IN 1999, Nyngan racehorse trainer Rodney Robb bought a brand-new Isuzu horse truck and started driving to race meetings across Australia.
During the next 25 years, Robb clocked one-and-a-half-million miles in the Isuzu – but it’s how he got the cash to buy the truck in the first place that makes for a better yarn.
He’d been training for about 24 years at the time – nailed up his shingle in 1975 – and there was a newly-arrived horse in his stable showing plenty of ability.
The horse, Lord Dalavon, was a son of Dalavon, the best horse Robb says he’s ever trained.
There was also a bloke who owed Robb some coin, and he arrived cashed-up at the stables the same day the new horse was doing fast work.
“I broke in two horses for this bloke and it took him about four months to pay me,” Robb said.
“He arrived at the stables one day and I’d just finished working Lord Dalavon – God, he was a good horse.
“I’d never had $1000 on a horse in my life, but said to my wife, Wendy, if this bloke pays me the money, I’ll have it on Lord Dalavon at Dubbo on Monday.
“Wendy said we couldn’t afford it, but I said we won’t be saying that after the race,” Robb chuckled.
Rodney Robb has called time on 50 years of training (Image: Bill Poulos).
Robb collared the grand, slapped it on the tote at mouth-watering odds of 60-1, and Lord Dalavon and apprentice Brian Carter got the job done in the 1000m class 2 handicap – by a couple of lengths, mind you.
“I bought a new Isuzu truck and it’s been around the clock once – one million kilometres – and has another 570,000 kilometres clocked up,” Robb said.
“I’ve done more than one-and-a-half-million kilometres in that truck, and another truck I bought later has done 670,000 kilometres.
“That means I’ve done more than two million kilometres since 1999. And that’s only in the trucks – I’ve worn out a Prado and two horse trailers as well,” he laughed.
Last hurrah
A couple of weeks ago, 70-year-old Robb parked up the truck after getting home from the washed-out Enngonia Cup meeting.
Enngonia was meant to be his last hurrah, and a fitting finale to a career spanning 50 years and countless winners all over Australia.
“The plan was to make Enngonia the last meeting before retirement, but there was good rain out there,” Robb said.
“I could’ve gone to Come-By-Chance (yesterday), but I said a long time ago that Enngonia would be the last meeting. It’s always been a good track to me, and I’ve got a lot of great owners out that way.
“I said to Wendy about six months ago, I’ll go to Birdsville and do the circuit, come back and go to Enngonia and that’ll do us,” he said.
When Robb bought the truck in 1999, thanks to Lord Dalavon, he set about making the annual pilgrimage to outback Queensland, taking in race meetings at Birdsville, Bedourie and Betoota – and a few other places along the way.
Some years, he’d coax the trusty Isuzu further west and saddle horses at tracks in the Northern Territory and Western Australia – and win more races.
Dalavon, which Rodney Robb says is the best horse he’s trained, beating Targlish at Canterbury in 1986. Robb’s good mate, champion jockey Malcolm Johnston, is in the saddle (Image Supplied).
Horseman born-and-bred
Robb is a horseman born-bred-and-raised, and has been in Nyngan for 68-and-a-half of his 70 years. His old man, Clive, was a drover, a western districts legend, who passed away last year, aged 93.
Many years ago, Clive told his son to stretch his wings, and not to worry too much about eking a living out of droving.
“I was born in Forbes and arrived in Nyngan in a wagonette when I was 18 months old. I’ve been there ever since,” Robb said.
“Dad said there was no future in droving, so I got a job on the railways.
“I went to Cobar for seven years – got there in 1972 and left in 1979. I enjoyed Cobar – it was good – and it was good for me when I left school.
“I was on the railway at Cobar working in the goods shed, unloading wool and what-have-you – I was no stationmaster, that’s for sure,” he laughed.
“I got my trainer’s licence in 1975, and left the railway in 1979 to go full-time training.”
Queensland forays
Robb’s love affair with the Queensland outback started in 1999 – the year be bought the Isuzu truck.
