Hall Mark was one of the quiet achievers of the turf, a compact chestnut with a noble brain and good breeding. He was a son of the relentless champion Heroic, who seemed to plant his stock in his likeness, in both colour and character.
Hall Mark was bred in 1930 by Charles Kellow, who paid an extraordinary sum for Heroic in 1925. Kellow was energetic and popular around the traps of Australian racing, but his earliest roots were in bicycles before flying the flag of early motorcars.
Hall Mark's breeder and owner, Charles Kellow, photographed as young man in 1885 | Image courtesy of the State Library of South Australia
When Hall Mark was foaled, he was a knobbly, frail-looking colt. At full maturity, he stood a little more than 15.2hh, “a weed to look at”, according to jockey Jim Pike, “but a mountain of power to ride”. The horse was named after Sir Samuel Hordern, whom Kellow described as ‘the hall mark of a true gentleman’, and it proved a fitting name as the colt burst onto the scene in 1933.
Trained throughout by Jack Holt, the ‘Wizard of Mordialloc’, Hall Mark won the Champagne S. and AJC Sires’ Produce S. in 1933. The same calendar year, he won the AJC Derby and VRC Derby before a gut-busting, narrow win in a vintage Melbourne Cup.
Hall Mark's trainer Jack Holt (right) at Randwick in 1933 | Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia
“He won the Cup under difficult conditions alright, but I doubt if he was an out-and-out stayer,” said his jockey Jack O’Sullivan, reflecting some years later. “Hall Mark was near champion-class from a mile to a mile-and-a-half, and after that he was very good, but not in championship class.”
So Hall Mark, it might be said, won the 1933 Cup on class alone, but he was far from a one-trick pony.
Hall Mark wins the 1933 Melbourne Cup | Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia
Through the following two years, he won the VRC St Leger, Underwood S. and Memsie S., all among his 16 stakes-race wins. When he won the Doncaster in Sydney in 1935, he became the first Melbourne Cup winner in history to win the Classic Randwick mile, and none have done it since. It’s perhaps why this great Melbourne horse has a Sydney race to his name.
In temperament, Hall Mark was cool and even, and it made him a popular stock sire in later life. But during his racing career, he had the odd inclination to refuse to get on a float on race mornings, and he had to be sent to his Melbourne engagements by train. By the end of the day, he took the float home without fuss.
Hall Mark’s career wrapped up in the autumn of 1936, within a throw of the retirements of Peter Pan, Chatham and Rogilla (Roger De Busli {GB}). Between them, these remarkable horses had singlehandedly driven the mid-1930s into a halcyon era for the Australian turf.
Hall Mark joined his sire at Tarwyn Park, run by studmaster Herbert Thompson, but he got none of the illustrious winners of his sire, Heroic, and he slid slowly from prominence.
Charles Kellow (left) at Randwick with the former Arrowfield studmaster Fred Moses (centre) | Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia
In 1944, he entered the ring at the Inglis Easter Sale and, selling for 475 gns to Frank Fraser, he headed to North Queensland, to Fraser’s Burnside Stud near Ingham, where he lived out his life until 1953.
It’s arguable if better horses have ever raced in Australia than those of Hall Mark’s era, and it gives Charles Kellow’s colt a dramatic claim to greatness. Hall Mark was game and he was brilliant, and, as Shakespeare sort of said, though he be but little, he was fierce.
