Family Ties: The McAlpines of Eureka Stud

In 2019, statistics from Family Business Australia found that 30 per cent of all family-owned businesses survive into the second generation. From there on, things get grim. Only 12 per cent of family businesses are viable into the third generation, and as little as three per cent survive into the fourth generation and beyond.

In a way, it comes back to the old adage that the first generation makes the money, the second generation spends it and the third generation blows it. Backing this up is a fact-find from TIME magazine, that it takes the average recipient of an inheritance just 19 days to buy a new car.

On the Darling Downs in Queensland, on 89-year-old Eureka Stud, the McAlpine family is bucking all of this.

Studmaster Scott McAlpine, now in his sixties with his affable, seasoned hardihood, is a third generation on the property, and his sons Harry, Angus and Charlie are the fourth.

Before them, there was Andrew (Andy) McAlpine, who turned the first sod at Eureka in 1932 (the year he bought the place), and his son Colin, who took over in 1960. Since then, Scott slowly took up the reins over the decades.

In the breeding game, this isn’t unheard of.

There are a handful of thoroughbred studs dotted around Australia that can boast successive generations. Widden Stud is an example, in continual Thompson ownership since 1867. Newhaven Park is another, currently in the hands of fourth generational John Kelly Jnr.

In Queensland, however, it’s less common.

Perhaps it’s the geography of the state, being that bit further from the hubs of the Hunter Valley and Victoria, or other reasons like population and climate. Either way, the McAlpines have blossomed for nearly a century on the rich black soils of the Cambooya slopes, and they’re not going anywhere.

A good stallion changes everything

“My grandfather started work on Banchory, which is just across the road from us, and that was one of the very first settlements on the Darling Downs,” said Scott McAlpine. “He started when he was 18-years-old, and he worked there until 1945, but he bought Eureka in 1932, which was a square mile off the original settlement.”

It wasn’t until the mid-1940s that Andy McAlpine put horses on Eureka.

“That first generation had been in the area for so long, but it was 1945 or so before my grandfather went on to establish himself commercially with horses,” Scott said. “My father (Colin) then took over at the beginning of the 1960s, and I left school and came home in 1973. My father and I worked together as a team right through until he died.”

Colin McAlpine passed away in August 2016, a peppered old country boy at 84-years-old. In his wake, Scott, his wife Grania and their three sons assumed Eureka Stud, but there was no obligation from Scott. He wanted his boys to see the world.

“Yes, you want them to come home and farm, but I also thought there were plenty of opportunities out there with education, to pursue a different career than horses,” he said. “They did, at least in Harry’s case, but he circled back to the horses. Angus probably always wanted to be the horseman, and Charlie went to England for 12 months and then came home for university.”

Harry did an internship at Tattersalls in England, then studied at the University of New England (UNE) and UTS, Sydney, in Business and Law. Angus completed a diploma at the National Stud in Newmarket. Charlie also interned for a time at Tattersalls, then studied Agriculture at UNE.

All of this proved especially useful in recent years.

When Spirit Of Boom showed up, and certainly since the stallion’s first running crop in 2017/18, things changed at Eureka. The business got busier and more commercial.

“The operation has got big now and, fortunately for us with the boys being here, we do have that expertise working for us,” Scott said. “A good stallion changes everything, doesn’t it? It puts a new prospect on your whole business.”

Raconteur of life

Since 1945, when Andy McAlpine started standing stallions at Eureka Stud, the property has had significant and generational farm-makers.

One of the best commercial early sires was St Constant, who won the 1938 Cantala S. and Yan Yean S., and sired the brilliant Queensland stakes winners Coniston and Mr Sunray. St Constant was the leading sire of 2-year-olds in Brisbane in 1948/49, and was privately bought by Andy McAlpine at the close of the horse’s racing career in 1943.

Colin McAlpine then took Eureka Stud to a whole other level through his tenure.

He imported the likes of Lumley Road (GB), Piccolo (GB) and Puissance (GB), but the farm-maker of this second generation was Semipalatinsk (USA).

Standing his first season in 1985, the stallion had raced exclusively in Italy. He was by Nodouble (USA), a son of the brilliant Australian horse Noholme, the latter not just a winner of the then Principal races the Champagne S., Epsom H. and Cox Plate, but also a Star Kingdom (Ire) full brother to the Champion Todman.

“The farm-maker for us, in that era, was definitely Semipalatinsk,” Scott said. “In the early 80s, he was the one that probably got us a little bit more nationally commercial. We were breeding horses to race in Queensland, and on the occasion down south, but we elected to market Semipalatinsk across Australia by going to Adelaide, because of my father’s association with Colin Hayes.”

