Their Last Ride: The Fallen Jockeys of Australia 1810 to 2020
Australian History Social History Illustrated Reference Sports Biography Animal Sports Horse Racing History True Crime & Tragedy
Their Last Ride: The Fallen Jockeys of Australia 1810 to 2020 is the only complete record of every jockey who lost his life on an Australian racetrack, from the colony’s first official meeting at Parramatta to the modern era. Across 645 richly illustrated pages, John H. Payne combines meticulous research with rare photographs, newspaper clippings and race-day memorabilia to give each rider more than a name on a memorial—he restores their full story: the mount they were on, the corner where the fall happened, the country towns that stopped racing for the funeral, and the families left behind. The result is a sweeping social history of Australia itself, told through the evolution of horse sports and the men who rode them to glory—and sometimes to their death.
Collectors value this 2020 first-edition paperback (ISBN 9781925742091) because no comparable reference exists. Libraries rarely keep multiple copies in circulation, so a clean, tight copy with all illustrations intact is already scarce; the small condition notes (tiny edge tear, light ripple to first five leaves) keep it affordable while still perfectly readable. For horse-lovers, historians, teachers or YA readers researching Australia’s sporting heritage, this single volume replaces folders of loose archival material and is cited by racing journalists, heritage bodies and the Australian Jockeys Association.
Owning Their Last Ride means holding a piece of living memory: the book is used for annual services of remembrance, and families of riders quoted within often search for extra copies to pass down. Whether you display it on a sporting shelf, gift it to a pony-club teenager curious about the real risks of racing, or use it as primary-source material for school projects, you are preserving stories that might otherwise disappear when regional newspapers age to dust.
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