Always good to look around the greater Coastal area and trot out a bit of random history.
Prior to the new Shirley Boys and Avonside Girls High Schools and new pool complex, and prior to the original QEII sports stadium where Dick Tayler staggered across the finish line 2 seconds ahead of the second-place getter to win gold in the 1974 Commonwealth Games 10,000 metres…
This patch of ground was for almost 70 years, the home of the New Brighton Trotting Club and for horse racing fans the betting mecca alongside Addington.
Mind you, until about hundred and fifty years ago the land was occupied by Maoris, who built their camp (kaika) known as Orua Paeroa near the neighbouring Travis Swamp abound with eels and birdlife.
By 1862 the Maoris had abandoned their camp due partly to European excursion into the area, and a Thomas Raine bought this land and burned the remaining whares.
Thomas Raine was a manufacturer of aerated water, he became popularly known as “Gingerpop”. There was a well know jingle at the time including the lines: “And strange as it may seem, from Raine we get good soda water.”
At the same time in the 1870s, arrangements had been made for the running of horse races along New Brighton beach once driftwood and seaweed was cleared. The beach racing club ran under testing conditions, a high tide would delay the start of proceedings and on occasions a blustery east wind sand blasted punters, and sometimes quite dark when the last race was run.
Eventually the shoreline was abandoned, and a Mr Tom Free, licensee of the Bower Hotel, laid out a 3/4 mile course at the property now occupied by Taiora QEII.
At the start it was a mixed trotting and galloping programme, and the first race on the new site held in 1886.
At first the track and amenities were only marginally better than on the foreshore. The judge had to carry out his duties from atop a beer barrel and as the grass had not yet consolidated the sandy soil, a lot of suits and hats returned to town in the special trams choked in dust.
Worst of all was the mountainous sandhill standing in the centre of the paddock. When horses got behind this they were utterly lost to view from the spectator side of the course, and was not unknown for a bit of skulduggery to go on here where the nag at the back was suddenly one of the front-runners when the race emerged.
An elderly timber miller Robert Button took over from Tom Free, best remembered as the father of Bella Button. It was for the pleasure of his favourite daughter Bella, he invested his money in the park.
Bella was a practitioner of Women’s Lib years before the phrase was invented. In the 1890s she was taking part in trotting and rodeo events around the South Island letting her parents know of any victories through messages attached to carrier pigeons
At the time the Buttons bought the racetrack, women were excluded from riding in trotting events and despite her many attempts never managed a ride at New Brighton.
Her activities confined to breaking in and training horses until being thrown from a horse named ‘Patience’ and killed aged 58 years in 1921.
New Brighton was one of the busiest horse training centres in NZ with the arena and shoreline awash with horses, and trackwork was well covered by the two morning and two evening Christchurch daily papers.
It was as fast as any track in the country and a freak of a trotter called Harold Logan (see photo) broke records from long handicap marks his winning the mile and a quarter Avon Handicap from away back on 84 yards behind the field, one of the greatest displays ever seen although one losing punter claimed he was running against donkeys.
Another red-letter day in the history of the club was March 15, 1927, when the New Brighton Trotting Club conceded the privilege of holding the Royal Meeting at Addington (see programme below) in honour of the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King and Queen). Said by some to dash the only opportunity ever to get a royal flush out this way.
The club was taken over by the military from 1942 and did not return as an active track till 1948 with 13 totaliser windows and a three-storied tower housed the photo-finish equipment
The New Brighton Trotting Club’s days were numbered but by the 1960 but did have a part to play in a famous fire on Show Day 1961 immediately prior to the running of the last race at Addington Raceway, the NZ Free-For-All.
This race continued while the grandstand was ablaze behind, the majority of the 20,000 crowd watched the race and cheered the very famous horse Cardigan Bay home, before turning their attention to the fire (see photos).
The blaze broke out in the public grandstand at 5:00pm, twenty minutes before the starting of the last race. A plume of smoke trailing from the kitchen window of the southwest corner of the stand the first exterior indication of the fire.
About 1,000 in the seated area were given the brief but terse order via the loudspeaker system: ”Please evacuate the stand.”
Sometime later part of the side wall fell in with a resounding crash, a shower of sparks and blazing timber and shortly after the roof collapsed and two firemen who had been under the roof playing a hose upwards onto the flames, jumped clear just in time.
The New Zealand Free-For-All, the last race on the programme was run at 6:00pm forty minutes late when the fire was at its height. The crowd were not going to be deprived of Cardigan Bay by any natural disaster and he won with another horse appropriately named ‘Smokeaway’ third.
Life can be stranger than fiction as even the horses and jockeys were determined to ignore the inferno and get on with the task at hand.
The New Brighton Trotting Club offered assistance to the Metropolitan Club and helped provide extra seating available on the banks in front of the stand areas until the rebuild.
As for the fire the general opinion was a cigarette butt being the probable cause not helped by a Canterbury norwester.
In 1963 the New Brighton course was purchased by the Christchurch City Council for £75,000, was well below the Government valuation of £90,000 now to become Queen Elizabeth II Park, with the noble aim of being developed into the Hagley Park of the seaside suburb,
A City councillor (Peter Skellerup) said the decision to acquire the park was a momentous occasion and future generations would look on it as an historic one. He went on to say the possibilities offered were enormous and would substantially increase Christchurch’s chances of securing the Empire Games in 1974, and that is exactly what happened.