heat in the ’56 Hotham Handicap.’

 

‘Sir Reginald doesn’t give second chances, especially when the mistake is one that affects his pocket. He laid out big on that horse yesterday Harry, and as he couldn’t be at the track, he listened in on the radio. Do you get the picture?’

 

‘You mean he was listening to me—and I called his horse the winner when it wasn’t? S’truth, no wonder he’s a bit dirty on the world.’

 

‘He’s more than dirty, Harry—he’s as cranky as a jockey forced to waste at Christmas. And Mr Barry is a very mean man. He’s so careful I heard he found a band-aid once and cut himself because he couldn’t wait to use it straight away. And, what’s more, he’s decided that you were shickered when you called that race. He’s a typical big businessman; vindictive, doesn’t like to be let down by underlings. Really, you’re lucky he’s decided to break only your contract and not your legs as well.’

 

‘Still, it isn’t my fault that ’is horse is a hay bandit,’ Harry replied.

 

Joe Jones’s craggy features softened slightly. ‘You understand this isn’t my doing, Harry. I hate to turn a legend like you out on the streets with the finishing post almost in sight. But it’s out of my hands—you see?’

 

‘Yeah, yeah,’ responded Harry absent-mindedly, suddenly wishing that he had opened a savings account thirty years ago rather than last week. For Harry knew what this sacking meant. Race callers, unlike brickie’s labourers or short-order cooks, are not advertised for each morning in the Herald. Opportunities are finite and limited. And if word got out that he’d been full on the job…which it had by lunchtime…

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

It was a day some six months later when Harry Trump, a couple of day’s growth on his chin, approached the entrance of his bank. In his hand was a cheque in his favour drawn against the account of his sister Beryl. He had received several similar cheques in recent months, the amount each time smaller than last. He was now firmly advised that this was the last of its kind that he could expect to receive. The family, he was told, was no longer prepared to pay for his stabling.

 

It had been a tough six months, Harry reflected. As he had anticipated, offers of work were not forthcoming. Doors slammed in his face with cyclonic ferocity. In the first weeks Harry had gathered up what little assets he could claim as his own and converted them to cash money. His aspiration was to eke out a modest existence punting. But Harry found that he had little talent for identifying winners—a fairly essential component of the skill-set of a successful professional punter.

 

It dawned on Harry for the first time that he had always been a lousy judge—good race caller, but a lousy judge. What winners he had backed were almost always the result of inside information he’d received at the track. He was suddenly aware, albeit without any sense of guilt, of the financial deprivations that anyone who had followed his tips for any length of time must have suffered. How many marriages had he sent down the gurgler, he wondered.

 

There was just one other customer in the bank when Harry entered, an elderly gentleman in a hat, who was already being attended to by one of the tellers. Harry waited his turn at the top of the otherwise empty queue.

 

‘Next, please.’ called the other teller, who was now free. He smiled at Harry.

 

Harry began to move forward, but he happened to look down and notice that one of his shoelaces had worked free.

 

‘Bugger!’ he said to himself. ‘Hang on, mate,’ he called to the teller. ‘I’ve loosened a plate here! I’ll ‘have to be reshod! Be with you in a moment.’

 

Harry noticed an artificial palm tree in the corner of the bank. It was housed in a planter box which he judged was just the right height, if rested on, to enable him to re-tie his shoelace. He shuffled over to the box with this in mind.

 

Now, as a race caller, there was one area where the public always agreed that Harry had it all over his rivals. He had an uncanny ability to call the ‘swoopers’—the horses finishing fast from the rear in the last half furlong in big fields—much earlier than anyone else.

 

Although Harry just took this talent for granted he was in fact blessed with exceptionally good peripheral vision. At that moment, courtesy of this great gift, he was aware of a sudden, violent movement almost directly behind him. And even as this movement registered in his brain, it was joined by an instinctive suspicion that whatever was its source, it bode no good for Harry Trump.

