The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse's ears. - Bedouin proverb
In all of recorded history, humans have recognised and celebrated the correlation between a free running horse and the wonder of flight.
No people did this more poetically than the Bedouin tribes of the Arabian deserts, for whom horses were the lifeblood of existence. They also practised falconry, and as the tribesmen watched their birds of prey soar high above, they must have mused upon this truth - that to sit upon a galloping horse was the closest a human being could ever come to that sensation of freedom.
Thousands of years later, the endlessly inventive human would finally build the machines which would take him - and her - up into that lofty realm of the hawk and the eagle.
Leading up to this momentous expansion into flight, convicts working the land around a new penal colony in Queensland in the 1820s were about as far from free and unfettered as people can be.
As they toiled the swampy ground to grow food for the hungry colony, the convicts would sometimes pause in their backbreaking work and look up at the many eagles who circled in the skies above them.
Could there have been a more compelling contrast to their own miserable circumstances? They named the area they were tirelessly cultivating “ Eagle Farm.”
At first their crops grew well, but these prisoners had come to a harsh land. By 1839, drought, flood and malaria outbreaks had put paid to not only the farming enterprise but the colony itself. The remaining convicts were shipped down to Sydney and the government parcelled up and auctioned off “Eagle Farm” to white settlers.
But the settlers also struck difficulties in that swampy landscape. It seemed only the eagles, still a constant presence above, would rule over this domain.
By the early 1900s, a new craze called “aviation” was sweeping the world and an airfield was built at Eagle Farm. From its modest airstrip and hangar the legendary Queensland aviator Bert Hinkler would launch his daring airborne adventures!
Born in 1892 in Bundaberg, Hinkler would rise to fame when he made the first solo flight from England to Australia, and the first solo crossing of the southern Atlantic Ocean in his little Avro machine.
The press dubbed him “ Australia’s Lone Eagle” or - less majestically - “Hustling Hinkler,” due to the speed of his crossings.
A popular song of the day was “Hustling Hinkler Up In The Sky”
Bert was a brave man. During WW1 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his deeds as a gunner / observer in Belgium and France. He was also a visionary.
Hinkler told the Australian Prime Minister of the day, Stanley Bruce "You know, one day, people will fly by night and use the daylight for sightseeing."
Bert married in 1932 but sadly perished when his plane crashed into the Italian Alps soon afterwards. So highly was this Queenslander thought of worldwide, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini - in a rare moment of grace - ordered that he be buried with full military honours in Florence.
Bert’s name is everywhere around QLD and The Hinkler Handicap (1200m) is a Listed Race run at Eagle Farm on Stradbroke Day.
Qantas named one of their mammoth A380 airbuses after Hinkler - it now proudly carries his name through the skies at around 570 mph, 43,000 feet above the Earth.
Imagine what Bert in his plucky little 105 hp Avro biplane would have made of the sight of this immense machine, scything through the celestial sphere so effortlessly! Perhaps, the far-seeing aviator had witnessed such things in his dreams.
A nineteen year old woman living in Brisbane at the time Hinkler rose to national attention was Maud Rose Bonney. Self-styled Dolores, or “Lores” as she would become known, this remarkable individual was born in South Africa.
Her husband Harry was a distant relative of Hinkler. Young Dolores was mad about this new realm of human endeavour - the freedom of flying! - and she persuaded the great man to take her up in his Avro.
Soon “Lores” was secretly taking flying lessons while her blissfully unaware hubby was out playing golf. But when she had obtained her pilot’s licence and had to tell Harry the truth, far from being disapproving he promptly went out and bought her the latest and greatest airplane, a de Havilland Gypsy Moth, which she named My Little Ship.
Bonney would become the first woman to fly solo around Australia, and the first person to fly solo from Australia to England (a feat for which King George V awarded her an MBE).
The outbreak of WW2 ended her flying career when her plane was requisitioned for the war effort, and by the time Lores was able to fly again her failing eyesight would not permit it. She lived to the age of 96.
Her name and her wings were placed on the wall of the Flyer's Chapel at California's St Francis Atrio Mission, alongside the immortal aviators Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and Charles Kingsford Smith.
“Smithy” - Australia’s greatest aviator, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith - was born in Brisbane in 1897.
Like Hinkler, he served bravely in wartime. With the Australian Imperial Force in 1915 he experienced the horrors of the Gallipoli campaign and the Western Front.
He switched to the Australian Flying Corps the following year, later becoming a flying officer with the Royal Flying Corps. Smith was awarded the Military Cross after being shot down in 1917.
In peacetime Smithy was an adventurer and a fearless and likeable larrikin. Having worked as a crop duster in the US and UK after the war, he had to “tone it down” when employed as one of Australia's first commercial airline pilots in 1921. Well that was never going to last!
In 1928, Kingsford Smith and three crew members packed into his “old bus,” the famous Southern Cross, and completed the first flight across the Pacific. They flew from California to Brisbane’s Eagle Farm Aerodrome, with stops at Hawaii and Fiji - and the feat made them instant global celebrities.
That year Smithy also completed the first non-stop flight across Australia, and the first non-stop flight from Australia to New Zealand.
In 1934 he purchased a new sporty machine, a Lockheed Altair and proudly named her the Lady Southern Cross.
It was in his Lady that Kingsford Smith and his co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge vanished over the Andaman Sea off the coast of Burma, on 8th November 1935.
The daring aviators were trying to set a new speed record for an Australia - England air trip. Despite an extensive search in the Bay Of Bengal, no trace of them or the Lady Southern Cross could be found. Almost two years later, Burmese fisherman found part of her undercarriage and a wheel.
