Cover image, the finish of the 1895 Melbourne Cup, with Auraria a narrow winner over Hova, image courtesy of the State Library of Victoria
As is often the case with great achievement and the passing of time, the finer details in the life of the race mare Auraria have been largely forgotten. Back in her day, this would have been unthinkable, like today forgetting about how well-bred is Black Caviar (Bel Esprit), or the page behind the Golden Slipper winner Shinzo (Snitzel).
In 1892, when the chocolate-coloured Auraria was foaled by Trenton (NZ) from the Richmond mare Aura, she was one of the finer bluebloods for her breeder, the great studmaster W.R. Wilson of St Albans Stud in Geelong.
Auraria was one of five stakes winners for her dam Aura, the five collectively winning an amazing haul of 21 stakes races from the VRC Oaks and Melbourne Cup to the VRC Sires’ Produce S., AJC Champagne S. and Caulfield Guineas and St Leger.
Auraria | Image from an 1895 postcard, courtesy of the National Museum of Australia
Auraria’s grandam herself, Instep (GB) (Lord Clifden {GB}), had also produced five stakes winners in Australia, including the 1893 Caulfield Cup winner Sainfoin (Richmond). And, the phenomenal mare Desert Gold (NZ) (All Black {GB}), who won 19 straight races through the First World War era, was a great-granddaughter of Aura.
This was a female family that was, literally, worth its weight in gold.
When Auraria retired after a glittering career on the track, three of her daughters, all by Pistol (GB), produced multiple stakes winners. Her grandson, King Of Mirth, won the 1923 South Australian Derby and was a successful sire, and her granddaughter, Lady Aura (St Anton {GB}), won the Gimcrack S. in Sydney and the Stradbroke H. in Brisbane.
In those days at the turn of the 1900s, even with colonial bloodstock numbers just a fraction of what they are today, the Auraria family was both bankable and priceless. However, in modern recollections of the mare, she is best remembered as the winner of the 1895 Melbourne Cup.
The 1895 Melbourne Cup field first time around | Image courtesy of the State Library of Victoria
Auraria was sold as a yearling for 280gns to Wilson’s old friend and business associate, the South Australian David James. James was a contractor, politician and mining promoter, a broadminded man of Welsh birth.
Auraria was trained by the ‘old brigade’ identity John Hill, who had not only trained horses but ridden in The Barb’s 1866 Melbourne Cup, and the filly won the South Australian Derby and VRC Oaks, the CB Fisher Plate and three other stakes races in South Australia.
All of these victories occurred in 1895, and when she won the Cup, Auraria split the VRC Derby-winning colt Wallace, later a dazzling colonial sire, from elite victory. Auraria won the Oaks two days later and, on the fourth and final day of the 1895 Cup carnival, she dead-heated with Wallace in the CB Fisher Plate.
A portrait of a very young Wallace | Image courtesy of the State Library of Victoria
Her feats during these four days have arguably slipped the minds of time.
Auraria was third in the Derby on the Saturday, a winner of the Cup on the Tuesday, a winner of the Oaks on the Thursday, and a co-winner on the final Saturday. She was also the first of her sex to win the Melbourne Cup since Briseis (Tim Whiffler {GB}) in 1876, and only the second filly or mare to win in the then 34 years of the Melbourne Cup.
Auraria was raced on after this brilliant spring, but she didn’t win another race. By many accounts, she was overworked, with John Hill one of the ‘old school who believed in hard work and plenty of it. Had Auraria been handled in the same way as Wakeful, there is no telling to what heights she would have risen.’
A cigarette card illustration of Briseis (author's own)
After brief, fruitless appearances at ages four and five, Auraria was retired to stud in South Australia in 1898. She lived at a property that belonged to David James in the district of Kapunda, some way north of Adelaide.
Like Wakeful (Trenton {NZ}) after her, and like the brilliant filly La Carabine (Carbine {NZ}) of the same era, Auraria was heavily criticised for failing to reproduce her own brilliance. If only the critics had had the benefit of retrospect, they wouldn’t have been so hasty to fault her.
Gallery: Images of David James
On April 20, 1914, at the age of 22 and with 10 foals behind her, Auraria was kicked so savagely by another horse at home that she was put down. It was a catastrophic leg injury and it spelled a sad end for one of Australia’s finest fillies.
‘Auraria was by no means the beginning and end of the Instep family,’ noted an Adelaide newspaper. ‘A more potential strain cannot be located in the Stud Book. Anyone at all conversant with breeding matters will know what the Instep line has been to Australian thoroughbreds and it abounds with substance. What’s bred in the bone will someday come out in the flesh, whether it be in man or equine.’
