With Billy Egan aboard, Widgee Turf had a Group 1 placing in the 2019 Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes before retiring to a life in the high country.
I n the Victorian high country, a good horse is worth its weight in gold and always has been. Horses are a part of high-country culture, they are part of everyday life. The landscape is as tough as it is beautiful, steep and unforgiving, hot in the summer and freezing in winter; this is working horse country, and the Man from Snowy River would feel right at home. It’s fitting then that Group 3 winner Widgee Turf has found his way to the high country in retirement. The son of Turffontein was a hard- nosed competitor on the racetrack with a huge will to win – they don’t come much tougher than Widgee Turf. On a farm on the outskirts of Mansfield, the unofficial capital of Victoria’s high country, Widgee Turf and a group of other ex-racehorses are being introduced to a very different pace of life by a family synonymous with racing and with high-country horses.
Billy Egan grew up in Mansfield. His father Brendan and mother Sarah always had horses around the place, thoroughbreds, stockhorses, ponies, as did his uncle Gerald, a trainer of racehorses but perhaps better known as a trainer of young jockeys – he was also a stuntman in The Man From Snowy River film. “I grew up around horses, grew up riding them, it was that sort of lifestyle where horses were just a part of everyday life,” said Egan. Despite the honest nature of working life in the area, there has always been money in Mansfield. The town was a service centre for the surrounding mining outposts during the gold rush and fortunes were made and spent on Mansfield’s streets. Recently the town has boomed again as a gateway to the snowfields of Mt Buller and a weekend escape for well- heeled Melburnians, but horses remain a constant.
“People would ride in and go to the pub, do their shopping. There’d be horses tied up in the main street. It doesn’t happen as much these days with a few more cars around but stockmen, cowboys and girls, camp drafters they’re all still around,” said Egan. Egan was always going to be a jockey, there were no two ways about it. He started his career in 2005 and despite some tough times and injuries – the latest in August 2022 when a fall at Pakenham nearly cost him the use of his left arm – he couldn’t imagine another life. A Group 1 win has eluded him so far, but good horses haven’t, and Widgee Turf was one such horse that made a particularly long- lasting impression on Egan. Egan was in the saddle when Widgee Turf made a winning debut in a Swan Hill three- year-old maiden in August 2016 and stayed in the saddle for much of the horse’s 42-start
14
INSIDE HEADQUARTERS ISSUE 2 2023
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker