Inglis proudly bring you:
Terry Evans – Fires And Flood A Familiar Tune
By John Curtis
MELBOURNE singer-songwriter Vance Joy’s 2015 debut single “Fire and the Flood” didn’t evolve from the escapades of Terry Evans and his wife Julie.
But they can certainly attest to the song title.
Evans has been Tuncurry Forster Jockey Club’s sole resident trainer with stables on course for the last 13 years – and his sole regret is that they didn’t make the move earlier.
Terry Evans Photo: terryevansracing.com
But enduring fires and a flood in recent years has been a real test of their resilience.
In late 2019, Evans for a couple of days had to sleep at the stables near the 1600m start he rents on course from the club when a fierce blaze which came from the Lakes Way forced him to let his horses loose in the centre of the track to ensure their safety.
As serious as that was, another catastrophic fire event a couple of weeks later which he described as being “like Armageddon” came perilously close to wiping out their house and 20-acre property at nearby Rainbow Flat.
Miraculously, the house, 11 horses and a foal, along with the chooks, were saved.
“We had already got a few horses out, but the fire came at us from four angles late in the afternoon with the flames up to 100ft high to the top of the trees, and I rang Triple Zero at 5.30pm to say I had to get out,” Evans recalled.
“Julie and I stayed with friends at Diamond Beach Resort that night and didn’t know what to expect the next morning, other than thinking all would be gone.
“A number of houses at Rainbow flat were lost. We dodged a bullet for sure.
“The Rural Fire Service’s decision to bulldoze a firebreak around our property earlier in the day undoubtedly saved us.”
Evans said Racing NSW lent great support to help ease their trauma. “Peter V’Landys got one of his staff to ring us that night to check on the situation, and replaced things such as feed and rugs.”
The following year, floods ravaged the Tuncurry area. “The water was 4ft high on the dirt road into the racetrack.
“Fortunately, the horses at the stables were safe because they were on higher ground, but we had to use a canoe to get to them,” Evans said.
“We’ve been through everything, and come out the other side.
“It’s a great place to live and to train horses, and we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
A Balmain boy, Evans played rugby league, for the Tigers Juniors of course, but could easily have been involved with harness racing rather than thoroughbreds.
“I was always around horses,” he said. “We lived near the old Harold Park track, and Dad drove a baker’s cart delivering bread in that area.
“As a kid, I used to hang around pacing stables near Harold Park and went to gymkhanas at Granville and Menangle.
“When I was around 16 or 17, some mates and I used to go to a riding school at Berry run by the late Kevin Robinson (the legendary harness trainer/driver and later successful thoroughbred trainer).
“I learnt some valuable advice from Kevin. He always felt the dock of a horse’s tail and said if it was long, it was worth buying.”
When Evans’ first marriage ended, he successfully applied for a job managing Oakwood Thoroughbred Stud at Mittagong, looking after the Cassim family’s mares.
It was there he met his second wife Julie, who was working for feed company Horsepower.
“Julie was arranging horse diets for a number of trainers including Kevin Robinson,” Evans explained.
“I spent around five years at the stud before moving to Dural, where Julie had a small acreage.
“From there, we went to Shillington Park at Arcadia managing the preparation of yearlings, and then to Dooralong on the Central Coast, where we leased 80 acres as a spelling and pre-training property.
“It worked well. We went from a few horses to 80 in a matter of months and did all the groundwork for many of Sydney’s leading trainers.”
When Evans’ wife suggested he should take out a licence, then Wyong secretary-manager John Varley permitted him to work a few horses there on fast mornings, and subsequently former Gosford boss Michael Beattie offered him a house and stables to set up shop full-time.
Evans’ first winner was Maiscarber (Dale Spriggs) at Newcastle on Australia Day, 2002 – and he was off and running.
Fittingly, after relocating to Tuncurry, he trained the winner (Verrekeen, who raced in the Tigers’ colours and was ridden by Hugh Bowman) of Ian Craig’s final race call at Gosford on June 24, 2009.
Evans took her to town a month later and she won at Warwick Farm (with then apprentice Mitch Beadman aboard), and he also has a real soft spot for the now retired Arise Augustus, with whom he won 10 races, including two in town.
“He was a real trier, and gave everything,” Evans said. “We look after him in retirement at our Rainbow Flat property.”
Evans has never had a runner in the Newhaven Park Country Championships – until this year.
He started four-year-old Shamus Award mare Par Avion (winner of four of her last six starts before spelling) in the Mid North Coast heat at Taree on February 20, but things didn’t go her way when seventh to Swamp Nation.
She will go to the Wild Card at Scone on March 20 in a last-ditch bid to snare one of the last two places in the field for the $500,000 Final (1400m) at Royal Randwick on April 2 on the opening day of The Championships.
“I bought Par Avion fairly cheaply as a yearling from Widden Stud through Inglis, and knew she could gallop from her early work, but was beaten at her first four starts,” Evans said.
“When she was unplaced at Grafton in early July last year, former Racing NSW racing manager Shane Meaney suggested I try blinkers on her, and she hasn’t looked back.”
HOOFNOTE: Evans is training Tilley’s Love, a four-year-old Excelebration mare, who is the last horse from his former workplace at Oakwood Stud at Mittagong.
“The stud has been sold, and Peter Cassim kindly sent this mare to me,” he said. “Hopefully, it’s a nice omen and I can win a race or two with her.”
