11 Williamstown racecourse, which openend in 1869, was requisitioned by the military in 1940 and never reopened. The mighty Phar Lap won the Underwood Stakes in 1931 at the Williamstown track. (Image: State Library of Victoria) 1944 were held at Flemington instead. Williamstown, a major city track, was also requisitioned by the military and never reopened. The autumn carnival 80 years ago was a season for longshots. In the Newmarket, Three Wheeler at 33/1 (ridden by Bill Williamson) beat Wonder Bird at 100/1. And the grey mare Spectre, hitherto a maiden, put in a form reversal to win the Australian Cup at odds of 33/1 – ridden by the 17-year-old apprentice and future champion, Ron Hutchinson. Twenty years later, who were the hero horses of 1965? The classy mare Ripa won the Newmarket, Craftsman the Australian Cup. In the spring, Light Fingers won the Melbourne Cup, a first victory in the race for Bart Cummings and Roy Higgins. It was in that year, 1965, sixty years ago, that the Menzies Government first committed an infantry battalion to serve in Vietnam, arguing that a communist victory there would be a direct military threat to Australia. The rights and wrongs of that commitment have been debated ever since, and the Whitlam Government on taking office in 1972 withdrew Australian forces. By that time the official Australian military death toll in Vietnam was 521, with some 2400 wounded. All of these service personnel, their families and descendants, are the ones we mourn and honour at the Anzac Day races today, along with those who have served Australia and suffered in other conflicts. Lest We Forget, the phrase runs, but there is no forgetting while the world continues, in one theatre or another, to be endlessly at war. Peace in our time? Maybe next year.
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