LIKE to hear the story about Newcastle's missing racecourse?
It existed for about 40 years, yet almost nothing is known about it, unless you search for clues in Hamilton, not the present course site at Broadmeadow.
For Newcastle's first premier racecourse has been almost erased from history with the march of suburbia. A century ago, workers toiled to pacify a large, unpromising landscape to even create major city roads out of low-lying swamp and sandy soil.
Yet, one trace of our lost racecourse may still survive today, possibly converted into a well-known traffic artery.
For the record, horse racing, or the "sport of kings", first emerged locally about 1846 at Burwood racecourse in Frederick Street, Merewether. Some prominent Newcastle identities of the day, such as James Hannell, were behind the venture that seemed to have lasted 10 years.
Meanwhile, the mighty Australian Agricultural Company (or AACo) had received a giant government grant of 2000 acres of land to the west and south of the previous penal settlement of Newcastle to explore for coal.
Places such as Pit Town (today's Hamilton) sprang up, but with coal mining later winding down, the AACo was left with 1000 acres of surplus land around 1900. It decided to stabilise this land by filling in existing swamps, then sub-dividing it to sell for home plots.
One exception to the unsold Newcastle Estate residential land was a 100 acre area at "Hamilton South", or Wallaby Flat, which was leased to the Newcastle Racing Club (the forerunner of today's Newcastle Jockey Club) in 1865, initially for seven years.
The original racecourse continued until 1906 when the NJC moved to a new site, also leased from the AACo, but further west to its present broad meadows site. This land was eventually bought outright several years later for a reported 11,000 pounds.
And the old abandoned racecourse sited amid swampy ground? For a while, it became Newcastle Golf Course . . . then even it disappeared from maps.
The Hamilton racecourse stretched from about Stewart Avenue to National Park. A makeshift grandstand was even erected, so this might explain later memories by old timers of a grandstand once briefly on the site of a future church on Stewart Avenue.
However, a frustratingly incomplete 1897 suburban map held in Newcastle Region Library's local studies section instead shows a grandstand facing south above the winning straight.
Just as intriguingly, the entrance to the old racecourse, including stables and saddling paddock, seemed to be only via 'Racecourse Road', now completely vanished from modern city maps.
The now lost road speared west across almost the middle of what is now No.1 Sports ground then onto a bridge over Cottage Creek to its final destination, the rear entry of the racecourse. At that stage, in 1897, there was nothing around the old racetrack but sand and swamp. Not even any streets.
Years ago, Newcastle University researcher Russell Rigby pinpointed the actual route of Racecourse Road by overlaying an 1894 map on a modern street plan.
Rigby deducted the racetrack road had started in Parry Street, just up from the intersection with the then Melville (now Union) Street.
Rather bizarrely, this same area was in the news earlier, twice, for another reason. In both June 1881 and also in January 1888 human remains were unearthed on the corner of Parry Street at the approach to the racecourse.
Investigations revealed it had been an old Aboriginal burial ground, so no inquest was considered necessary. Some bodies found in their sandy graves were wrapped in large sheets of tea-tree bark.
Also extremely useful in helping to unravel today's puzzle of the two racetracks once both at 'Hamilton' was Lake Macquarie author Peter Murray. He helped fill in further gaps in the story through his valuable past writings, particularly his excellent book on the beginnings of suburban Hamilton.
A 1971 Newcastle Sun sport report then revealed the first Newcastle Cup was held in 1907 at today's Broadmeadow course. The former Hamilton track lapsed into obscurity and a golf links was extended in there. A girls high school later occupied the location known today as Newcastle High. The article said the move to the Wallaby ground (Broadmeadow) further west was because it "was considered a much better site".
By whom, one wonders. Or was it just more convenient for the AACo's future residential estate plan?
One of the founders of the Newcastle Jockey Club and its 1907 club president, C.H. Hannell, was once quoted as saying that the Broadmeadow site was a swamp and "he had seen two foot of water over it".
Creating the Broadmeadow racecourse had involved a tremendous amount of work, moving 66,000 cubic feet of earth to make it viable.
In 1907, public transport there was by steam tram and the only road access, a bumpy one, was from Beaumont Street.
The club at its new site though was one of the few racetracks to later survive the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many other Hunter tracks such as Wallsend, Boolaroo, Maitland, Singleton and Cessnock were forced to shut.
Newcastle surveyor, the late, legendary Astley Pulver (1899-1988) also once gave a key insight in his book entitled After Coal . He wrote that to eliminate traffic problems in their potential new residential city site, the AACo offered the Newcastle Jockey Club an "alternative site" for their Hamilton racecourse so it would not impede their huge development plans.
These ambitious designs proposed before 1914 included providing direct access to both Merewether by creating a wide avenue (now Stewart Avenue) and Bar Beach (now Parkway Avenue). Rapid progress was then made in the 1920s.
Sand collected from the eastern side of Darby Street was used to fill in swamp and low-lying land in the area, aided by slag from the company's Hamilton and Glebe mine dumps. This section of 'new' Hamilton became a prestigious model suburb, called Garden Suburb.
Parkway Avenue with its broad thoroughfare with central pine trees and manicured lawn was, and is, at the suburb's heart.
But maybe the AACo designers a century ago were just improving on a major path already existing for an earlier use.
So here, dare I suggest, the unusually wide road and centre green corridor outside the present Newcastle High may well be part of the original old racecourse straight and finish post right in front of its grandstand?
