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Video: Delray and the Doll
Come on Jill, come on Jill, the group
of Australian nurses screamed as the horses pounded into
the Flemington straight in the 1952 Melbourne Cup.
There was no horse of that name – they
were cheering on behalf of tiny Kiwi nurse Jill Crossan,
who they worked with at Dandenong and District Hospital
on Melbourne's outskirts.
"You're a Kiwi, you have to have
the day off and go the cup," she had been told.
She knew nothing about horse racing,
but she knew enough to back the Kiwi horse, the great stayer
Dalray.
So did her Aussie friends and they cheered
themselves hoarse as Dalray, lumping the huge weight of
nine stone eight pounds (61kg), came from third last in
the 30-horse field to storm to victory.
No horse since the greatest of all,
Phar Lap, had carried more weight to win the cup – 9
stone 12 pounds, in 1930.
The nurses' celebration was nothing
compared to that of owner Cyril Neville, a larrikin merchant
and illegal bookmaker from Greymouth.
A fearless punter, he had invested everything
on his horse and he took the Flemington rails bookmakers
to the cleaners.
Dalray started 5/1 favourite and returned
Neville a fortune, reputed to be as much as £62,000 – $2,415,000
in today's money.
He had so much money it was stuffed
into a pillowcase and he had a police escort back to his
hotel.
He was a generous man – he shared
the £10,000 winning stake (today's first prize is
$3 million) between Riccarton trainer Clarrie McCarthy
and replacement jockey Bill Williamson, and gave £1000
to charity.
Mr Neville also bought a special present,
the latest walkie-talkie doll, for his four-year-old goddaughter
and Greymouth neighbour, Gaylene Preston.
Jill Crossan – my mother – was
to have a closer Dalray connection. She returned to New
Zealand a few days later on the steamer Wanganella to be
wed, sharing a cabin with Cyril Neville's wife, Iris.
She remembers her as a "posh woman",
well dressed and laden down with luggage and presents.
Among them was a large doll, which Mrs
Neville asked her to carry off for her, along with some
other packages stuffed in her pockets, when the ship docked
in Wellington.
Miss Crossan assumed they included contraband
banknotes, perhaps packed into the doll, but was too timid
to ask.
That doll was given to Gaylene Preston,
who went on to become one of New Zealand's foremost film-makers.
She still has it in her home in Mt Victoria, Wellington.
My mother, now 85, met Ms Preston last
week for the first time and saw the doll she last held
55 years ago.
Ms Preston's childhood playmates included
Dallas and Raymond Neville, whom Dalray was named after.
The Prestons lived at No 10 Ida St in Greymouth, the Nevilles
at No 8, and they were in and out of each other's houses.
When Mr Neville returned home with his
winnings, the party went on for days at both addresses.
Dallas had a walkie-talkie doll that
Gaylene coveted and she was overjoyed when Cyril, her godfather,
gave her one too.
"I had to be nice to Dallas for
ages before she would let me hold her doll," Gaylene
says.
"When I got mine, Dallas went down
to the garden and buried hers.
"Obviously most of the fun was
having the doll because I wanted it. All the fun had gone
out if it.
"I can remember us digging it up
again. It was a symbolic act."
There were other "relics" of
the great win – an ashtray made in native woods in
the shape of Australia and a ruler of Australian native
timbers. "Cyril and Iris didn't live next to us very
much longer," she says.
"They bought a very nice house
up the hill in Greymouth with a view and then they moved
to Auckland, to St Heliers.
"He certainly contributed to the
greater economy of Greymouth that year." In those
days £5 was enough to pay household bills for a month.
The Prestons were not gamblers but Mr
Neville had convinced them to have a bet. Gaylene's father,
Ed Preston, was a milkman and he bought a new van with
his share of winnings off Dalray. The old scrubbed kauri
kitchen table was also given the heave and replaced with
the latest red formica model.
The doll came with a wardrobe but though
there were little coathangers in it, there were no clothes.
Ms Preston suspects that is where some of the cash was
hidden and brought home to the West Coast.
"I was very lucky to have had Cyril
Neville as my spiritual guardian," she says.
"He risked everything, which is
what I do and what every film-maker does."
She laments that Dalray's courageous
win, one of the greatest by a New Zealand horse, has been
forgotten.
"Nobody has a fight about where
his heart is buried. He's been written out."
Not by Gaylene Preston though. She will
always treasure Cyril Neville's act of kindness and the
winner so long ago of Australasia's greatest horse race. |
