Newmarket Oral History: Jamie Inglis - Part 2

Jamie Inglis (b. 1954) speaks to interviewer Virginia Macloud. Jamie grew up on his family’s rural property at Cobbitty with his parents, Dick and Lorna, and two siblings. From an early age he loved riding, helping with cattle, and accompanying his father to sales. After a year jackerooing and learning horsemanship from Jim Hayden, he joined the family business, first selling cattle at Camden and Homebush. He gradually developed his auctioneering skills—voice, pacing, knowledge, and the art of praise—sometimes selling property, houses, and chattels as well. Jamie began at Newmarket as a bid spotter before progressing to auctioneer. He later served briefly as managing director during the company’s transition to professional, non-family leadership, helping to recruit an external managing director, chair, and board members with broader industry expertise. When Inglis closed the Camden saleyards in 2012, he took over broadacre property sales. Jamie describes the long-considered move from Newmarket and the selection of the Warwick Farm site. He reflects on shareholders, the role of women in the business, succession, and the culture that makes a strong family company. His knowledge was shaped by his father, John Inglis, and Jim Hayden. He recalls Newmarket memories—summer Night Sales, the Night of the Stars, and a final farewell celebration in the Big Stable in 2017. He still enjoys riding, cutting, and campdrafting.

So just coming back to the Newmarket site, memories you'll take away from here and whether you'll miss it or not.

Well, yes, a lot of memories without a doubt.  I can't remember the first time I came here because I would have been so young when I did arrive and it just feels like a second home; a lot of great memories, horses, clients, great sales, characters.  So there’ll be memories that'll live on forever and I'm sure that we’ll all talk about them from time to time.  We’ve had some high-profile people here over the years from the Bunker Hunt, the Texas oil billionaire, Robert Holmes a Court, the great trainers, Colin Hayes, Tommy Smith, Bart Cummings, prominent owners, a few scallywags, they’ve all been here, so it’s been a very interesting time to be at Newmarket, and I'm very lucky to be an Inglis, to have been here and witnessed it and enjoyed it.  And the first yearling sale here under lights was, at the summer sale, 1969, I think I'm right in saying, where the Boss put on another yearling sale to accommodate the growing industry.  And I think at that first summer sale there was only a couple of hundred yearlings, but the sale started in the twilight and went into the evening, and we put up lights in a big open-air arena, the old ring that we had, and the horses looked magnificent under lights and the sale went off like a cracker – it was a great success.

                 And was it a big event, a lot of people came, the novelty if you hadn't had it before.

                 Oh, it was a big event, coming out at night and the bar was open, and people drinking champagne and the first $100,000 yearling was sold at that sale, some years later but the first $100,000 horse in Australia was sold at that sale, so it’s always been a good sale, still is a good sale and it worked very well.  The night sales were in great fashion for a while.  They’ve come back; we’ve sort of got away from that now.  They're very hard on people, particularly trainers, and trainers are our biggest supporters.  Trainers have early starts.  Well, they don’t want to be out, buying horses at ten o'clock at night, and have to get up at three o'clock in the morning, so we’ve gone away from the night sessions.

                 Have you?

                 Yeah.

                 So you have the summer sale but it’s in the day?

                 We’re back to the day sessions now, and an odd sale may finish sort of early evening, six o'clock, six thirty, but that’s about it now.

                 Still time to get a few hours’ sleep in for the trainers

                 Well, and we also think people can go home, have dinner, people can work on syndicates or talk about the day’s trade, the next day what’s happening.  We think it’s valuable time for people to have on their own.

                 And the sale goes for, what, three or four days?

                 The biggest sale here goes for three days – like that’s one session.  We’ve only got six hundred boxes.  When we get to Warwick Farm, sales will be able to go longer.

                 Because of the location?

                 In fact, they could keep going because as horses go out, we can now keep bringing them in.

                 Because of the logistics of the site will be much better?

                 Exactly.  We’ve got the boxes and we’ve got the room to roll them round.  

                 That'll make sense because then the whole setup will last for longer.

                 Yeah, exactly.

                 You don’t have to recreate it and take it down.

                 And that’s the way buyers want it these days.  If you're going to attract buyers to come from a distance, locally or from wherever, give them the sale, give them the horses to sell, put them in front of them, and then let them go.  You can’t have a sale, wait a day, and then have another sale; doesn’t work; time’s too precious.

