"BROWNIE" - the greatest Australian jockey you've never heard of.
- Bruce Clark
- Jul 23
- 11 min read
Updated: Jul 31
We all know Moods and Zac, Tappy too of course.
Mahogany? Yes, probably.
Hydrogen? With a prompt - maybe. (Well two Cox Plates, just photo'd out of a third, a Victoria Derby, Rosehill and Caulfield Guineas - yes, yes, in rare air, that is Hydrogen - sorry).
But what do they have in common? Each, being the latest turf heroes nominated to be inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame next month.
And yes, that always follows the usual banter of - “what about so and so?”
“The Gauch” or “The G” maybe, in the jockeys ranks for instance - they will get there, but not for now.
But let me drive a different call here: “what about Brownie?”
“Brownie?”
No, not Corey - but yes, can one day make a case for him too - 49 Group 1’s, a couple of those being Melbourne Cups, surely that will eventually be good enough atop an already robust and versatile CV.
And there is another Brown already famously in there - that’s “Joe” - ABC broadcaster (of 31 Cups and a few other 20,000 odd races - in an era when radio was your only broadcast vehicle) - he’s a Hall of Fame associate - in good company too coming, through the 2016 alumni alongside Les Carlyon.
No, I’m talking about Bernard Grantham “Brownie” Carslake, originally of Caulfield (son of a trainer I T Carslake), via Austria, Romania, Russia, with some extraordinary tales of survival, escapes and travels before even making his mark both on and off the track in the UK.
“Brownie” who?
Let me offer “Brownie” up as the best Australian jockey you may have barely heard of, if at all, and course, given the timing, let alone seen.
A few sepia photographs befit a “Brownie”, I’ve found a few others, hand painted, lithographs and some auctioned as rare items, plus his own words of some remarkable tales.
So, it started he rode his first winner Lady Watkins “at a bush meeting” - we still don't know where - but he was a 12-year-old lad, he won three races on the same horse in a couple of days apparently. Anything but a hint of what was to come.
Yes, Carslake would eventually win an Adelaide Cup (Sport Royal), VRC Oaks (Red Streak), Sires Produce (The Infante), a Doncaster (Famous), even a Kalgoorlie Cup (The Snail) before this gets serious. We are talking 1904-05.
He’d first get to the UK in1906 and ride a winner somewhat appropriately called The Swagman at Birmingham in 1906, because it took him another decade and some rich boys' own tales across Europe before returning to imprint the name Bernard “Brownie” Carslake on riding history.
And then three times he won the Classic St Leger, twice the 1,000 Guineas and the Sussex, St James’s Palace, Middle Park and Dewhurst Stakes’ and the Ascot Gold Cup. He was also successful in the 2,000 Guineas and the Oaks.
That should be enough, but it doesn't factor in hundreds of winners in Austria, a compelling record in Russia but even rowdier tales of how he got back to the UK.
“Brownie” was also runner-up to Steve Donoghue, twice in the Jockey’s Championship in 1918 and 1919, mainly because “Brownie” couldn’t ride under nine stone (57kg), Donoghue could ride eight stone (50kg).
But here’s just the start of the case for Brownie: when the UK turf’s bible - the Racing Post - listed the Top 50 flat jockeys of the 20th Century - “Brownie”, our Aussie Brownie, the one you’ve never heard of, - was ranked #12.
Some perspective on that? Well in that Top 50 – Sir Gordon Richards was the eternal king ahead of Lester Piggott.
Steve Donoghue was ranked fourth.
Scobie Breasley was at 10 (an original Aussie Hall of Famer and straight up Legend in 2000), Frank Bullock, regarded a trailblazer of a similar “Brownie” era was at 14 - and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006,
Other Australians included - Bill Williamson voted at 21, ahead of more modern day heroes like Mick Kinane (22), Frankie Dettori (33), Aussie Edgar Britt was 49, and Kieron Fallon rounded out the Racing Post top 50.
Williamson was inducted into our Hall of Fame 2003 and Britt, a year later - “Brownie” remains an eternal sub, barely unrecognized at home to this point but legendary in the UK.
But it also explains the origins of the “Brownie” name - in his own words he existed on “a cup of tea and hope”, leaving the always stylish dresser with impeccable manners, “sallow” in complexion, or a touch yellowy - Brownie - if you like.
Some asides - “Brownie” was the first jockey to follow American Tod Sloan and ride in a short, leathered crouch. Sloan, once employed by Pittsburgh Phil, was a fanciful story in himself, “Yankee Doodle” in a stage show, his name etched into Cockney rhyming slang with “onya Toddy” equating to “on your own.” (On your Toddie Sloan). It still exists.
