Darby McCarthy, page 14
Darby discovered that in a crisis situation, Marion would handle problems with efficiency and control, unlike himself who took solace in alcohol. “She left nothing for me to do except worry I started not turning up for track work. If we weren’t going back and forth from the hospital Marion would go home to do chores and I would say ‘I’m just going out for a while’. I’d go down to the Chadstone Hotel and have a few beers and a few games of pool. I’d see Vic Beames there occasionally when he wasn’t truck driving, and Marion’s brother Gary came down for a while. I had got Gary a job working at Efron’s.”
As soon as Darby started drinking again he felt Marion distance herself from him He couldn’t help thinking that she was waiting to pack her bags as soon as Bradley was discharged from hospital.
When Bradley came out of hospital Darby started picking up rides again. He was able to score a few more winners, enough to think that they might be able to buy their own house. Marion seemed keen to own a home with Darby, despite the fact that she regularly avoided sleeping with him and was still threatening that she would leave if he didn’t cut out the grog.
It was the arrival of Darby’s younger brother Ian that eventually determined the course of their marriage. He came to visit in November, 1974, the same year that Darby rode Corroboree in the Melbourne Cup. The horse led for about a mile and a half but was placed well back in the field at the end of the race.
Darby’s sister Bub and mum Kath also came clown to stay, in part to see Darby ride in the Spring Racing Carnival but also to watch over Ian. When Kath was sure that he was settled in with Darby, Marion and the children, she went back home to Queensland.
“Mum was very worried about Ian. She said he had been drinking heavily and keeping bad company in Queensland. That’s when I bought him a plane ticket to Melbourne and said we would pick him up at Tullamarine Airport. I was going to keep an eye on him because he’d previously taken an accidental overdose.”
Ian was the baby of the family, blessed with good looks and a quiet, unassuming personality. At 20 years of age, he dreamed of being a hairdresser. But it was just a dream. In reality he had spent most of his life unable to hold down steady employment, floating between part time work and the dole. Whenever he needed time out he found his way to wherever Darby was living at the time.
Like his older brother, Ian had suffered disappointments. However unlike Darby’s ability to bounce back, Ian’s worries consumed him and it seemed that no one could solve his problems. He was a lost soul.
Darby would invite Ian out to the pub for a drink but he always declined. “He could have been taking drugs, I’d ask him and he’d tell me that he would smoke now and again, but I never saw him do that in the house.
“I know he had a lot of sadness because he had a natural talent for hairdressing but could never get into a course. I would try to talk to him about things but he always clammed up. Sometimes Vic Beames would come around and take Ian for a drive in his truck, just to get him out of the house.”
Ian’s withdrawal from the family’s social events was so much a part of his manner that no one took much notice the day he died. Earlier in the day, Vic had taken Ian for his customary truck ride, and when they returned everyone joined in a game of cards. A pleasant afternoon.
“We’d bought a dozen cans of beer and we were all just sitting around playing poker in the loungeroom, a couple of cents a game. At some point Ian left the room and then came back in. He did it again and Marion picked up on it, telling me to watch him because he was a bit glassy-eyed. So the last time I followed him outside and saw that he was taking my Lasix tablets. I challenged him about the tablets and he denied taking them. I said ‘what are these on the floor then?’ I took away all the tablets I could find and watched him closely.
“Later on he got into a bit of an argument with Bub’s son Michael, who was visiting at the time. They got into a scuffle and both fell on the floor. We laid Ian on the couch, his eyes full and his body stiff. I told Marion we had to ring a doctor but she said not to because of the Lasix tablets, which were illegal at the time. She thought I would get into trouble with the police. She suggested that we give him a bath to bring him out of it, so we did and I helped him out and sat him in the loungeroom chair. This was about 2am.”
According to Darby, Ian sat up and spoke to him, calling him by his real name, Richard. He then told his older brother to go to bed because he was okay. Darby got up later on to check on him and he “seemed to be alright”. Marion also checked him at about 3am.
“I woke about 5am and walked out to where Ian was lying on the loungeroom floor. The gas heater was on full blast and one of his arms was pretty close to it. I thought he was too close so I moved his hand away. The skin was burnt and it just came away in my hand. I knew then that he was dead. He hadn’t felt a thing. I touched his legs and they were cold. I picked him up and dragged him out of the loungeroom, screaming to the others that he was dead.”
Darby never forgot that dreadful day. He went through the motions of co-operating with the attending police and ambulance, but his heart and mind were full of self-loathing. Was he responsible for his brother’s death?
He could still hear the phrase his mother used often in relation to Ian—’look after your brother’, and he would always answer her with a promise. He had broken the promise. He had failed.
Arrangements were made for the body to be transported to the coroner’s for an inquest into the cause of death. Darby was questioned about the origins of the Lasix tablets and Marion provided a statement to police. The result of the inquiry was that Ian McCarthy committed suicide. The coroner’s findings were that an overdose of Lasix caused his heart to stop.
Darby did the only thing he knew that he could accomplish: rally the family together again for a funeral. Calls were made to the various family members across Australia, announcing Ian’s untimely death.