                 And you have more people coming from overseas now, is that right?

                 For our Easter sale, we rely heavily on overseas buyers, yes, Asians, Europeans, Americans, South Africans, Kiwis, a lot of international buyers.  Easter’s a truly international sale, yeah.

                 So that'll be much better when you can have a bigger forum of horses for sale?

                 Yeah, exactly.  Yeah, it should work well, yeah.

                 You also had a special occasion called Night of the Stars.  It wasn’t a night sale, though.  Can you tell me about it?

                 Well, in fact it was a night sale.

                 It was?

                 We did have that at night.  It was for about sixty-odd yearlings.  Bart Cummings the year before went into a deal, a partnership, with Coopers Lybrand.  He bought five million dollars’ worth of yearlings for tax effective schemes, which Bob Hawke had set up, being prime minister of the country, set up some tax related schemes for thoroughbred investors.  So that worked very well – that was in ’88.  In 1989 Coopers, they said, ‘We’ll do a bigger one.’ so they went for ten million.  KPMG said, ‘We don’t want to be left out of this.  We want to do ten million.’  So Bart Cummings was commissioned with twenty million to go and spend on thoroughbreds for the sales that year, which he did.  He bought a number from us, he bought $13.6 million from us, he bought one yearling in the Melbourne sale from Dalgety’s for five hundred thousand, and the balance in New Zealand Bloodstock.  Well, there was a clause in the accounting companies’ contracts that if eighty per cent of these tax effective schemes weren't taken up, they had the right to walk.  Well, that’s exactly what happened: they weren't taken up.  The financial world, it was starting to collapse: interest rates were going through the roof, the stockmarket of ’87, the stockmarket collapsed at ’87 - we were feeling the effect of it through the financial markets.  So the accounting companies walked.  Bart Cummings sued them with no avail.  He was left holding the baby so to speak or holding, I think it’s sixty-three yearlings.  So the only thing we could do was repossess the horses and we called it the Night of the Stars; and we recouped exactly half of the debt he owed us, 13.6.  Interest rates were at sixteen and seventeen per cent and we had enormous debt, which nearly brought the company undone.  We scraped through that year and the following year without paying a dividend.  I think I'm right in saying we certainly didn’t pay a dividend for the first year.  The second year, I think, if we did pay a dividend it was very minimal, but we got through and Bart paid a fraction of that debt back.  He had a lot of creditors lined up and we went into a Part Ten [legal] agreement with him, so Dalgety’s New Zealand, Bloodstock, us, the feed merchants, carriers, blacksmiths, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, all were owed money.  So we all got a bit and we wrote the rest off, which was a very difficult time for us, but it was well managed by my brother, and John Inglis, at the time, and we got through.  So we allowed Bart to keep training – we could have bankrupted him but we let him keep training.  And so that was an interesting time, worth reflecting on.

                 Yes.  What a dangerous debt.

                 Yeah.

                 But you managed to contain it – that was good.

                 Yeah.  If you ask me that, I would like to elaborate on that.

                 Yes.  Is there anyone who stands out for you particularly in the firm?

                 I think – well, not think, I'm sure – that culture, good culture in a firm or a company is paramount to the success of that firm, and I think we’ve been very lucky in the hundred and fifty years, that our firm’s been around, is the quality of staff that we’ve had, and we’ve been very lucky.  When I started in the firm, we had some remarkable people.  I was extremely lucky to have a father as good as mine, so supportive, and such a good agent, and a good auctioneer and he was great with people – he had a phenomenal personality.  And the Boss was so good to Reg and I, the support he gave us and the help that he gave us.  He was a remarkable bloke, very good judge of a horse, and very sound in his knowledge and, any actions that he took were always so sound.  When I started in the firm, the very first person, our bookkeeper or accountant in those days was a Miss Bowman - she was a remarkable lady.  Then the bloodstock manager was Ozzie Roberts - he was a superstar, terrific man. 

                 And going on through, I worked with three remarkable people in the livestock business, a fellow called Bob Murdoch – or four of them – there was Bob Murdoch a man called Miles Thoms.  All these people long time employees, you know, forty years plus involvement.  So Miles Thoms, Bob Murdoch, Geoff Lees - who was the last man I worked for, and he was with the company for forty four years – Terry Gordon, and Jim Knapman who managed the office when I first came into the livestock business.  These fellows – and I think that sort of describes that we must be not bad people to work for, for people to last that long – but they were so dedicated - - -

                 It’s definitely a marker.

