Vale W.K. Trewick (Brisbane)

 

 

 

 

Ken Trewick died peacefully in Brisbane on February 8. He was 97. His memorial service was held in Albany Creek yesterday. Unfortunately, I could not attend.

I met Ken Trewick in the betting ring at Flemington on what has become known as Super Saturday in March 2003. Susan and I had moved to Melbourne about six weeks earlier. Ken’d flown down from Brisbane to back a horse in the Newmarket: Belle Esprit. “Got 8s,” he said. But he probably got 12s as well.

It ran second. To Belle du Jour. “Not to worry,” he said. “Not a bad run,” he said. “Paid for me trip.”

Ken was 77 then, and looked like he could still run in the Stawell Gift. Fit. Slim. Tanned. What you’d expect Errol Flynn to have looked like had he made it past 50. As we sat in the shade on one of those circular garden seats that surrounds a tree trunk in the ring, he started to tell me a little about Stawell. And other stories. About footy at Windsor and his three brothers. About Brisbane during World War II, and enlisting when he was old enough. I loved hearing these yarns.

Time passed and I had to head home, but I reckon Ken was enjoying himself. As we were about to go our separate ways, he suggested I visit him at his friend’s place, which was down Waverley way while he was down. We caught up on the Sunday morning. And he told me some more. But really it was just the beginning.

That meeting had been set up after a series of phone calls over at least a year. I had never heard of Ken until I was paging through the centenary history of the Stawell Gift. In 1950, it was won by W.K. Trewick (Brisbane) off 10 yards. Why didn’t I know this? Why hadn’t I heard of Ken Trewick? I asked around.

I rang Murray Bird. “Muz, who is this Ken Trewick?”

“Ken Trewick,” he said. “He won the Stawell Gift. Won a fortune. He’s always at Eagle farm and Doomben.”

Turns out he’d had a life in Queensland sport as an Australian Rules footballer (for Windsor and Queensland), a professional runner, a trainer of professional runners, a trainer, fitness advisor and sprint coach of rugby league teams (including Queensland), a golfer and a (uncommonly successful) punter.

I chased his phone number and rang him up. During that first phone call he was sort of friendly, but sort of not. We talked about footy – his Brisbane Lions were the side of the moment, and horses. When it came to discussing the Gift, he was quite circumspect, the way people are when they’re trying to work out what you’re after. I told him that I was fascinated by Stawell, that I’d followed it since I was a kid watching it on black and white ABC TV, that I’d recently had a chat with J. D. O’Donnell (Preston), 7 ¾ yards, and that I was keen to hear the story of his win. “J.D.” Ken said to me. “1955.”

I thought for a minute that the O’Donnell connection was going to serve me well. But I was wrong.

He turned gruff: “I’ve never told anyone the Stawell story and I’m not telling you.”

I left it at that, but I thought I’d try one last angle. “When you won it, how’d you go on the punt?” I asked.

“Mate,” he said, “I’m still fuckin’ livin’ off it.”

And he was. He still had the house he paid cash for on the hill in Wilston just north of The Valley, and I’m pretty sure he still had a taxi license. He certainly was a regular with the Black and White Taxi Golf Club where he played off 14. We had a hit once – but buggered if I can remember where, or who with. He was handy then and it was only a matter of time before he shot his age – a magnificent sporting feat. But he never told me whether he did.

We got on well.

He’d ring from time to time to talk footy and to ask how The Leader of the Opposition was. I’d tell him my good wife Susan remained opposed to gambling and all other forms of poor living. Geelong annoyed him. He reckoned he knew how to sort them out. Brisbane eventually annoyed him. He was a fixture at the Gabba.

One night, maybe the second or third time I spoke to him on the phone (I remember, because we were still in Brisbane) he rang with a tip. “This’ll win,” he said with not a hint of doubt in his voice. “It’s from a clocker,” he said. “They’ve been mucking around with this one,” he said. “He’s got lengths on the others.”

I listened to 4TAB the next morning and legendary bookie Merv Cooper (more on him another day) made no mention of the horse. Neither did the tipsters.

I went down to the Highgate Hill TAB to back it. I didn’t know Ken too well of course, and I was uncharacteristically cautious. An hour out from the race, it was paying about $38 the win in Queensland, and longer everywhere else. So I let it go. The horse started at $3.60 and won by four lengths.

He pointed me at a few certs over the years. Mainly Brisbane. But he used to get some Mick Kent mail too.

Eventually, I suggested to Ken that we go to Stawell together for the Gift. And, better still, we’d drive down the Newell Highway (a trip he did on his own for many years) and he could tell me the whole story, over a few days. He agreed.

I proposed this idea to Christian Ryan who’d just taken the reins as the first editor of The Monthly. Chris, a brilliant editor and a superb writer (as Golden Boy and his other books demonstrate), loved the idea, but the journal’s proprietor Morry Schwartz didn’t. Chris pushed for it, and gradually won the argument. And so the story of Ken’s Stawell Gift, with all its intrigue, and its depiction of an old Australia, appeared in the first edition of The Monthly.

It was a privilege to write it.

That was 2005. Subsequently Ken and I had many phone conversations. He would also come to Melbourne from time to time. He loved footy. He loved racing. His mail was often spot on, but not always. He was in the know. He retained very good contacts in pro running.

Occasionally, a parcel would appear in the mail. After he noticed I was always juggling phone, diary, wallet, exercise books, pens, papers and other paraphernalia, he sent me the most surprising item: a man-bag. “For Chrissakes,” he said, “get yourself organised. You’re bloody difficult to watch.”

He was generous – when he was winning on the punt. He was in very high spirits one evening on the phone, pockets bulging with cash I assumed. “I want to set something up,” he said. “Something to do with Stawell for your website.” We invited some younger writers to do something on Stawell, Paddy Grindlay included.

Ken wasn’t as successful on the punt the following year.

One time, when he was coming Down South to look at a horse down on the Peninsula, he was our special guest at an Almanac Stawell Gift dinner. Film-maker Bayden Findlay shot the Q and A which was memorable. We should dig that tape out.

For a while I didn’t hear from Ken much. When I did, he was actually pretty happy for the Geelong faithful. When they kept missing out, he started to offer his best how-to-fix-Geelong advice (again).

During his early 90s, he looked after his ailing wife Peg. She died in 2018.

I had hardly spoken to him since then, and not at all since we moved to the Barossa. Just the way things went. Recently, a bloke in the Tanunda Clubhouse, the local community pub, told me that in 1950 Nuriootpa hosted the Australian Grand Prix. In those days the Grand Prix was moved around the country, not unlike the national tennis and golf championships.

I did a bit of research. I was reading some stuff about the lead-up to the Nuriootpa race in The Leader on Trove.  An article from January 1950 got me thinking. “Ken would have been in Melbourne in January 1950, training,” I thought to myself. “I wonder how he’s going. I must give him a ring.” And two weeks’ later I get a call to say he’s passed away.

One of the many good things about being a writer is that you get to meet so many people.  I have made many friendships with people about whom I’ve written, and sometimes their families. They all have their own stories. They all matter. They’re all important to me.

I loved Ken. I can imagine him at the Pearly Gates, a deck of cards in his top pocket, a form guide in his back pocket, a Crown and Anchor board under his arm, a stop watch hanging around his neck: “Well, Pete, you got a decent spot for an old digger?”

Vale W.K. Trewick (Brisbane).

 

To read John Harms’s original story on Ken Trewick winning the 1950 Stawell Gift, click HERE.

 

Read more from John Harms HERE.

 

 

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