 

It was well known among returned servicemen that while with the second AIF in North Africa Harry had also developed great expertise in finding cover, even in the seemingly featureless desert, to avoid contact with the enemy, and he didn’t hesitate to put that skill to good use now. He had already begun to bend down to tie his lace, but now he modified that movement into a neat forward tumble that carried him over the planter box and out of sight behind the palm tree.

 

Harry quickly righted himself and looked forward into the bank from between two palm fronds. He was certain that the tree would conceal his presence from anyone standing in the public section of the floor.

 

He saw three men wearing masks rush into the bank. The foremost was waving a sawn-off shot gun at the bank officials and the lone customer.

 

‘Property is theft!’ he cried in a gravelly voice. ‘You pair!’ he called to the tellers. ‘Turn around and put your hands up! Now!’

 

‘Right, lads,’ he said to his two accomplices, ‘get over the counter and get the cash—and don’t muck around. They’ve probably hit the alarm already.’

 

As his partners leapt the counter, the man with the gun and gravelly voice turned to the elderly customer. ‘OK, old man, you can reach, as well,’ he ordered. Then he grabbed the lapel of the old man’s suit and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Say, great bag of fruit this! Top of the range cloth, that. Bet this didn’t come off the rack at Solly Cohen’s cheap-and-cheerful menswear, eh? You’re some sort of capitalist, I’ll warrant. Hand over your roll so I can redistribute some of your excess of production!’

 

‘This is an outrage!’ spluttered the Suit.

 

‘Nyet, Rockefeller,’ responded the robber, firing a shot into the air, then bringing the butt of his rifle down on the customer’s head. As that person crumpled to the floor, he reached inside the victim’s coat and removed a plump wallet which he replaced in his own pocket.

 

‘Jeez, I’m well out of this,’ said Harry to himself, concealed behind his tree. ‘Worse than bloody Tobruk.’

 

Then Harry heard the sound of a distant siren, rapidly drawing nearer. The gang-leader heard it too, and he cocked his head, as though to discern which direction the sound came from.

 

‘Fall back, boys, it’s the cops,’ he yelled to his henchmen.

 

Obediently his deputies leapt out and sprinted for the door. Gravel Voice backed behind them providing cover. As he reached the door he called to the bank clerks, ‘Come after me and I’ll blow a God damn hole in you!’ Then he turned and ran off.

 

Moments later three policemen entered the bank. Once it was clear that the robbers had fled two of them set off in pursuit. The third, a young man of self-confident bearing, had been at the scene several minutes before Harry decided it was safe to emerge from his hiding spot. With a rustle of palm fronds he stepped out into the open. The policeman, who had begun interviewing the tellers, turned at the sound.

 

‘Hello, where have you come from?’ he asked Harry.

 

‘Oh, I’d forgotten. This gentleman was in the line before the robbers struck,’ said one of the tellers. His eyes narrowed. ‘Perhaps he is an accomplice!’

 

‘Accomplice nothin’,’ Harry said, ‘I just came here to cash me tight sister’s Kleine cheque.’ He noted a safe, its door swinging open, its interior empty. ‘And I suppose that plan’s a late scratchin’, and all, judging by the hungry look of that cashbox.’

 

‘Never mind about that,’ said the policemen, ‘I was just about to ask these fellows for a description of the criminals.’

 

But the bank men could offer little help, as they had been made to face the wall during most of the raid. Both also frankly admitted that they had been too scared to notice much anyway.

 

The police officer looked Harry up and down, then asked none too hopefully, ‘I don’t suppose that you, sir, would be able to describe—’

 

Harry cleared his throat like he used to when the runners were moving into the starting barrier.

 

‘Maybe I can at that, captain,’ he said. ‘Now: there were three of these blokes. The first—the one who thought he was Ned Kelly holdin’ up the bank at Euroa—was wearing a sort of khaki blouse with a belt around it, and a hound’s-tooth floppy cap like the pommy workers wear.’