                 - - - and loyal, loyal and honest.  And there was another man here that used to be an outdoor fellow and knockabout block called Jack Burraston, remarkable person, just loyal and honest.  And right through to the staff we’ve got today, people that were in our bloodstock division, Trevor Leob, John Hutchinson, Jonathon Darcy today, Simon Vivian in Melbourne and Peter Heagney that’s just retired, we’ve very lucky to have the calibre of people that we have in our company.  And so it’s been an honour from my perspective to work with such good people.

                 All experts and very dedicated.

                 Yeah, dedicated, loyal, treat people well, and I think that’s why we’ve been lucky enough to last a hundred and fifty years.  The culture that’s lasted, it’s been there.

                 Yeah, you’ve kept that.

                 Yeah.  And in history, what was written about my great-grandfather, John Inglis, when he died, the accolades of treating people so well and being a good auctioneer and just the basic fundamentals, we certainly hope that it'll last another hundred and fifty years.

                 Yes, definitely.

                 Yeah.

                 You said your father and John Inglis were very knowledgeable.  What was their teaching style?  Did you just follow and watch or were they actively saying, ‘Try this, do this’?  I mean how did they convey it to you?

                 Yes, very much - - -

                 You talked over the dinner table?

                 A lot of talk, always talk, and advice and the right advice.  And I suppose, if anything, perhaps if I'd been a little bit of a different makeup or personality, some people might not have copped the advice, because he wasn’t frightened to give it, and if you did something wrong, you certainly knew about it, I suppose, but he was just very fair, very fair.  If you did something wrong, you knew about it, if you did something good, you were told you did it well, and very supportive, extremely supportive, happy to give you a go, generous with his time.  Yeah, I think if there was a mix, he probably had it right. 

                 It sounds a very clear style, and, as you said, fairness.

                 Yeah.  And my father was a role model too.  He always conducted himself well.  Never once in my life would you say, ‘Gee, dad, you didn’t do that very well.’ or ‘That was a bit disappointing.’ or ‘That was an embarrassment.’ - and I'm sure there are fathers like that, that would embarrass their sons now and again - never once could I say that.

                 That’s good.  Well, it’s often hard for fathers to hand over to sons and for sons to learn from fathers – that’s why I asked.

                 And that’s the other thing - I'm glad you brought that up – because he did step back and said, ‘Righto, away you go’ and was very supportive.  And if you were doing something he didn’t think was perhaps not right – you weren't doing it wrong, but perhaps he’d do it a different way – he’d say, ‘Now, do you reckon - you're doing that – have you thought about this?’  He sort of, you know - - -

                 Tactfully.

                 - - - tactfully lob the idea into your mind.

                 And was your mother interested and involved in the whole horse selling business?

                 Yes, very much so.  Mum, she used to always come, very supportive, great support for dad, and very much on side.  Like dad wouldn’t have been an easy bloke to live with in the sense that he never took any time off.  There was no cattle sales, or horse sales between Christmas and New Year – that was his holiday.  And he said, ‘Why would I want to go on holidays when I just love what I'm doing?’  Well, mum never got a holiday, she never got a holiday.  She’d get a week at the beach, where she had a house at Gerroa on the South Coast.  So either Christmas Eve or Boxing Day to the beach for ten days and then - - -

                 Back to work.

                 - - - back to work, back to ironing, washing, cooking.  But mum never complained and they never went anywhere.  Dad was a woeful traveller, never went anywhere, but loved to meet people, international people.  If someone walked in and he was from England, or Ireland, or America, he’d be straight over, talking to them, finding out what was going on, but wouldn’t go there.  And I'm sure mum would have loved to have travelled, because mum’s a great gardener, loved outdoors, was a good tennis player, and had a lovely garden at Cobbitty – still does have – but never saw anyone else’s, except like in the district, but dad not only loved his job, but he was tied to it, loved it; it was his life.

                 Lived it and breathed it, yeah.

                 He lived, ate and breathed the firm, yeah.

                 And you’ve lived in Cobbitty most of your life.  I mean we left you at the beginning, having grown up there but, you went back and lived there all your life.