Smithy had been knighted in 1932 and made honorary Air Commodore of the R.A.F before his death. A star of innumerable newsreels, the charismatic pilot went full Hollywood when he made a cameo appearance as himself in the 1934 film Splendid Fellows.
In 1986, the great man was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall Of Fame.
His lovingly preserved Southern Cross can be viewed by arrivals at Brisbane's Kingsford Smith International Airport, and Kingsford Smith Drive passes through the suburb where he was born.
Smithy’s familiar features have adorned Aussie banknotes and coins. Many books have been written, songs penned and documentaries filmed about his extraordinary and relatively short life.
As they did for Hinkler, Qantas christened a giant A380 Airbus in his honour - he even has a little moon of Saturn orbiting out there in the depths of space with his name on it!
While Smithy and his new breed of daredevils were pushing the bounds of possibility in the skies, the old Eagle Farm airfield had been slowly sinking into the silty earth.
It was left abandoned until the outbreak of WW2 caused an emergency reactivation, but was finally decommissioned for good in 1988, when Kingsford Smith Airport opened.
The area in which Eagle Farm racecourse and its neighbouring Doomben track were established is adjacent to the original “Eagle Farm” site - really just a working gallop away!
Opened in 1863, Eagle Farm sits between Kingsford Smith Drive and Southern Cross Way.
The race now named for the city’s greatest aviator was originally run at Doomben, and it was named to honour longtime BATC committeeman J.T. “Jack” Delaney.
It is the second of Queensland’s three G1 sprints, scheduled a fortnight apart and progressing from 1200 to 1400m.
The inaugural J.T. Delaney Quality Hcp ran in 1964 over seven furlongs and was won by the Precipitation grandson Rashlore, who also won the 1967 VRC Newmarket Hcp.
After 1982, the JT Delaney became a race of many names, before running as the BTC Cup ( still its registered name) from 2004 - 2016. It attained G1 status in 2004.
The venue has switched between Doomben and Eagle Farm over the years, but since 2017 it is officially the latter's race, and runs over 1300m. Prior to 2017 the distance changed from 1200- 1350m twice.
What has never changed is the requirement for a very, very fast sprinter to win the race.
After Rashlore’s inaugural victory in 1968 came the likes of Eye Liner, Triton, Tontonan, the mighty Strawberry Road, Mr Illusion, Broad Reach, High Regard, St Jude and Barossa Boy.
The race switched to WFA conditions in 1991, and the Doomben 10,000 is obviously the best form guide.
Interestingly, despite the final leg of the G1 trio of events being a handicap, the record of winners/ placegetters in the prior WFA races (particularly the Kingsford Smith) is strong in the “Straddie”.
In 2024, Bella Nipotina was runner up in both legs of the Eagle Farm double and in 2023, Think About It won both. The remarkable Rothfire was placed in both races in 2022 and is on the same path this year, the old marvel seemingly going better than ever after his riproaring triumph in the Doomben 10,000.
Others are: Vega One (2021, first in the KS Cup, second in the Straddie); Trekking (2019, third, second); Melito (2010, second in both); St Basil (2005, second, first); Thorn Park (2004,won both); Falvelon (second in both); Mr Innocent (2000, second in both); Staging (1999, first, third); Monopolize (1996, second, third); Schillaci (1995, third, second); All Our Mob (1994, third, first) and Barossa Boy (1992, first, second).
So we will be wise to keep in mind the above in a fortnight’s time!
The international aspirations of last year's Cup heroine Joliestar also have solid historical backing as she readies for her Royal Ascot campaign - winners Strawberry Road, Falvelon, Black Caviar, Sea Siren and placegetters Buffering, Scenic Blast and Takeover Target all flew the Aussie flag successfully on the international stage.
The flying Buck’s Pride became the first dual winner in 1993/94, and his back to back victories were followed by wins to the people’s champ Chief De Beers, Accomplice, General Nediym and the fine mare Staging in 1999.
Warhorse Falvelon tore up the turf with his two classy Cups in 2000 and 2003, while in 2004 it was another champion Thorn Park to take out the first G1 edition of this great race.
He was followed by Spark Of Life, Gee I Jane, Bentley Biscuit and the great war-painted chestnut Apache Cat in 2008.
Duporth saluted the year after the big Cat to replicate the success of his dam - the Success Express mare Staging - ten years earlier.
Black Caviar set the crowds alight in 2011 with her pulsating two length win over her closest “rival” Hay List, a great sprinter in his own right - with world class Buffering left in their wake. That was a sweet moment for two proud Queenslanders, trainer Peter Moody and jockey Luke Nolen.
Though not in the Caviar league, Sea Siren was a superstar sprint filly and she beat the old champ Scenic Blast to take the prize in 2012.
Exciting gallopers like Hot Snitzel, Malaguerra and Impending won in the lead up to a memorable Tony Gollan stable quinella in 2021, when Vega One beat Jonker. Gollan had trained Jonker’s dad Spirit Of Boom, runner up in 2014 to Famous Seamus.
2022's local hero Apache Chase (Better Than Ready) was somewhat of a surprise winner over Godolphin's flashy entire Paulele.
In 2023 Joe Pride's outstanding sprinting son of So You Think, Think About It, beat Converge and Rothfire at the start of a winning streak that would also include a Stradbroke (Rothy second) and an Everest (beating I Wish I Win).
I Wish I Win ( Savabeel) for that man Moody would claim his own Kingsford Smith Cup in 2024, unleashing his powerhouse finish to defeat the great mare Bella Nipotina.