 

‘Hey, that’s right!’ confirmed one of the tellers. ‘I remember now.’

 

‘The second bloke,’ continued Harry, ‘was wearing white and blue striped seersucker trousers, and a tan jacket with white arm-bands.’

 

‘That’s the fellow!’ agreed the teller again. ‘Bloody crook dresser, he was!’

 

‘And the last one,’ went on Harry again, closing his eyes, ‘green gabardine trousers with white contrast stitching, blue body shirt with dark blue yoke and inlays under the armpits. White footie beanie with red stripes and pom-pom.’

 

‘Pop, you ought to be a race caller,’ said the police officer, busily scribbling notes onto a pad. ‘You’ve got a great memory for colours.’

 

‘As a matter of fact, chief inspector, I’m Harry Trump, the legendary broadcaster who—’

 

‘Some other time,’ cut in the policeman. ‘What about the height, weight—distinguishing features—of these offenders?’

 

‘Pah! Statistics! Such things mean nothing to me. I’m a colours man.’

 

‘You should try to be more versatile, like Bill Collins. He sings and dances on the telly, as well as calls foot races and wrestling at the Olympics!’ said the policeman, who Harry now suspected of being a Melburnian.

 

At that point, the other policemen returned to report they had lost the robbers. The first told them to call an ambulance for the injured customer, who was still lying unconscious on the floor.

 

The policeman barked out a few more orders to his colleagues. For some reason he then took Harry Trump into his confidence. ‘Of course, we’ll never get them now. Got away scot-free. Who knows where they’re heading?’

 

‘As a matter of fact, major, I might be able to help you there as well.’ said Harry.

 

‘Oh! And how is that?’

 

‘Look, one of those characters had a race-book sticking out of his sky-rocket.’

 

‘So what?’

 

‘It was for a provincial trot meeting run later this afternoon—a non-TAB meeting. Now, most blokes only carry a form guide if they’re planning to have a bet, see, and as this meeting’s non TAB—and as you and I both know, field marshal, there’s no such thing as SP betting—then I reckon maybe—’

 

‘Are you trying to tell me that if we go to this race meeting we’re going to find these fellows there betting on the trots?’

 

‘It might be a rough chance, brother,’ said Harry to the constable, ‘but these long shots get up sometimes—that I can vouch for better than any man alive.’

 

‘If these fellows operate on the trots it would explain why they’ve taken to robbing banks,’ put in one of the tellers. ‘Now I think of it, too, the leader sounded a bit like a revolutionary; he shouted something about the redistribution of wealth on his way out. That might account for the poor taste in clothes.’

 

‘Cripes, a trots man and a commie!’ Harry exclaimed. ‘Talk about drawing an outside barrier twice!’

 

‘All right, I’ll call the sarge and see what he thinks,’ said the constable. ‘Meanwhile, old timer, I’ll take some personal details from you, if you don’t mind.’

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

That night Harry received a call from the jubilant police constable to tell him that what had quickly become known as the ‘red-hots gang’ had been picked up during the afternoon at the trot meeting. After observing the activities of the threesome for some time, undercover police moved in and made an arrest. The credit was due entirely to Harry, said the policeman generously.

 

‘We’ve recovered the entire proceeds of the bank robbery, as well as the wallet of the gentleman who was assaulted during the raid,’ went on the constable. ‘We’ve also got a fair bit of cash above and beyond that.’

 

The policeman had taken a shine to Harry. Again he became matey and confidential. ‘Believe it or not, those crims had backed the first three winners straight at long odds before we caught up with them. Half the ring had jumped in their Valiants and headed for the hills. Our undercover boys didn’t arrest the gang straight away—decided to see if their luck held. Fair dinkum, they got the next two up as well, both at ten-to-one. Our boys collected from the tote, went to the bar for a round of drinks, and then moved in. The bookies stood to a man and cheered when they saw those blokes being led off the course in handcuffs. By the way, the wallet has been returned to the victim of the assault, and he has been informed of the major part you played in its recovery.’