                 Yes, I've lived at Cobbitty.  I lived at Applewood, my parents’ place.  When I got married, I moved up the road, and stayed there for the best part of sixty years.  And then about ten years ago, my wife’s family had a family split-up, and Sarah was given a couple of paddocks at Mudgee, and we said then one day we would go and live there - it was just bare; there was no infrastructure at all.  So in that last ten years, we’ve put up a set of cattle yards, and a shed, and a stable, and water system for stock, etcetera, and this year we built a house.  So we’re in it – we were renting a house prior to that.  And then when we sold the livestock business in 2012, I said to Mark Webster, ‘I'd like to oversee the property division.  I want to go and live at Mudgee.’ And he was very supportive of that.  So I'm very lucky: I've got a great job, I'm still involved in the firm, it’s great to be on the board, I still have day-to-day involvement in the property division.  And I'm not on the job so to speak every day but, I'm on the phone or once a week or twice a week or once a fortnight I may have to travel, do an inspection, go and see clients.  So we’re lucky, we’re very lucky that we’re able to do that.  And Mudgee’s a nice part of the world – I enjoy living there.  As I mentioned earlier, we’re very rural, so we’ve got horses to ride, dogs to work, cattle to move around.

                 And you enjoy it.

                 And we are backwards and forwards a bit on that road from Sydney to Mudgee, but we enjoy it, so we’re lucky, very lucky.

                 So how many horses do you have?

                 Oh, Virginia, too many.

                 Too many?

                 Too many.

                 You can’t ride them all?

                 Oh, no.  I'd have twelve or fourteen, I suppose, something like that.  If I count them up quickly in my head, twelve.

                 And are you still breaking them in and training them?

                 I don’t break them in now - I'm a bit old for that; I don’t want to get thrown – but I certainly ride young horses.  I compete in a sport called cutting.

                 I've heard of that, yeah.  Tell me about it, though.

                 Well cutting, it’s an American sport that has been here in Australia for about forty years, and it’s a great sport.  It’s where you have a trained horse, you ride into an arena, seventy metres say by thirty metres, and there’s a mob of cattle in one end and you’ve got to cut one out, and you’ve got two men that chase them back at you, but the horse is trained to keep it out of the mob so it won't let them in.

                 So you separate it from the others, yeah.

                 So basically you’ve got to ride this horse.  You can’t touch its reins; you ride it with your legs.  The horse is trained to work on its own, but you change the horse’s direction with your legs.  You speed it up or you slow it down, or you push it away, or push it up.  It’s very difficult but to ride a cutting horse is a phenomenal thrill, and it’s very safe.

                 Really?

                 It’s extremely safe.

                 But you're not holding the reins?

                 You're holding the reins, but the reins must be loose.

                 I see.

                 So at a particular time, you can pick your reins up and, get off that beast, or as they say, get off it, quit that one, and go and get another.  And then when you're cutting another one out, you're using one hand but as soon as that beast is free, you’ve got to slam your hand down, can’t touch it.

                 And just ride with your legs?

                 Just ride it with your legs.  So it’s very safe because you're in an arena, with six inches of sand and they're very good-minded horses, the cutting horses – they're quarter horses – very quiet, really good-minded horses.  So we have a lot of fun, travelling Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales to events.

                 So there’s special cutting events everywhere?

                 Yeah.

                 Amazing.

                 Yeah, it’s great fun.  And I've been a campdraft, and I've played a bit of polo – done a lot of campdrafting, still do a bit of campdrafting.

                 What’s campdrafting?

                 Campdrafting is different.  You cut a beast out of a yard, and again you hold it up the front and then you, ‘Outside.’ and they open the gates and you’ve got to chase the beast round a figure of eight, and then back through a couple of pegs that are close together, but that’s at flat gallop.  So that’s a bit craftsman cutting and if you don’t like going fast, campdrafting’s not for you, but that’s also a great sport.  It’s probably Australia’s biggest recreational, pleasure horse, sport.  Thousands of people campdraft; it’s a lot of fun but you're going quick.

                 So you’ve got to hang on.

                 Yeah.

                 And do you go to the races to look at the horses?

                 Oh, yeah, go to the races.

                 The -  or the big ones?

                 Not as much as the bloodstock staff would, [I] would go the major carnivals, Mudgee Races and the major carnivals here [and] in Melbourne.  Presently, I've got a share in three horses, gallopers.  I enjoy the races very much, yeah, particularly when the better racers come round, the good horses.  And I also really like looking at yearlings, and then seeing them race.  You know, you mark off yearlings you really like, and then watch them when they come back through, into the various racing stables.