“I got five horses ready, but my mum, Beryl, got crook. I had a team of five very good horses to take and there were eight or 10 owners and friends ready to go with us,” Robb said.
“But mum got crook, and wasn’t getting better as Birdsville got closer. I had a yarn with Col Richardson and Jim Hampstead – great mates of mine – and said, why don’t you take the horses to Birdsville and do the circuit. Col used to train one or two horses. I wanted to stay home and be with mum.
“They ended up taking three horses – Amirreb, Nazeem and Golden Promise – and Amirreb won the Birdsville Cup.”
Amirreb won a class 6 by three lengths on the first day of carnival, and backed up 24 hours later to win the cup by nearly a length from Dry ‘n’ Sober and Crows Before Dawn.
“I was at Enngonia when Amirreb won at Birdsville on the Friday, and Jim called and wanted to know whether to start the horse in another class 6 the next day or the cup,” Robb said.
“I told him to start in the cup – you only get one throw of the dice.”
On cup day, Golden Promise was beaten nearly two lengths when second in a 1200m maiden and Nazeem finished midfield in a 1200m open handicap.
One week later, Nazeem beat Amirreb in the Bedourie Cup and Golden Promise was third in a five-furlong maiden.
Three starts later, Nazeem won the Cobar Cup, with Normie Ward up. Amirreb finished fourth.
Amirreb won the Birdsville Cup, but Robb wasn’t there to see it, and surprisingly he hasn’t won the race since.
But there’s been plenty of winners at the track just about every year since, and it seems fitting that Robb’s final winner was at Birdsville – Lady Dutton, owned by satchel-swingers Terry Picone and Peter Alexander.
Winning the Birdsville Cup in 1999 at his first attempt planted a seed, and Robb has made the pilgrimage north just about every year since.
“I reckon I’ve been up there more than 20 times, and a lot of trips I also went to Darwin,” Robb said.
“I did a big circuit one year and was gone for five-and-a-half months. We also went to Western Australia four times straight, to places like Kununurra and Wyndham.
“It was a lot easier then. I always had 25 to 35 in work and trained a lot of tough horses,” he said.
Robb would draft a handful of horses he thought would suit the Queensland circuit – tough horses that like the dirt and could handle long road trips.
“It was sort of easier to pick eight or nine out of the stable to take,” Robb said.
“I never, ever had one bit of trouble with owners. If I thought their horses were worth taking, they all gave me their blessing – and some came along on the trips.
“My owners were always the first obligation, and I always tried to get the horses to pay their way for them. That’s very important,” he said.
Supreme Attraction
Robb says the best horse he’s taken to Queensland for the circuit wasn’t a cup winner, but a restricted class galloper that left its mark in 2019.
Supreme Attraction started in the 1400m class 3 plate on day one of the Birdsville carnival and led throughout to score unextended by 13 lengths from Foxleigh and Static Lift.
To quote Banjo Paterson, Supreme Attraction showed ‘em the method to travel, the boy sat as still as a stone; they never could see him for gravel, he came in hard-held and alone.
Supreme Attraction was resting up when French Hussler and Clayton Gallagher won the Birdsville Cup the next day for Barcaldine trainer Todd Austin.
But the following week, Gallagher jumped on Supreme Attraction to win the 1300m class 6 handicap at Bedourie by seven lengths in race and track record time.
The same day, French Hussler finished well back in the Bedourie Cup behind the Robb-trained Austin.
Had Banjo been there, he would’ve got the ink and parchment out quick smart.
“Supreme Attraction was the best horse I ever took to Birdsville,” Robb said matter-of-factly.
“If he had started in the cup, I reckon he would’ve won. The race-caller said he’d been calling races at Birdsville since he was 15 years of age, and had never seen a horse win by so far.”
Two years later, Robb took Supreme Attraction to Alice Springs for a hat-trick of wins, including the Cummins Cup. In all the gelding won 14 races, including five in a row at Alice Springs in 2023, when trained on the track by Terry Gillett.
“He was a bloody good horse,” Robb said.