“Mum was very quiet this time. We told her what happened but there was mainly silence from her. She only indicated that he may have taken something else other than the tablets I had in the house.
“We discussed that he may have been more upset than we realised, and maybe that was the reason he came down from Brisbane.”
Darby arranged and paid for the body to be flown to Queensland, engaging the services of the same funeral parlour that had handled Alfred and Aunt Ollie’s funerals. A charter flight was provided for the rest of his family to be there. The funeral cost Darby almost his entire savings, about $6500.
Upon returning to Melbourne, Darby was keen to pick up his career again, but there were pressing changes that had to be made. Most importantly, they did not want to continue living in the same house that was the scene of such a tragic death. For Marion, the marriage was still rocky, although she went along with plans to save for a deposit on a house as quickly as possible. She could sense that Darby was heading for another downfall.
“I wasn’t coping well with Ian’s death, even with Marion helping me through the crisis. I started to drink again I wasn’t good to her when I drank, it made me fairly abusive and possessive. I accused her of having someone else but deep down I knew it was my insecurities and a build up from the past, losing Dad, Joy, Kathy and Ian. I seemed to be shit scared of anything or being involved with anybody.”
While he drank to escape the painful memories of Ian, Marion waited at home with the two small boys, wondering and worrying when he would put them through another ordeal.
In the midst of this instability Darby was able to pick up a few rides with Ian Saunders at Epsom, on a horse called Allshot owned by Henry Harrison. He won the Lithgow Handicap on this horse, a feat, considering the drinking had increased his weight and restricted his racing options. The win not only boosted their meagre savings but sent a message out that Darby hadn’t lost his touch. Just after the Lithgow Handicap he was offered an all expenses deal to ride in Asia, by Chinese racing identity Bob Quk. It was in January of 1975 that he flew out to Singapore, a temporary reprieve from the tension at home with Marion.
On his first day at the beautiful track in Singapore, Darby had one winner on Quk’s horse Summer Land, followed by several placings on forgettable horses. He raced the next day with equal success. The races, which were held at the time on Saturday and then Sunday, were rotated fortnightly between Penang, Ipoh, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
On Darby’s first day at KL he rode the winning double, followed by another winner the following day on a horse owned by the chairman of the Singapore Racing Club. It was to be one of his most successful short term racing stints, lasting seven weeks until the completion of the Ipoh Carnival. Darby was so happy he rang Marion and asked her to come over for a brief holiday. They stayed at the Federal Hotel, went shopping for the kids and watched movies—a honeymoon style visit that reaffirmed how happy they could be when Darby was earning money and not drinking. After Marion returned to Australia Darby started missing his family but decided he would see out the end of the carnival and then return home.
“I came back with $3000, good money considering I’d paid for Marion’s visit and we’d spent a lot of money while she was there. Bob Quk also paid me a nice sling, although the Chinese prefer to take you out and dine well rather than give large sums of money. I liked them a lot, they were lovely people.”
When Darby returned to Melbourne he resumed riding for Ian Saunders, but routine always spelt trouble for Darby. He never knew how to manage long-term happiness, always sabotaging some aspect of his life, usually his career or his relationships. This time it was a nagging insecurity that Marion might cheat on him, spurred on by her constant threat to ‘pull in your horns and get your act together or I’ll leave you’.
His insecurities weren’t helped by a cocktail of alcohol, pills and constant weight loss activities to keep riding at a competitive level. His body was being slowly abused, the delicate physiological state of his brain constantly under pressure. At one point he couldn’t take any more. “One night we were playing cards with friends. John and Karen Nikolic, who lived opposite Brian Courtney in Caulfield. Karen was a hairdresser and John was the foreman of a refrigerator company. We’d had a few drinks and I got drunk. John had a brother living with him and I accused Marion of sleeping with him. We argued, had a few words and Marion put the kids in the Valiant and started to drive off. I ran after her and hung onto the side of the car. The next thing I remembered was waking up in a private hospital in Caulfield.”
According to Marion, who filled in the blanks for Darby later on, he hung on until he collapsed, falling so close to the wheels of the car that Marion was convinced she had run over his head. “When she looked back and saw me lying there she was hysterical; she believed she had run over my head because my face was towards the road.” The first person she rang was Ray Efron.
Because Darby was ranting and raving like a lunatic, Ray suspected he may have suffered more than a head injury. He arranged for psychiatrist Dr Seery, his brother-in-law, to assess Darby while he was in hospital. The words used to diagnose him were “this man’s so close to having a complete breakdown it’s not funny”.
Marion relayed Darby’s paranoia to Dr Seery, of how he had accused her of having an affair.
In her opinion, he had gone completely mad.
“The first few days in hospital I was dopey, then I started to level off a bit and feel better as they did all sort of tests on my nervous system. When I got out two weeks later they gave me anti-depressants. Of course the reporters wanted to know why I hadn’t been riding so I said I slipped over and broke my ankle.”