                 What, you mean you see them in a sale and then you - - -

                 You see them as a yearling and you see a lot of nice horses but you mark in your catalogue, you know, ‘Top class.’, you know, with a couple of crosses on it, and then see them come back and just see how your judgement was.

                 Yeah, interesting.

                 Yeah, I really enjoy that, really enjoy that.

                 And what other stock do you have on your property?

                 We’ve got a hundred and thirty-five Angus cows, and replacement heifers and steers, bulls, of course.  It’s fourteen hundred acres, it’s not a big operation, but big enough that we can do it ourselves.

                 So you enjoy it that way?

                 Yeah, I enjoy it very much.  So, nothing I like more than just getting on a horse and go for a ride, check the cattle, check the water.  Yeah, riding a nice horse is one of life’s great pleasures in my opinion.  And we’ve just built a house, so it’s - - -

                 You'd be comfortable on the property?

                 Yeah, it’s really nice, yeah, so we’re very lucky.

                 [Pause]

                 …He didn’t have any children so that side of his family’s finished …

                 So just tell me again – this property was once owned by -?

                 Yes, this property was once owned by James – well, the Honourable James White; he was a member of the Legislative Council – and he bought this property in 1884, I think I'm right in saying.  Interestingly, the prior owner or the owner that had it at the time, had split this property up into thirty-six lots and James White, evidently at the time, was very wealthy - he’d won a lot of money with a lot of good horses and punting but wealthy in his own right – and he came along and bought the entire place, so kept it as one.  Had he not done that, Newmarket would not have been Newmarket today.  So James White is my wife’s great great-uncle so it’s amazing how it turns a circle.  It was he that kept Newmarket together and he built the Big Stable.  The stable that was originally there burnt down, so the stable that’s now here on Newmarket at the moment, what we call the Big Stable, he built in 1884.  And he had phenomenal success in the racing world, on Derbies, Melbourne Cups, Oaks, extraordinary success, and in those days he lived at Cranbrook -  where the school Cranbrook is now, was his home – and he built a magnificent big home and also another home, a country estate at Camden called Kirkham which is actually now called Camelot but it’s a massive, massive three-storied house.

                 And he bred there and the great horse, Chester, won a Melbourne Cup, trained by the legendary Etienne De Mestre who’s buried at Kirkham.

                 The horse is buried there?

                 The horse, Chester, that won the Melbourne Cup is buried at Kirkham.  So interesting history.

                 So did you know that when you met your wife?  Were you destined?

                 No, I found that out some years later, but I've known it a while that James White, that his trainer lived in the house, and he had the racing stable.  But it’s interesting because Andrew Lemon has been researching our history, and the history that he’s dug up is just phenomenal, on what he did win and how successful he was.  And, interestingly, his wife - he died, James White, and he didn’t have family, and his wife married a man half her age.  She didn’t last much longer and he got the lot.

                 Lucky man.

                 So that was more history I didn’t know about.

                 And, tell me, you said you're having a reception in the big stables tonight.

                 Well, tomorrow night.  Twelve months ago my wife said, ‘We cannot leave Newmarket and not have something.’ so we’re having a dinner.  We’re going to have drinks in the sale ring, walk down and have dinner in the big stable.  We’ve got a hundred and eighty-eight people coming, which has grown and grown and grown but it’s our friends from all our life, who I was born with, who I was brought up wit, school friends, campdrafting friends, cutting friends, work friends, Mudgee friends, Cobbitty friends.  And we thought we’ve got to do something, so that’s tomorrow night.

                 Wonderful.

                 So we’re looking forward to it.

                 Yes.  And that will be the last function here?

                 The last function.  I want it to be the last function, so yeah.

                 I hope you have a lovely evening.

                 Thank you.

                 Very nice.

                 We’re looking forward to it.

                 Well, thank you very much, Jamie.

                 Pleasure.  I've enjoyed it.

                 It’s been a really interesting afternoon, talking with you and we’ve got a lot more on the record now, thank you.

                 It’s good, Virginia, it’s good.  Thank you very much.  When it’s compiled and complete, we’ll have to go and look at it, hear it.

                 Hear it, yes.

                 Hear it, yeah.