wager

Carey, former team-mate, lives in Gembrook, nurturing bees, plants and the people around him. He feeds the forwards at the Greta Footy Club all those years ago. Recently, after I express my disdain for the gee gees, he takes me aback by revealing that he likes a punt, then confounds me by saying he bets on nags schooled by “trainers I like”. 

He reads that Cranbourne trainer Wendy Kelly once lived at Emerald and rode her horse to work at the vet’s as a girl. She breeds dogs and meets her husband at a dog show. He has a couple of racehorses and she decides she’d like to have a go training them.

He hears a race-caller talk of Terry and daughter Katrina O’Sullivan. They always win at Stawell, their home track. He starts backing their horses at home, then wherever they run. By going with the trainer he doesn’t look at the odds, so there’s less umming and ahing, less time spent.

John Ledger’s charges pop up now and again on his home track at Wangaratta. Aaron Purcell at Warrnambool gives him a good winner so he follows him. Alan Peterson, same town, described as a small boutique trainer. Brian Cox of Wodonga has horses going round at Wang and Benalla and Echuca. Carey enjoys a good strike rate on him.

His maximum wager is $1 and simple maths tells him he can’t expect to win. He has no rules; the jockeys influence him and he likes the lady hoops. Sometimes a name, like Candy Rain, gets his attention, and sometimes a number comes into his mind.

A keen punter he meets sometimes on his walks says he should try running doubles, two races in a row, hard to get, but good odds and a good payout. His best return is on his first running double: a dollar on two roughies picked at random as he likes the names brings in $600.

If he has a bet, he always takes a couple of trifectas on the last two races, same numbers, drawn out of a hat, till they come up. Might take a year, pay $50 or $500, then he goes back to the hat for new numbers.

He loves rural Victoria, a legacy of his time with ‘the Department’ as an apiary inspector. Listening to country races romances his day. If the races are at Swan Hill, he pictures the Murray and the river red gums, the horses and colours, hears “the thundering hooves as the magnificent powerful beasts give us all they’ve got”.  

He doesn’t lose much and it adds a little excitement to tending bees and pruning camellias. He hasn’t found a horse trainer who was a former beekeeper. If he did, he’d back his horses.

Carey turns 60 the other day. Welcome to the club, and rock on.