Cabrone and Denis McClune after winning a 1200m intermediate at Gosford in 1987 (Image Supplied).
The good horses remembered
Robb has no idea how many winners he’s trained during the past 50 years, but it’s well over 1200. Quite possibly more.
“I wouldn’t know,” he shrugged.
“I never kept count or kept a diary, but the racing game has been good to me and the family.
“I can recall all the best horses I’ve trained though. Gee, I’ve had some good ones,” he said.
Horses like Dalavon and arguably his best son, Lord Dalavon, Drought Breaker, Red Yacht, Cabrone, Cover of Darkness, Hussar’s Wish, Dipalm and full brothers Letza Star and Let Me star won more than 140 races between them.
“Probably the best horse I’ve ever trained in my life was Dalavon. He could put a race beyond doubt at the 400-metre mark,” Robb said.
“Dipalm was good, too. He never won in Sydney, but won 21 races everywhere else, and another good one was Red Yacht, and Letza Star won in Sydney.
“Letza Star won at Canterbury – the day I got two winners. Drought Breaker was the other one.
“His full-brother, Let Me Star, didn’t win in Sydney but won 19 races,” Robb said.
Robb recalled the day he went to the Dubbo yearling sales with a group of owners. A filly-foal caught his eye.
“I saw this little brown mare go in – a bloke called Jack Gallagher used to train her mother – and I said to my mate Max Smith, another good owner, gee that’s a nice horse,” Robb said.
“I told him I’d buy it myself, and gave $700 for her. We named her Normar and God she was good. “Nobody ever saw the best of her because she was a bugger of a mare to ride – used to throw Normie Ward every second morning.
“But, gee, she could gallop – a very, very good mare. She was a good producer, too, and had three foals, and they all won races,” Robb said.
Forbes Cup and Malcolm
For all his big wins across the country, including city tracks, Robb said winning the Forbes Cup was probably the most satisfying. Drought Breaker got the job done, with Robb’s good mate, former champion Sydney jockey Malcolm Johnston, in the saddle.
“I was born in Forbes and I’m great mates with Malcolm, who was raised in Forbes. Malcolm rode Drought Breaker and Dalavon to win races in Sydney for me and I got him up to ride Drought Breaker in the Forbes Cup one year – winning that was a great thrill,” Robb said.
“Drought Breaker was only 15.3 hands and had a heart of gold.”
After the Forbes Cup dust had settled, and winning connections were enjoying post-race celebrations, owner Brian O’Malley slipped Johnston a cash sling.
“Malcolm turned around and gave the money to my daughter, Jodi, and told her to buy herself a new show saddle,” Robb said.
“Jodi would’ve been 10 or 12 years old at the time and was doing a lot of showjumping in pony club, so Malcolm gave her the sling . . . there’s a lot of good in a lot of good people.”
Johnston, one year younger than Robb, was at Birdsville this year to watch Lady Dutton win for his mate.
“Malcolm used to bring his young bloke out to our pony camps and we’d go pig-hunting and things like that. We’ve been mates for years, and it was great that he was at Birdsville this year,” Robb said.
Robb has won just about every bush cup about, and the further west he went, the more space he’d need on the mantelpiece.
“I reckon out of all the cups, I’ve probably won the Louth Cup more than any other. I think I’ve won it seven or eight times,” Robb said.
“The people at Louth are good people – the further west you go, the better they are.”
Top riders
Robb has legged up plenty of top riders during the past five decades – and his list of stable riders over the years reads like a who’s who of bush racing.
In recent years, Clayton Gallagher, Greg Ryan, Kody Nestor, Michael Hackett and picnic jockey Maddy Wright each guided Robb-trained gallopers back to the winners’ enclosure dozens of times.
Stable jockeys Norm Ward, Anna Hozack, Steve Harding and apprentice Chris Wearne rode more than 270 winners between them for Robb.
“I’ve had a lot of good people working for me over the years,” Robb said.
“Normie Ward was apprenticed to me and worked for me for 27 years. Steve Harding was a good rider, who was with me for six or seven years and Anna Hozack and Chris Wearne, one of my apprentices, were both good riders.