 

‘How is the old coot, anyway,’ asked Harry, though not in fact much interested.

 

‘Oh, he’s not doing so badly,’ said the police constable. ‘In fact, the hospital’s released him. He’s a big shot, you know. He’d like to meet you. Could you arrange to call in down here at the station tomorrow morning? I reckon he has some kind of a reward in mind.’

 

‘Beauty! What time do you open?’ asked Harry quickly.

 

‘Harry, we’re not like the pub—we don’t have licensed hours. But he asked if you could make it at about 10 o’clock.’

 

‘I’ll be there, you can take the odds to that,’ promised Harry.

 

Next morning Harry was shown into the sergeant’s office. Seated before the desk was a man whose small head was swathed in a large bandage. Harry guessed correctly that it was the man from the bank, whom he had not really looked at closely before. Now as he studied the gentleman, it occurred to him there was something vaguely familiar about the fellow—his small stature, bristling moustache, and beady eye.

 

Harry started slightly as he recognised the man as his erstwhile employer, Sir Reginald Barry. Barry himself had a sharp intake of breath, which indicated to Harry that recognition had been mutual.

 

‘Anything wrong, sir?’ asked the police sergeant, noting the wealthy man’s reaction.

 

‘Er—no sergeant. It’s just that this man is a former employee of mine who lost his position as a consequence of—well, I needn’t go into that.’

 

Sir Reginald turned to Harry.

 

‘Mr Trump, I have been informed by the police that my billfold, which contained some very important personal effects, as well as a large sum of cash, was restored to me primarily because of a remarkable piece of observation on your part, as well as a very sharp piece of deductive reasoning.’

 

‘No worries,’ responded Harry magnanimously.

 

‘It had been my intention, sergeant, to make a substantial cash award to this person, in order to express my gratitude. I think, however, that in these extraordinary circumstances, I can do better than that. It is clear, Trump, that you have lost none of the skills of your calling, of, er, calling. It would be a great pity to continue to see them go to waste. I think it would be best for everyone if you came back to work for us.’

 

‘Mind you, Harry, there’s been a changing of the guard in your absence.’ said Sir Reginald later, when they were alone for a moment. ‘I’m afraid you won’t be the top dog anymore. Broderick Kent, who has come up from our sister station in Victoria, is now the number one race caller.’

 

Harry was at the point of telling Sir Reginald that in his opinion Broderick Kent could not call a hungry hog to a feed, but he wisely decided that a policy of diplomacy and humility was better value, so he kept this assessment to himself. Which was as well, for Kent was Sir Reginald’s nephew.

 

Instead Harry responded, ‘think nothing of it, your honour; I know I’m no longer the favourite pick, but I need regular racing. Being left behind at the stables when the races are on is no good to me.’

 

‘You will, of course, have to be done with this debilitating dependency on alcohol—’

 

‘Haven’t touched a drop these six months, so help me!’ lied Harry easily, glad that his flask of Corio ‘Five Star’ Whisky was safely out of sight in his coat pocket.

 

‘Very well, then. Report for duty to Joseph Jones in the morning. He will be expecting you.’

 

‘Goodo, sport—er, boss, that is.’

 

‘Yes.’

 

And while it is not true that a bottle of black label whisky never again ascended from the old Gladstone bag on race days, Joe Jones gave Harry an assistant whose primary task, apart from placing Harry’s bets, was to ensure it stayed more or less out of play until after the last race. At the time of his retirement some years later, Harry had accumulated a ‘cunning kick’ sufficient to keep him in comfort the rest of his days.

 

 

Copies of Sydney Racing in the 1970s: an Illustrated Companion are available via Wayne’s website (worth a look too).

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