When “Brownie” married Annie Langley at the Church Of St John in Leeds in 1907 it was society news for “The Gentleman Cavalier”. When he divorced her in 1931, granted for admitted infidelity to a woman from Bradford, it was bigger.
As was a dangerous driving offence - “the police gave evidence they were compelled to chase the jockey a long distance by a motor car” for “ignoring traffic signals”, Brownie was news again. That was 1930.
As a cricketer, he was a useful top order right hand batsman, decent slow left arm bowler. As a boxer, he won the 1922 Jockey Boxing Championship raising money for the Sussex County Hospital.
Again, mere sidebars on “Brownie’s” story, and I have included his own elaborate explanations of them below.
A Reader’s Digest version of them (and you can follow below):
Austria: “When the Austrians took a big Russian stronghold, not very far from where I was staying, I was forced to witness some harrowing sights. The arrangements for the maimed and wounded were not the best and many would pass our way every day.”
Escape Romania: “The driver at once gave me a suit of overalls to put on and a little engineman’s cap…and the disguise was completed by getting plenty of dirt on my face. I was able to converse with the driver in German and he told me I had no occasion to worry as I looked the part.”
Russia: "I rode 131 times for my own stable and was successful on 52 occasions. I also rode many other winners for outside stables. 92 winners altogether. It will be readily realised that I had a remarkable average of winning mounts.
“That was about all I got out of it. In addition to the retainer, I received the usual riding fees and a percentage of the stakes. I was paid in roubles and have them yet. What are they worth today? A few coppers I believe, but I have not even troubled to look the matter up. It would hardly pay me for the time I should waste. No, I just keep those Russian “boys” as a memento.
It took 13 days to get from Moscow to Liverpool - “but I shall never say 13 is an unlucky number. We got there. The convoy consisted of 13 ships. Of these, three were blown up on the voyage by torpedoes. One of these was side by side with the ship we were on. Anyway, thanks to the British Navy we got to Liverpool.”
His version of the stories are here below.
It was an indignant but perhaps not unsurprising end for “Brownie - after a lifetime of tea and air.
He trained in but eventually back in the saddle, would come back after narrow win at Alexandra Park in Ipswich in 1940, collapsed, diagnosed with heart disease, and would pass away a year later, leaving an estate of £1,417 14s. 5d. and his ashes were scattered at his request over Newmarket's Rowley Mile, by permission of the stewards.
Hall of fame stuff. Surely. Brownie!
IN BROWNIE'S OWN WORDS
An article published in the Newcastle Sun, in 1921, and also in Lloyd’s Weekly, has Carslake telling his own story. Abridged excerpts from that story follow.
He wrote: “I happened to be riding at Kottingbrunn (near Vienna) when the war broke out. I remained there for nine months during the commencement of hostilities…before escaping to Romania. Many English people were interned in that time but I was amongst those more fortunate and was left unmolested at Oberweiden where Baron Springer’s horses were trained.
“Although I do not know it to be a fact, I have no doubt the Baron was, at least, partly responsible in enabling me to retain my freedom.
“During the nine months | stayed in Austria I had quite a good time. When they discovered that I came from Australia, the farmers around about did not regard me in the same hostile manner as they would have done had I been English.
As a matter of fact, with them, I had many a good day’s shooting and though we had to undergo deprivations, much more so than the people in England, I must say I did not come to any harm and kept up my spirits.
“Soon after the war started we could not get any other than black bread, and the conditions for some of the poorer people in Austria were very bad. When the Austrians took a big Russian stronghold, not very far from where I was staying, I was forced to witness some harrowing sights. The arrangements for the maimed and wounded were not the best and many would pass our way every day.
“Food was already scarce, and the men ate a wild cat I had for a pet. I scarcely like to recall those things. They certainly do not make very pleasant reading but the fact remains they happened.”
Carslake’s escape to Romania (in his words)
“After the war had been going on for nine months, I was approached by a Romanian merchant named Niculescu who asked me if I would care to go to Romania to ride. I replied ‘that I would not mind doing so, but how was I to get out of Austria?’.”
“A day came when I decided to make a dash for it and chance my luck. I left Oberweiden in company with a man who had promised to see the thing through. We travelled to Budapest by train, and then all night to Kronstadt (west of St Petersburg).
On arrival I found that my companion was getting cold feet and was not so keen in guiding me out of the country as when we started and wanted to go back to Budapest.
“I did not want to be stranded on my own, so I thought the best thing I could do was to go back to the capital also. While I was in this predicament and not knowing really what to do, I was accosted on the station platform by an entire stranger.”
Carslake went on, writing that he suspected the stranger was a spy but discovered he was a Romanian who spoke English. The man said a train from Romania was due shortly and that he would endeavour to find someone who might help and indeed found an agent sent by the merchant Niculescu.