“Anna came to me for three months and stayed for six years,” Robb said.
Family ties
Like all bush racing folk brought up around horses, the bloodlines run deep in the Robb family.
Sons Brett and Clive, and daughter Jodi, know their horses.
They cut their teeth at the family stables and all did pony camp as children. Their old man has been president of the Nyngan Pony Club a few times over as well as chief instructor. He started in pony club when he was 11 years, and Brett, Clive and Jodi have followed the same course.
Clive owns a butcher-shop in Nyngan and sells his own product.
Brett, known universally as Snow, had made a name for himself as a trainer since nailing up his own shingle six years ago. He’s now based at Dubbo, with partner Maddy Wright, who rode dozens of picnic winners for Rodney.
In the short time he’s been training, Brett’s won premierships and feature races, including the $500,000 Country Championships at Randwick in 2023 with Sizzle Minizzle – at 60-1, thank-you very much – and TAB Highway Handicaps with Gallant Star, Boom Boom Basil and Poisen Point.
He also won a NSW Country Picnics Championship four years ago with On A Promise.
At the moment, he’s preparing Gallant Star for a tilt at the $2 million Kosciuszko. The gelding finished sixth last year behind Dave McColm’s Far Too Easy.
In 2022, Brett was named NSW Country Racing Trainer of the Year with 58-and-a-half winners. His runners earned more than $1 million in prize money.
Clive and Jodi are also race-day clerks of the course at Nyngan race meetings and Jodi, a regional manager with Home Care NSW, is an Australian champion barrel racer.
“Whatever my three kids have chosen to do, they’ve done very well,” Robb said.
“If the three of them all decided to train racehorses at the same time, they’d all be equal. They’re all as good as each other – that goes for riding and anything they take a hand to.
“Jodi chose barrel-racing and went on to national level. She was selected to ride for News South Wales against the Queenslanders one year and was also selected for the Australian team to ride against the Kiwis,” he said.
“All our kids have ridden at national or state level, whether it be showjumping or any type of sport in pony club.
“It’s like anything. If you want to play football, you have to train, and if you want to ride horses, you have to ride them at practice.
“I never, ever pushed them to ride, but they all knew that if they didn’t ride or work their horses, they didn’t go anywhere.
“I remember one year, Wendy was away for 48 weeks, all through pony club – she has been my biggest supporter ever since the day we met,” Robb said.
Learned from one of the greats
Robb has known and met some fine horsemen and women during his lifetime, and has listened and learned from some of the best.
“The greatest trainer I always took notice of for years and years was a bloke called Gary Cooper – I used to ring and talk to Gary twice a week,” Robb said.
Cooper trained some champion bush gallopers from his Dubbo stables, including Let’s Be A Star, Mighty Tom, Mundio and Imber to name a few.
Like Robb, he didn’t mind clocking the miles, and started horses across the western districts of New South Wales, deep into Victoria, at Charleville, Rockhampton and Townsville in Queensland and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
“When I was 14 years old, and droving with my old man, Gary got me to ride a horse on the road for him for a week. I told him I was going to train racehorses one day,” Robb smiled.
“I remember once, I got him to watch a horse for me. I said, I think there’s something wrong with this horse, Gary, and I can’t figure him out.
“He came over to the fence with me, we watched the horse and watched it race. He said, there’s nothing you’re doing wrong, Rodney. It’s simple. At the 50-metre mark the horse ran out of breeding – the horse simply wasn’t bred good enough,” Robb said.
“One of my horses, Red Yacht, ended up a very good horse, only because of Gary Cooper.”
Great owners
Robb has trained horses for some great people, most of whom became lifelong friends. All of them gave Robb a free rein, especially when planning the long trips interstate.
“The first blokes to ever give me a horse to train – one I got paid for, anyway – was Billy and Robert Boodle,” Robb said.
“I used to buy my lucerne from Billy when I had showjumping horses. They were great clients of Tommy Smith and had Black Onyx, and some great horses.
