Club Spotlight: Oak Park

By Jordan Gerrans

The annual Oak Park Race Club weekend is one most in the north Queensland racing community circle on their calendar each and every year.

As the last two years of Oak Park racing has not been able to go ahead, with many non-TABs not being able to run in 2020 and rain washing most out in 2019, hundreds are keen to get back to Oak Park later this week.

The Oak Park Races are held each year at Oak Park Station, situated off the road which joins the Lynd Junction and Hughenden, approximately 80kms south of the Lynd Junction in Far North Queensland.

Like many of the once a year clubs in NQ, such as Ewan, Cooktown, Laura, Mt Garnet and Einasleigh, there is an annual pilgrimage to the track.

Oak Park – like Mt Garnet and Ewan also in north Queensland – are unique in the way they race in consecutive days but not again for another 12 months.

With Laura and Einasleigh not being able to run their meetings so far in 2021 - they were both transferred to Mareeba - this year’s Oak Park weekend takes on extra significance.

Oak Park races over two days each year, with five races each day across Friday and Saturday – with the headline act the famous Lyndhurst Shield on Saturday afternoon, worth a massive $25,000 this year.

“This is another notch above Laura, Mt Garnet and Einasleigh, I reckon, the facilities and stabling,” Cairns trainer Peter Rowe says about Oak Park.

“All the private camps, too.

“It is a welcoming, relaxing environment being at a perfect time too, right in the middle of the year before the northern carnival, it is a refresher really.”

It is not just those in the north of the Sunshine State who make sure they attend the race meeting almost every year, club secretary Deborah Woodhouse says.

“They come from interstate and people even from New Zealand in years past,” Woodhouse said.

“Being the school holidays this year, they seem to all bring the kids out and have a week or ten days camping on the river.

“It involves the local people but people from Townsville, Cairns, the Tablelands and people travelling up from down south again, hopefully they can get up here with a few border movements over the last week.

“It is a great family event for people with kids, it’s a great crowd of people at the races we get here.”

Rowe, who has his stable based out of Cairns’ Cannon Park, believes if Oak Park was based on the coast, it would be one of the better tracks in north Queensland.

He referred to it as an “amazing track” for one that is used so sparingly while also describing it as tight turning.

Woodhouse notes that the track is looking good for their big two race days this week with some water going on it about 10 days ago in preparation.

Rowe has taken up training in his own right in recent times after working with his father Trevor for many years before that.

He has been going to Oak Park for around a decade and says while racing is the focus, the weekend is also about family and friends coming together.

“It is a working holiday for us, we usually go out there on Wednesday and it is a family focussed weekend as my sister will come and take my nephews out,” Rowe said.

“Yes, we have horses out there and we are there to race, but it’s a holiday.

“Everyone comes and helps with the horses, you have got people helping carry the water and feeds, Dad and I, with our staff do the handling of the horses but everyone loves to come to the stables and have a pat of the horses.

“It is a no-fuss, family, laid-back weekend.”

Woodhouse was born in the area around Oak Park and estimates she has missed three meetings in her entire life.

Racing is in her blood as her father was the president of the Oak Park Race Club, her mother was on committee, as was her sister and a brother in law was on the committee, as well.

The annual races are the second biggest event in the local shire for the entire year, Woodhouse says.

“It was a shame having to call it off last year but it was just too much to contemplate it all,” she said.

“The year before we could not race because it rained the week of the races and it was just too wet.

“We are looking forward to this year’s races as we have put in a new bookies area and a new area for horses, we have not stopped as a club even though we have not raced in a couple of years.”

While it will not be ready for this week’s races, the Club have recently received a financial grant that will see their outside running rail be replaced.

The committee except it to be in place for the 2022 edition of the races.

Just under 1500 people are set to descend on Oak Park this week with tickets long sold out.

“It has been really easy as we have a really good committee and a band of volunteers that come up twice a year to do working bees, which we have done twice this year to get things up to scratch,” Woodhouse said.

“We have a caretaker, John Masterson, on site all year so he looks after things, so we are lucky like that.

“He lives up there on-site, he keeps an eye on the track and the gardens throughout the year - he does all the mowing and slashing.

“He is really good.”

The club has attracted a massive number of nominations across the 10 races – with 52 for Friday and 53 for Saturday.

Club spotlight will be a regular feature that shines a light on the unique and individual racing clubs across Queensland