Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Now that the hammer has fallen on disgraced trainer Darren Weir, the arse has fallen out of the argument to allow 800 racehorses a week to train on a wild beach in the Belfast Coastal Reserve – because this was always about Weir.

Regardless of how the Warrnambool Racing Club, Warrnambool City Council or State Government try to spin it, ramming up the training numbers at Levy’s Beach to industrial levels was all about appeasing Weir.

Racing Minister Martin Pakula said as much in his very public face slap to the council last October:

“Council really needs to decide whether it wants a commercial horse training industry in the City of Warrnambool or it does not…If it doesn’t, it should just say so, because trainers like Darren Weir – and others – have plenty of options.” Warrnambool Standard, Oct 30, 2018

 

Mr Pakula has never actually detailed these other “options”, because there is no other beach in Australia where racehorses can run up and down the dunes en masse. There is a simple reason for this – dunes damage easily.

But who cares about that minor detail, the blackmail message was clear: No Weir, no Warrnambool racing industry.

Parks Victoria originally thought 65 racehorses a day across the whole 22km stretch of the Belfast Coastal Reserve might be a reasonable number.

This was the number it came up with in 2016, before the Belfast Coastal Management Reserve Plan was developed in 2018.

It turns out Parks Victoria was hopelessly naive.

As of last year, Warrnambool had about 250-300 racehorses in training: of those, Weir trained about 100 and counting.

A total of 65 horses training across the whole reserve was never going to cut it for Weir’s mega-stable.

It wasn’t even close.

 

So when the Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan hit the decks last July, the daily number had suddenly more than doubled – to 160 – and all of the racehorses (apart from some ‘historic’ trainers near Killarney) would be poured into Levy’s Beach, just 10 minutes from Weir’s Warrnambool stables.

The stretch of wild beach with its threatened Hooded Plover population and fragile dune system had become the sacrificial lamb to Weir’s ambitions.

Weir the Invincible. Mr Magic. Mr Superstar who won $33 million in prize money in just 12 months.

And now we know behind all of the “magic” was something terrible and cruel.

There was no secret tonic in the dunes.

They found three tasers in Weir’s bedroom.

 

Weir’s demise has exposed the rotten core to a career that no doubt began with hard work and heart, but which veered dangerously off course.

Because the tasers – and the criminal charges that may be yet to come – follow a string of convictions against Weir under the rules of racing, especially around the illegal use of anti-inflammatories and pumping horses pre-race with bi-carb soda in a practice known as “tubing”.

But such was Weir’s dazzling success, everybody looked the other way, even when his rapid rise seemed to pass the realms of the explainable.

“No Weir, no Warrnambool racing industry”: that was the only message.

And now there is no Weir.

So what does this mean for our dunes and our wild beach?

Is it business as usual, keep moving, nothing to see here?

Surely not.

Surely the game is up. Surely now, as Cr Michael Neoh hinted last week, Levy’s is not needed and allowing local trainers to continue to access the ever-shrinking beach at Lady Bay is more than enough? 

 

We no longer need the carpark graders to move into Levy’s and Spookies, do we?

We no longer need to keep explaining that 800 horses a week running along a stretch of beach (including 200 up and down a dune) in a coastal reserve will destroy it, do we?

The Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Victoria are no longer going to rely on a great lie – rather than environmentally stringent plans – to sustain our local racing industry, are they?

If the answers to these last three questions are yes, yes and yes, then our local racing industry really is doomed and it has nothing to do with Weir this time, but our own collective stupidity at letting it happen.

If you would like to see The Terrier keep digging up, sniffing out and chewing on local issues, please make a small contribution below.

Donate

 

Management Plan for the Levy’s Point Coastal Reserve

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Here is yet another plan for Levy’s Point that was started, never really finished, and then forgotten.

Warrnambool Mayor Tony Herbert recently claimed that the Belfast Coastal Management Plan was the first plan for the area in 150 years.

This is not true.

There have been several plans, including this one commissioned by the Warrnambool City Council back in 1998.

Nowhere does it mention using the area for large-scale racehorse training.

In fact it doesn’t mention racehorses at all, only recreational horse riding and a small horse riding ring.

It also mentions the potential for illegal four wheel driving and motorbike riding to worsen, due to numerous management tracks leading into the dunes.

Some of these dunes, the plan says, had already blown out, and other “large, active dunes” needed “stabilisation and revegetation”.

These “large, active” dunes are in the very area where commercial racehorse training will now be permitted – having been illegal –  and up to 40 racehorses a day, five days a week, will be allowed to pound up and down what is called “Hoon Hill”.

How this fits into any plan for “stabilisation and revegetation” is beyond me.

 

 

Just the fact that – 20 years on – authorities now refer to this area as “Hoon Hill” says it all really.

Those in charge of looking after Levy’s Point gave up on the place.

The illegal four wheel driving and motorbike riding was not stopped, so it worsened, until it got to the point where some dunes were so damaged that they are now considered suitable only for large-scale racehorse training, which, of course, will ruin them even further.

For any councillor to claim that they did not know the history of this area and the extent of the damage done is ludicrous, unless, like the current President of the United States, they don’t read, don’t research or don’t want to know.

This 1998 plan follows the government’s Land Conservation Council plan of 1978, and pre-dates the council’s Coastal Management Plan of 2013.

They all say the same thing: the need for conservation, restoration, protection, promoting low-impact activities and eco-tourism, controlling four-wheel-drive access, and not repeating the mistakes of earlier times when sand mining and rendering plants were considered okay.

And yet here we are, not only about to repeat a mistake, but doing so with our eyes wide open.