“It seemed like an age before that train came in,” Carslake wrote, “I walked up and down the platform and every minute expected to be arrested….but my luck was in.
“In quick, sharp tones I was given my Instructions: ‘That train over there,’ said my English-speaking friend, ‘goes to Romania in three quarters of an hour. It has been arranged that you shall travel in the engine.
You must walk along the platform till you pass the front of the train, then dart across the railway line and jump into the engine on the other side. There you will have to do what you are told, and I think you will get safely into Romania’.”
“The driver at once gave me a suit of overalls to put on and a little engineman’s cap…and the disguise was completed by getting plenty of dirt on my face. I was able to converse with the driver in German and he told me I had no occasion to worry as I looked the part.”
It was a two-and-a-half-hour journey and Carslake, without a passport, survived inspections as some of the engineer’s cabin was not checked. The train stopped at the border town of Predeal and Carslake was told to jump off the train and head to a designated house about 100 yards away. “They do say truth is stranger than fiction,” Carslake wrote.
“They were prepared for me at the house,” he wrote, “gave me a passport and the next night, I travelled to Bucharest. I soon forgot about the journey from Austria and settled into work. I rode for Mr Niculescu. He had about 22 horses in training and I rode plenty of winners. I had a very good time in “little Paris” as they call the gay Bucharest.
“The following season I trained as well as rode for the same patron. I’d lost a home in Austria but found another in Romania and I was grateful I’d sent my beloved piano to England six months before the war broke out.
“My wife had not been with me in Austria but I liked Romania so well that I persuaded her to come over from London. The time came when we then had to flee from Romania. Mrs (Annie) Carslake can tell the story better than I shall leave her to recount our later trials and tribulations.”
The Austro-German 9th Army invaded Romania in October 1916 and headed toward Bucharest.
Mrs Carslake dutifully took up the story, explaining that “Brownie does not like to recall the terrible times we both underwent”.
The couple pulled out “the pony and cart” to travel – leaving all their belongings behind – more than 200 kilometers from Bucharest to Galati – a journey which took eight days over muddy tracks.
They often walked to give the pony a rest and stayed wherever they could – generally in what they described as a “little shanty” – and survived Carslake’s short–term arrest under suspicion of being a spy. “As for food, we managed to exist and that’s about all,” Annie Carslake wrote.
The Carslakes contacted the British Consul in Galati and were given a “wire”, which they believed had been forwarded from Bucharest on the advice of someone at the Romanian Jockey Club, asking Carslake if he would go to Russia to ride for a Mr Mantacheff. “We decided the best thing we could do was go to Russia,” she wrote.
They travelled by boat to Reni in Ukraine and then 340 kilometres by train to Odessa. “It was far from a comfortable journey for we were packed like sardines in a tin. I know it is a hackneyed phrase but the only to describe it. Yet it was not so bad as the one which was to follow.
“There were a large number of English refugees in Odessa waiting to go to Petrograd. We got a train at Odessa on January 2 and arrived in Petrograd on January 5. We just had to sit there through the three days, there was not room to turn,” she wrote. The following day they ventured to Moscow; all up a journey of more than 5000 kilometres from Bucharest.
It was 1917, and the Russian Revolution had already broken out before the racing season recommenced. “However, the revolution did not interfere with the racing season which went on until October,” Carslake wrote in the next instalment of his story, “the meetings were not open to the public and no betting was allowed. I believe it was similar in France around the same time, both countries deciding that racing was essential in the interests of the thoroughbred breeding industry.”
Sound familiar?
“I rode 131 times for my own stable and was successful on 52 occasions,” Carslake noted of his Russian season, “I also rode many other winners for outside stables. 92 winners altogether. It will be readily realised that I had a remarkable average of winning mounts.
“That was about all I got out of it. In addition to the retainer, I received the usual riding fees and a percentage of the stakes. I was paid in roubles and have them yet. What are they worth today?
A few coppers I believe, but I have not even troubled to look the matter up. It would hardly pay me for the time I should waste. No, I just keep those Russian “boys” as a memento.
“It must be understood I have no complaint against Mr Mantacheff. I signed up to work for so many roubles and got them….I read about the sale of Russian gems in London not so long ago. If the Lenin brotherhood have any left and they want to exchange them for their own currency, I can oblige them and I don’t mind if they do have the best of the deal”.
As the revolution intensified, it was time to move again – back to London for the first time in 11 years.
“It took 13 days to get from Moscow to Liverpool,” Carslake recounted in an interview with The Australasian, “but I shall never say 13 is an unlucky number. We got there. The convoy consisted of 13 ships. Of these, three were blown up on the voyage by torpedoes. One of these was side by side with the ship we were on. Anyway, thanks to the British Navy we got to Liverpool.”
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