“The O’Malley and Egan families and Barrow family were all great owners,” Robb said. Wayne Brown was a good owner, too; he’s training at Tamworth now.
“There were plenty of good owners – blokes like David Simmons and Mark Ward. I could try and write them all down but I’d still miss plenty of them,” he said.
“I trained a lot of horses for the O’Malley family, Brian and Greg, and there was only one horse that wasn’t any good, and that’s the first horse I trained for them.
“The O’Malleys had a big property towards Wanaaring, the other side of Bourke, and they sent me this brown mare.
“We started her at Bourke and I said to Brian and Greg, she’s not much good, but we started her anyway.
“When the field went past the winning post, she was coming around the turn whinnying.
“Afterwards, along came Dalavon and Drought Breaker and others – they just kept coming,” Robb said.
Money stable
Moree bookie Terry Picone, who shares ownership with fellow bagman Peter Alexander, from Charleville, of Robb’s last career winner, Lady Dutton, said when money came for a Robb-trained galloper they invariably won.
“If there was stable money for any of Rodney’s runners, it meant they were very hard to beat,” Picone said.
“To be honest, Rodney Robb money is the hardest money I’ve ever come across on a racecourse. It’s a very well-respected stable, and when the money goes on, it rarely missed,” Picone said
In 2022, stable money pinhooked Knee Slapper in the Bourke Picnic Cup.
There was plenty of double figures to be had, and the price quickly tumbled to 7-1. Nothing strange about that.
This was a stable-inspired plunge, after all.
Terry Picone’s brother, Chris, said bookies were caught off-guard.
“The horse was a maidener, but the money kept coming – and, of course, the horse won. I aked Terry, who starts a maiden horse in an open picnic cup, and he said ‘this is Rodney Robb we’re talking about, remember’.”
The Banjo-esque twist is that a few starts later, Knee Slapper won a class B at Nyngan and a class 1 at Carinda after winning the Bourke Picnic Cup.
They are the only races Knee Slapper won in a 43-start career, but he earned a unique place in bush racing history as a cup-winning maidener.
(from left) Duncan Edwards, Rodney Robb, Mick Gray, Malcome Johnston and Wendy Robb with Lady Dutton at Birdsville on September 5. Lady Dutton was Robb’s last winner as a trainer (Image Supplied).
Lady Dutton
As a racehorse owner, Terry Picone makes a pretty good bookmaker.
“I’ve been in part-ownership of horses with Rodney, on and off, for about 20 years. There hasn’t been much success, but that’s driver error – my fault for picking slow horses,” Picone said.
“Rodney is a great bloke to have horses with, and when he says ‘today’s the day’, he’s right nine times out of 10. If Rodney said, ‘this will win’, they’d win.
“As an owner, there weren’t many winners, but when there was, it was good times,” Picone smiled.
“Rodney’s a horseman as well as a trainer, and cares for his horses. It’s his bread and butter. He’s been a horseman all his life, and still is.”
Fellow bookie Peter Alexander agrees.
“Rodney’s a very, very good bush trainer, who’s dealt with a lot of second-hand horses over a long period of time – sometimes third-hand, where he’s had to patch them up to get them to the races,” Alexander said.
“He doesn’t get the bluebloods from the breeding barns, put it that way.”
Picone and Alexander never had two-bob on Lady Dutton when she won at Birdsville.
Rodney Robb did.
He doesn’t mind boasting he wagered $25 each-way at odds of 20-1. Sure, it wasn’t a Lord Dalavon-inspired plonk, but a nice collect from a horse that wasn’t rated a hope in hell by its owners.
“Lady Dutton is not one of the better ones I’ve trained, but the owners are as good as any other people I’ve trained for,” Robb said.
“The money they paid for Lady Dutton, you’d spend that on a Chinese feed if you went out the night before the races,” he laughed.
“But she kept improving, and when I started her at Betoota over 800m, I thought the run was good.
“I told Terry and Peter, the mare has run a good race. She drew wide and was never on the track. The race was too short for her, but she was the only horse making ground,” he said.
