Jumps racing ban from 2022 ends an Easter tradition carried since 1870s by Oakbank club in the Adelaide Hills

Campaigns against horse jumps racing, joined by organisations such as the RSPCA, were background to Racing SA's decision to ban the event style because of what it said was a lack of participants and horses. The resulting dispute involved South Australian legal figures such as Frances Nelson QC (top right) and Oakbank Racing Club chair and solicitor Arabella Branson (bottom right).
Jumps racing images by Peter Fuller, courtesy Oakbank Racing Club

Jumps racing – part of the Easter carnival at Oakbank in the Adelaide Hills that grew to one of the world’s largest picnic race meetings, with origins in the late 1870s – was dropped from the event in 2022. 

The future of jumps racing at Oakbank had been questioned from 1969 with plans to merge metropolitan Adelaide’s three racing clubs, sell one of the city tracks and close down Oakbank altogether. In 1972, when South Australia didn’t have enough jumps races, trainers had to send their horses to Victoria to find suitable events. The city racing clubs refused to subsidise the then Onkaparinga (later Oakbank) Racing Club for its meeting over the Easter long weekend.

When the city racing clubs merged in 1975 as the South Australian Jockey Club, opposition to financially propping up Oakbank continued, resulting in the club almost losing the von Doussa Steeplechase that year to Victoria when only three acceptors forced it to be abandoned. The Oakbank meeting’s reliance of big crowds was eroded by the new Australian Football League competition and stricter drink-driving laws.

Animal rights concerns about jumps racing and media coverage of injured horses being euthanased were confronted by Oakland racing Club chairman Barney Gask, an Adelaide lawyer and horse owner, who replaced John Glatz as chairman in 2017. He proposed that the club seriously consider running its carnival without jumps racing.

In 2021, Racing South Australia, governing body for the state’s thoroughbred racing, announced that it would no longer schedule jumps racing from 2022, due to a drop in participants and horses. Among the backlash against that, the Australian Jumps Racing Association offered about $100,000 a year to save the Great Eastern Steeplechase (run over 4,950 metres and famous for a fallen log jump) and Harry D. Young Hurdle at Oakbank. Racing SA rejected the proposal citing figures (disputed by South Australia Jumps Racing) that 12 jumps races staged in the state over the previous year had 65 starters, with only six of the horses were reported to be registered to South Australian trainers.

Plans to run the Great Eastern and Von Doussa steeplechases as flat races in 2022 were also abandoned. Gai Waterhouse, who trained champion steeplechaser Social Element, was a national racing identity joining the pro-jumps racing supporters move to sack the Oakbank club committee for agreeing to the Racing SA decision.

This was led in South Australia by former club chairman John Glatz and Frances Nelson, QC, who obtained a court order granting her access to records kept by the Oakbank Racing Club. Nelson, a former long-serving Oakbank committee member, member of Racing SA’s hall of fame and former chair of Thoroughbred Racing SA (Racing SA’s predecessor), led district court action against the committee over access to documents.

The court action intensified what had become a dispute between members of South Australian legal profession – beside having the famous von Doussa legal name floating in the background. Nelson had solicitor Greg Griffin and barrister Dick Whitington QC presenting her side’s case while Matt Selley represented the club whose chairwoman was solicitor Arabella Branson, with lawyer Barney Gask as deputy chairman. (Branson had been persuaded to join the committee by John Glatz.) Among those to resign from the committee in protest was Frances Nelson’s daughter, lawyer Roma Williams.

Nelson won the court case for access to documents but the final blow for Oakbank jumps racing was Labor state government support for a Greens party bill in state parliament in 2022 banning such events.