Author: Wendy Green

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9781921496103

Her name is Wendy Green, but she’s better known as Wendy in Wonderland, being the name Bart Cummings gave her after she asked him to win the Melbourne Cup with her horse Rogan Josh. While Cummings has no peer when it comes to winning Australia’s greatest horse race, he thought Green was dreaming when she told him her lightly-raced and unfashionably bred Perth horse had the potential to win the Cup. Too shy to approach Cummings personally, Green, a Darwin schoolteacher, arranged the deal through her trainer who in turn contacted Cummings’ Melbourne foreman, as a result of which Rogan Josh moved from Perth to Melbourne’s most famous stable. The fact that Cummings had seen Rogan Josh narrowly beaten in the 3200m Perth Cup in 1999 had a significant bearing on his decision to accept Rogan Josh into his stable. So began another colourful chapter in the history of the Melbourne Cup to give Cummings his 11th winner of the famous race. In between all the racetrack drama was the interminable optimism of Wendy Green, who travelled some 7,500km by car on a round trip between Darwin and Melbourne to see her Josh race to glory. And after the history-making win, Green returned to Darwin by road with extra luggage – the Melbourne Cup trophy and a crate of champagne stopping off on the way to share her joy with scores of larger-than-life characters in remote places of the Outback. There has never been a more colourful post-Cup celebration in the history of Australia’s greatest race and this book is a must read for people who like to hear of dreams coming true.