When Darby was discharged from hospital he expected that Marion would leave with the kids as soon as he was capable of looking after himself. Instead he discovered a house full of guests. Her life was going on without him in it. She had friends and family to occupy her time, so much so that even though they were husband and wife there was rarely a moment alone together. There was no chance of a sexual relationship either.
Ian Saunders never lost faith in Darby, so he was able to pick up from where he had left off on Allshot, owned by Henry Harrison. Allshot won the Craiglee Stakes and earned several other placings. Darby had a number of other winners in early 1975, enough to save a deposit and obtain an Aboriginal Housing Co-operative loan. Marion and Darby purchased a house in Mulgrave for $32,000, a place for her and the boys to call home. She still lives there today.
While it was the first Christmas that Marion didn’t go to Moree with the children, she continued to distance herself from her husband physically and emotionally. She became more involved with family, her children and a friend by the name of Denise, who had recently left her husband.
Denise’s estranged husband Joe owned numerous massage parlours—this association led to Darby visiting the parlour, playing the dice and occasionally engaging the services of a prostitute. He was boozing and playing up again, and Denise let Marion know what was going on.
“I remember one time going out with a couple of friends of mine, Jack Walsh was one of them, and we went to the Builders Arms Hotel in Fitzroy. There was a whole group of us Aboriginal people having a party, and this woman called Sandra joined in. We took some beers back to someone’s house and played records. Sandra and I ended up in bed together and the next morning I left. I didn’t see her again for two or three years but Jack Walsh let me know she had a baby to me. I said ‘what, after just one night?’ Anyway I looked her up and she’d had a baby daughter called Meluda.”
It was the last time Marion would hold the family unit together while Darby wrecked his life. She had her home and her children in order—it was time to end the marriage. While Marion had always threatened to take the boys away from Darby, when it came to the end of their relationship she did the opposite. She invited her brother David, sister Colleen, another friend and her father to stay in the house, making Darby a ‘foreigner’ in the home he had bought. “It wasn’t my place any more.”
She then went on a holiday to Adelaide with Denise. Upon her return she told Darby she was having an affair. There were five other family members living in their house when he got the news.
“There was nothing I could do about it. I had bigger problems by then.
“I had two rides the following day at Hamilton and called Raymond Efron by phone. I said ‘do you have a plane going down to Hamilton tomorrow because my son isn’t well and I’d like to come back the same day?’ He said yes.”
The Black And White Scotch
Whisky Handicap
The form guide for Wednesday, March 31, 1976, listed the race results at Hamilton, trotting at Ballarat and greyhound racing at Olympic Park. Seven races were run in Hamilton the previous day, the daily double paying $11.45 for the selections of number one and seven, Chops in race five, and Matrium in race seven.
Punters at the track would have recalled a slight delay in correct weight after race seven, the Black and White Scotch Whisky Handicap, when jockeys were called into the stewards’ room to review an alleged interference. But a short time later the results were declared as they had passed the post: Matrium three quarters of a length ahead of Blue Bubble, Flash Future in third place. Time 1:37:9.
So what had caught the attention of the stewards during the running of the 1600 metre handicap? Jockey Darby McCarthy, riding Rickshaw’s Luck, had crossed in front of the favourite Blue Bubble, which in turn had caused it to check in and bump against the eventual winner, Matrium. Blue Bubble came in second and McCarthy’s horse ran fifth.
Tom McGinley, one of the Hamilton Racing Club’s official stewards stationed near the 800 metre mark, noted that McCarthy crossed over rather fine. He thought there could have been less than the mandatory two lengths clear between the horses during that particular movement.
Immediately after the race McCarthy was called in before the stewards to explain the incident. Two other jockeys, John Letts on Matrium and Bill Power on Blue Bubble were also called in for questioning. At the conclusion of the interview, which lasted just over 10 minutes, McCarthy was given a ‘run of the mill’ reprimand and told that no further action would be taken against him.
A record of the proceedings stated the Chairman of Stewards as saying:
“McCarthy, look, to put your mind at ease, we are not going to take any action.” With those words suggesting that the matter was finalised, Darby McCarthy left the track by taxi and flew home in the same charter plane that had delivered him there.
A ‘run of the mill’ inquiry by racing stewards? Three months later on June 28, the same tribunal of the Hamilton Racing Club declared Darby guilty of dishonest practices in that he “deliberately conspired” with another to cause interference to Blue Bubble to prevent the horse from winning the race. He was disqualified from racing for seven years, representing no less than the end of his professional life as a jockey.
The events of that fateful day three months earlier had been strung together in the longest running inquiry held by an Australian racing body, culminating in over 200 pages of transcribed evidence. Its revelations were front page news across the country, not only because of the disturbing allegations but also the farcical ‘legal’ process that was being undertaken.
At its conclusion the career of one of Australia’s best jockeys was ruined, a trainer was forced to relinquish his licence and an infamous ‘big punter’ referred to as ‘Mr X’ was warned off all Australian racecourses for life.
So what had happened that day in that pleasant, pastoral town in the Western District, once promoted as the ‘wool capital of the world’?