In the days following, Lady Dutton continued to improve, but not enough for Picone and Alexander to brush the cobwebs off the pineapples, apparently.
“When I accepted for her at Birdsville, Peter said it was a strong race and we might be better off waiting for Bedourie. But he added, it was my call,” Robb said.
The trainer consulted Picone, who argued Lady Dutton had drawn wide.
“I told Terry the mare’s done well and feels good. Later, Wendy and I were sitting around the fire and Wendy asked what the plans were for Lady Dutton.
“I said I wanted to start her – who’s to know what might happen the following week at Bedourie. It could rain, for one thing, or she could draw the outside there, too, and Bedourie is a worse track than Birdsville if you draw wide,” he said.
Robb deliberately waited until after the scratchings deadline on race-day morning before again consulting Picone and Alexander.
“They would’ve talked me into not starting her had I spoke to them,” he laughed.
“I didn’t call them, and just turned up at the track.”
Lady Dutton defied its owners by racing midfield to the turn and powering home to beat Dawn Embers and Day to Remember by a half-length.
And what a day to remember – Lady Dutton was Robb’s last winner as a trainer.
“I’m not quite sure Lady Dutton will reach the heights of some of my good horses, but she’ll win one or two more,” Robb said.
“The last time I spoke to Terry Picone, he said he was going on holidays to Greece – he must’ve got something out of Lady Dutton to get all the way to Greece and back,” he laughed.
Time for family
Robb said closing the book on 50 years of training winners across Australia was a decision not taken lightly.
But, he says, he’s not getting any younger, and wants to spend more time with his family and grandchildren.
He wants to watch them grow up and wants to support their endeavours. He says there will always be plenty to do on the family farm at Nyngan.
“We’ve got a very good block here at Nyngan – racing has been good to us – and we never wasted our money,” Robb said.
“We’ve got 1250 acres just a five-minute walk for a horse from the back of the levee bank at Nyngan, with a fair few sheep and a fair few cattle. I’ll still do a little bit about the place.
“I’ve got grand-kids that are bits of rugby league players and bits of Aussie Rules players, and they are pretty good little riders, too, and I want to follow them a bit,” he said.
“My daughter, Jodi, won two national championships at Tamworth, but I didn’t get to either one of them, and I’ve been watching her ride since she was two-and-a-half years old.
“I’ve got grandsons away at school, and I want to get in the car and go and watch them play football and things like that.
“I don’t mean this in a bad way, but I played a little bit of football at school and played a couple of years at Cobar and four years at Nyngan, and I think my mum and dad only saw me play one game.
“I don’t hold that against them, don’t get me wrong, because they were always too busy working – and that’s’ the same with me at the moment,” he said.
Robb’s grandsons will be home for school holidays, and are always the first to put up their hands when work on the farm needs to be done.
That’s just how kids are raised in the bush.
“I’ve only just got back from being down in the paddock with my two grandsons and we marked 250 lambs – one grandson is 13 and the other is 10,” Robb said.
“And I’ve got another grandson at Farrer in Tamworth. I rang him the other day and he said, don’t mark those lambs until I get home and I’ll help you. He’s 13 years old. It’s great to do things like that with the kids, and now I’ll have the time,” he said.
“I’ll be honest, I’ll have no regrets. I’ve thought about retiring for a long time and now I’ll have plenty of time to do whatever I want to do.
“Wendy and I talked about it, and she said, we’ve been in it for a long time, and the horses always came first.
“We’ve done a lot in 50 years, especially the mile – it’s been a good ride,” Robb said.
HOOFNOTE: Robb’s son Brett, fresh from winning the Highway Handicap at Rosehill Gardens yesterday with Poisen Point, will have two runners at today’s Dubbo Cup meeting.
Robb starts first-starter Sunday Lemonade in the 1000m showcase maiden plate and Proper Twelve first-up in the 1200m class 2 showcase plate.
Robb also accepted with Rouge Moulin, sixth emergency in the 1100m Vincent Gordon Flying Handicap, but the gelding missed a start.
WORDS: Bill Poulos
