From gavel to gate: Robertson returns to his roots

Cover image courtesy of Inglis

There is a specific kind of gravity that pulls a fifth-generation farmer back to Scone, and for Angus Robertson, it was finally time to answer it. After a whirlwind tenure in the Inglis bloodstock team, Robertson is trading the suit and tie of Sydney for the family acres, betting on a future where elite contract auctioneering and building a bespoke horse business go hand-in-hand.

“Up until October last year, I've been full time in the bloodstock team with Inglis here in Sydney. And as of the end of 2025, I stepped away from full-time work to move back to a family property in the Hunter Valley. I’m there the majority of the time, and continuing to auctioneer on a contract basis during the yearling sales,” said Robertson.

“I’m very much involved with Inglis' inspections and sales, and it also allows me to start flesh things out back on the family property. We have a few mares, and it’s a longer term goal to build up there while still having a foot in the door in Sydney.

“It’s nice to stay present in the industry. When you finish up a job with an auction house, there's the risk that you can slip into the background. Being a contract auctioneer means having all those contacts and still being very much involved on a fairly regular basis, particularly through the sales.”

Thomas Cook and history of the farm

Having a family farm in Scone seems like a natural gateway into the horse racing industry, however for Robertson, it wasn’t so straightforward.

“We always had horses growing up, but not necessarily thoroughbreds. My father had Thoroughbreds with his old man back in the 80s and 90s. They brought a few mares and raced a few horses, and then there was a period there where we didn't have any Thoroughbreds on the place,” said Robertson who noted that the core business on the farm is cattle.

“We’ve been predominantly cattle for the last forty years. My siblings and I are the fifth generation and it’s quite interesting historically. The first guy who owned the farm was called Thomas Cook, and he was quite a philanthropic gentleman in the area. He had quite a bit of bloodstock and used to even host on-property auctions at the end of the 1800s. It’s cool to come full circle back to having horses on the farm. Sometimes you almost wish you could be able to take a step back in time and see what it was all like.”

Thomas Cook, born in Canada in 1834 came to Scone in 1837. His father worked for William Dangar, and at the age of 21, Cook took on the management of Dangar's Turanville property. He bred a number of good racehorses including 1895 Doncaster Handicap winner Courallie.

“Cattle are always going to be important (to the farm), and the ideal plan going forwards would be to branch out into Thoroughbreds a bit more.”

So if having a farm in Scone wasn’t the natural pathway into racing, how did Robertson get the bug? “Brett Cavanough and his family bought the property next door to us towards the end of 2016 when they relocated up from Albury. Maybe a year or two later, when I was back (in Scone) from uni over the summer, I was riding a bit of trackwork for Brett and his son Jack, riding breakers and pre-trainers too. I hadn’t really done that before.

“I'd ridden Pony Club growing up, but hadn't ever ridden track work before, and I got hooked on it pretty quickly. In my last year of uni, in 2019, I ended up doing 12 months of track work down at Randwick. I did 6 months with John O'Shea and then I came back in the middle of the year and did another 6 months with Mark Newnham. So that was my grounding or introduction into it all stemmed from.”

A COVID Flying Start

While riding trackwork and finishing his degree – a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Agricultural Economics – Robertson applied to the Godolphin Flying Start program. He was accepted to join the 2020 crew, and it was the COVID-impacted cohort.

“I flew over to Ireland for the breeding season and ended up arriving just before COVID hit and blew up. We drew a bit of a short straw in terms of our movements and itineraries across the different countries (for the program).”

The Flying Start trainees typically spend 10 weeks in Ireland, eight weeks in England, six months in America, five months in Australia, finishing with a study tour in Dubai and a final four months in Ireland.

“Godolphin had to rearrange everything (due to COVID travel restrictions). I was quite fortunate that I got over to Ireland in time. And because it was a farm job, we were still able to commute to and from work and aside when you go and do your grocery shop. Life was probably more normal than it was for a lot of people.

“Being on the farm all day, we didn't have to really sort of lock ourselves up too much. It was sort of a loophole (being farm workers).”

The impact on the Flying Start program was noticeable, though.

“Rather than bouncing from Ireland to England at the end of that 1st year and then into America in January of the second calendar year, we were holed up in Ireland until halfway through 2021. I think it was fifteen or sixteen months until I got back to Australia.

“We were dispersed back to our home countries to do our first placement, so I came back out to Australia and spent a month at Arrowfield, which was quite handy being on our back doorstep at Scone.

“I spent the mornings in the training centre with Paul (Messara) and Leah (Gavranich) and their team, and in the afternoons, I was with Matt Hill on the stud side of things. I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of days in their office in Sydney and spent time with the likes of Jon Freyer and Mr Messara as well. I got a good cross section of things there.

Gallery: Angus Robertson's mentors during his time at Arrowfield

“Then my second placement was with Magic Millions, because by that stage I had become keen on the idea of an auction house, and had started developing an interest in auctioneering specifically. So (Magic Millions) lined up as a logical progression. I spent time with them in the lead up to Christmas and then during the January sale of 2022.