Colin McAlpine and Colin Hayes were close during their lives.

After the former’s passing in 2016, David Hayes recalled the older McAlpine as an uncanny breeder and raconteur of life.

“He lived and breathed racing,” Hayes said. “Back in the days before mobiles, the phone would ring at 7.30 on a Saturday morning and it would be Colin (McAlpine), followed by Bob Hawke, wanting to discuss the afternoon’s racing.”

Colin McAlpine’s contribution to Queensland racing was decades long, earning him presidency of Thoroughbred Breeders Queensland for 17 years and, in 1991, an Order of Australia (AM) for his services to thoroughbred breeding.

Scott McAlpine is well aware of this legacy.

The brilliance of his father was probably, at certain points of his younger life, an imposing load. However, Scott has carved his own name into Eureka, and he looks at legacy with a pragmatism and humour that his friends and family know well.

“It’s just the progression of life and careers, and the way your hand is dealt in the business that you run,” he said. “Before my father died, I was always number two to him, and then the boys came home and I’m still number two!”

The old ways

Like their father, Harry, Angus and Charlie are well-raised. They have good, country manners and a healthy respect for their roots.

However, in an everyday operational sense, they work on Eureka Stud without constantly thinking about things like legacy and family history.

“Every day is entwined with the jobs on the farm,” Harry said. “We do most of the work here and, being on a farm of this size, you get behind the highs and lows and you deal with them. I guess one of the things about being here so long, though, is that you are always able to look towards the next achievement.”

A handful of years ago, about the time that Spirit Of Boom was looming large as a sire, the Darling Downs was choked by unreasonable drought. So was much of eastern Australia, but it was especially difficult in this part of southeast Queensland.

“I moved back from Sydney three years ago, and came into the thick of the drought,” Harry said. “I thought it was that bad that maybe that’s how it was going to be forever, and that the place was just going to be a desert. So I haven’t been around long enough to appreciate that it can be as bad as that, and recover to be as good as it is now.”

With longevity comes perspective, and that’s a handy advantage in farming horses.

“Being around for a long time, there’s plenty of stories and you get to know the terrain and the climate, and that’s a bit of a comfort,” Harry said.

Around the farm, Eureka Stud has clung to a few of its old-time practices. The McAlpines still break in yearlings from a pony, and Harry admitted that probably wasn’t widely done these days.

“A few of our techniques might be considered old horsemanship now,” he said. “We still work all the yearlings off the pony, and a lot of places wouldn’t do that anymore. I guess we’ve got an old philosophy about the way we handle horses and educate them.”

Family business

Among the boys, it’s likely Angus who will uptake the McAlpine mantel. But right now, Eureka Stud is a grassroots family business, and it’s run as such.

“Everyone’s got a point of view and everyone’s got an argument for which way they want to do things,” Harry said. “I guess communication is key, that everyone gets to put across their point of view. It can be contentious at times, but you’ve got to forge the best way forward together.”

In recent years, there have been hefty decisions to make at Eureka Stud.

The McAlpines rejected enormous money for Spirit Of Boom in 2017, something to the tune of $20 million. At the time, Scott said it was money that he’d never see again, but he never looked back either.

Spirit Of Boom fought out the First Season Sire Championship with Zoustar in 2017/18, and again the following year for the Second Season Sires' title. Right now, he is 13th on the General Sires’ Table by winners, and inside the top 10 for wins.

His 12 stakes winners to date include Ef Troop, Boomsara and Outback Barbie, all of whom emerged from his blistering first crop in 2015 when he stood at Eureka for $11,000 (inc GST). His service fee this upcoming season will be $33,000 (inc GST).

Spirit Of Boom was the reason Harry returned to Cambooya from Sydney, but he admitted the best of his memories were forged in the sale ring.

“There’s nothing more satisfying than having a good yearling sale,” he said. “You work so hard to get your horses that far, and a great result indicates all the hard work you’ve put in.”

Likewise, the young studmaster admitted that all the years of his family’s presence at Eureka was bound to give them all a confidence in how they operate, and how they plan ahead.

“You get buoyed by the successes that you’ve had,” Harry said. “You become very confident that the way you run your business and the way you raise your horses is a successful way of doing it. You see that with all the graduates that come off the farm, and that’s the injection you need to keep being passionate and keep going forward.”

Eureka Stud is approaching a century in McAlpine hands, and the Australian breeding industry has never known one without the other.

“If we weren’t here doing it, I don’t know who would,” Harry said.