Beckley name in the harness

Andrew Mathieson
The name Beckley Park still sounds funny to 83-year-old Ray Beckley.
Just like it did the day the Corio racetrack’s name was unexpectedly thrust upon him.
The late Victorian sports and racing minister Neil ‘Nippa’ Trezise didn’t mind a punt back then and would always share a tip but this one he kept to himself.
During one harness meeting Nippa quietly snuck into the generic Geelong trotting complex that was barely four years old.
Between race presentations, the one-time Geelong Football Club champion rover made an announcement, with Ray, the harness club’s long-standing president, by his side on the dais.
“I’m going to ask Ray Beckley to step forward and say some words to accept the name of this complex to be Beckley Park,” the minister called out.
Ray was taken by sheer surprise and stood there perplexed.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” Ray says on the eve of Beckley Park’s 30th anniversary, “even though my family did, apparently, and I just found that out recently.”
Much to Ray’s shock – again – a Melbourne radio station contacted him out of the blue for an interview after Nippa’s decision to appoint the later-retired Geelong president to Victorian Harness Racing Board.
The name Beckley Park, he also discovered, was the suggestion of the former Shire of Corio, which strongly supported the development of the multi-purpose track.
Not only was Ray awarded the honour for his vision, the straight shooter was also a local councillor at the time.
So was Ray’s father before him – not that nepotism ever played a part.
“I’ve been accused of having named it myself, even though I can assure you I didn’t know anything about it,” Ray laughs.
Ray has actually grown tired of the name.
At least it’s not Ray Beckley Park, he observes, which gives him some form of anonymity.
“When I’m introduced to someone in the town that I haven’t met before they always ask,” Ray sighs.
“Oh Beckley, anything to do with Beckley Park, they ask.
“Sometimes I feel like changing my name.”
By his own frank admission, Ray inadvertently fell into harness racing.
“Where do I start?” he asks himself.
“It was when Minute Man won the Inter Dominion in 1963.”
He’s corrected. It was 1964.
A friend invited Ray and his family for the night out at the Inter Dominion in Melbourne but he knew nothing of the significance of harness racing’s top prize.
Ray remembered looking at his friend puzzled and asking: “What are you talking about?”
“The trotting championships,” his friend responded.
Finally it clicked.
Less than five years after first mixing in trotting circles, others were tapping Ray on the shoulder to take over the Geelong club presidency, which he held until 1984.
Harness racing, before then, was run out of an old track on Corio Oval, once the home of Geelong Football Club.
However, the introduction of the CSIRO animal health laboratory near Eastern Park site in 1978 forced the harness club’s hand to relocate to Corio.
“There hadn’t been a new complex built like this for years,” Ray reflects.
“It was a big thing at the time.”
The club envisaged the move more than a decade earlier because the facilities were outdated and the harness track, which was barely 600 metres, or three furlongs, was too small.
Ray feels harness racing is now in his bloodline, something to which his family would attest.
“My wife endured it but my mother would always ring me up about races,” he says.
“She would know more about drivers and horses than I did, not that she was a big punter but she’d have five bob each way.”
Ray still wagers the odd trifecta or quinella but no longer follows the form like he once did.
Good mate and fellow life member Neil Allan still picks Ray up most racing nights but trips to Beckley Park now seem more of a social gathering.
“You’ve got to have a bit of knowledge about it if you’re going to have a bet,” Ray smiles, “otherwise you’re paddling in the dark.”