“Then, because we'd missed out on England and America in that first year, they were slotted into the last six months of the course. We went Dubai and then bunny-hopped onto England, then a month later, we were in Lexington. It was a pretty action packed last six months, but a lot of fun. We were very lucky in that regard, still getting to go to all those places.

“My last placement was in Ireland, with a guy called Kevin Blake, who writes for At The Races, and one of his primary roles is that he does a lot of work with Joseph O'Brien in terms of race planning and form analysis. He also has his own little stud farm in the south of Ireland. It was excellent being able to be hands-on at a farm on a day-to-day basis, and also learning from him.”

It’s all about the networking

The Godolphin Flying Start program was founded in 2003 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, meaning that at least 250 people have gone through the two-year program.

“I was fortunate enough to go back to Keeneland a couple of years ago with Inglis and spend some time with some people over there during Keeneland’s September sale. Even the month I was there on Flying Start, it’s amazing the network you get. You can go anywhere in the world to do with thoroughbreds and chances are you're going to run into someone who has either done the course or you've met during the course,” said Robertson.

“I feel lucky to have spent time with people who were very good at what they do, and also have wide range of skills and lots of different balls in the air.”

From there, Robertson was offered a role in the bloodstock team at Inglis in Sydney and spent three-and-a-half years full-time with the team. “Having the likes of Jonathan Darcy and Brett Gilding and Chris Russell mentor me through auctioneering, and I was able to get up on the rostrum and start selling as well.

Gallery: Angus Robertson's mentors during his time at Inglis

“A lot of people who have trodden the auction house path say that no two days are the same. You’re doing everything from client relations and communications to hosting on race days, yearling inspections, valuations, sale inspections and sale days across all the different sales, yearlings, broodmares, weanlings, 2-year-olds. There's so much going on and it's just such a good environment.

“I was very lucky that it was at a time where I was looking to soak up as much as I could from such a good team with so much breadth of experience. It's a pretty awesome environment for a young person wanting to learn about the industry and develop and grow in the industry.”

Back on the farm and looking to the future

Now that Robertson has decided to step back into the family farm business, what does the future look like? “It's a good question. It definitely wasn't an easy decision to step away from full-time work, and move back to the farm, but it is something I’ve always been passionate about pursuing.

“There’s never going to be the ideal time to do it. It was always going to be a case of diving in the deep end a bit. Probably for most people, not just in the horse industry but any career path, you reach a point where if you have ambitions that you want to go and chase, you have to go out into open waters and sail your own ship.

“There’s some apprehension around (that choice) but it’s also exciting to be back, working on the farm alongside my parents. I've got a couple of younger siblings who are both very interested and passionate about (the farm). Getting to stay involved with Inglis through the sales and the contract work is a pretty ideal balance

“It's been great to get back to Sydney this week and get into inspections with the team. A few people have said, ‘Oh, how's part time work?’ It's certainly not a case of just doing the Inglis work part-time and nothing else. With farms, there's always a never-ending to-do list. It’s special too, being a family place, there’s that extra degree of intrinsic motivation. When you grow up in a place, it's becomes part of your identity. You almost feel a custodianship with a responsibility to carry it on.

“I would love to keep growing things back at the family place in terms of horse numbers and build up a bit of a client network. As with anything, it's always a bit of a slow burn. Nothing happens overnight. You just want to do it properly and do it right.

“I’m also trying to spend as much time as I can with as many different people in the game, to use a cliched phrase, to try and be a sponge and soak up as much as I can. There are so many people who have walked the same path and to be able to learn from all those individuals in the industry, I think it’s imperative to try and learn as much as you can from people. Ultimately it puts you in good stead when you're chasing your own ambitions.

“I do like the saying that the harder you work, the luckier you get.”

People are the key to a successful life in racing

For someone who has deliberately moved back to his family business, Robertson is highly aware of the need to maintain a network of people. His advice to others who might want to pursue a career in auctioneering, or build a horse business on a farm, is to get out and meet people.

“For someone who is really passionate about horses and keen to pursue a future career in Thoroughbreds, it’s important to do as many different things and spend time with as many different people as possible.

“There are so many different facets of the Thoroughbred game. It’s what makes it so fantastic, that there are all these different avenues, whether it's running a farm or working in a training stable or working for a syndicate or running an auction house or working in bloodstock insurance or marketing, if you can have prior experience in as many of those different fields as possible, then that will ultimately serve you well when you settle into one aspect.

“You've only got to look at all the different people in prominent industry roles in Australia, and also the world. Go and look at their CVs and see the amount of places and people they've worked with and their international experience for different operations. It’s imperative that people try and put themselves out there and soak up as much as they can.

“Racing is ultimately a relationships business. You've got to do right by people. If you look at the best operators globally, the ones that really stand tall above the rest are those who do right by people as well as the horses.”