Summary

This race book was issued by the Victoria Amateur Turf Club for the Compensation Meeting at Caulfield Racecourse on 11th November, 1931. It also details the recent race results, including Phar Lap's win in the Melbourne Stakes on Derby Day at Flemington, 31 October 1931. This was significant as his last win ever in Australia.

Description of Content

This race book was issued by the Victoria Amateur Turf Club for the Compensation Meeting at Caulfield Racecourse on 11th November, 1931. It also details the recent race results, including Phar Lap's win in the Melbourne Stakes on Derby Day at Flemington. This was significant as his last win ever in Australia.

Physical Description

Small rectangular booklet, consisting of 64 white paper pages printed with extensive black text. The booklet is bound with two thin card covers, and two (now rusty) metal staples along the spine. The cover is printed with extensive blue and purple text.

Significance

Currently the Museum has almost 500 items related to the life and times of one of its most famous icons Phar Lap. These relate to the horse, his career and death, as well as the memorialisation that has taken place in the (almost) 75 years since then. The collection includes racing silks, rugs, knee pads, horseshoes and girths used by the horse and his trainers, with books, photographs, art works, medallions, newspaper cuttings, condolence letters, other souvenirs produced in the 1930s, and more recent material produced around the film 'Phar Lap', various exhibitions, and souvenirs produced to sell in the Museum shop.

As the Phar Lap exhibition is considered a permanent fixture of Melbourne Museum, there is a continuous need for significant displayable items such as these, as conservation requirements mean that many of them can only be displayed for a fixed amount of time. As well as the exhibition, there is an active Phar Lap website, one of the Museum's most frequently visited sites, which also utilises noteworthy and visually appealing items such as these.

The Museum's Public Life and Institutions Collection Policy, under which the Phar Lap collection falls, states that the Museum will `comprehensively' collect Phar Lap-related material, and will include `objects associated with the horse and his career, and the process of memorialisation that occurred after his death. Souvenirs, photographs and memories are all collected, and changes in the way Phar Lap is remembered are being recorded '.

This group of items fall under these parameters, and would be an important addition to the collection as they relate to his career, which is always the most difficult area to source new material. These are particularly interesting as they relate to both the beginning and to the end of his career, and of his life.

All these books are difficult to locate as, being specialised publications, only a relatively small number of copies were produced.

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