JAMES DUNBAR’S FLEMINGTON INN
T o get by road from Melbourne to Flemington Racecourse in the pioneering 1840s you had to travel via Flemington Road and cross the Moonee Ponds Creek using Main’s Bridge at Mount Alexander Road, then cut across country to the racecourse two kilometres away. The farmland you crossed was named ‘Flemington’ in 1840 by its first freehold purchaser, James Watson, after the Scottish birthplace of his wife Elizabeth Rose. Watson strategically built the Flemington Inn near Main’s Bridge in 1848 and installed his friend James Dunbar as licensee. It was originally on 10 acres (4 ha), a long, low, brick building set back on the northern side of the road below Watson’s residence, “Flemington House”. Dunbar advertised it as ‘Half Way to the Racecourse’. Crowds heading to the annual autumn Melbourne races inspired him to institute his own modest holiday meetings in paddocks near his inn. The first was in May 1848, the second on 15 January 1849 when he ran his “Flemington Cup”. Dunbar was only 30 when he opened the Flemington Inn. His time there was brief. After quarrelling with Watson, his silent partner, he became insolvent in 1850 and died two years later. His successor, James Connolly, ran occasional “Flemington Hotel” races in the 1850s and 1860s. The horse racing fraternity often gathered there for a drink or dinner. Sometimes his stables accommodated intercolonial horses visiting for the Melbourne Cup. Under genial Tom Gurney, the hotel flourished for a dozen years from 1885 as the venue for professional foot racing. His “Flemington Running Grounds” boasted a cinder running track. Gurney was reputedly a great mate of champion jockeys Corrigan and Hales – the “three Toms” they called themselves. Gurney died in 1897. The hotel fell on hard times and was delicensed in 1925. Not a single clue to its existence remains.
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