Last Thursday’s race meeting at Seymour Racing Club was another brilliant display of on-track action; however, it was what happened off track that is perhaps the most compelling.

Amid all of the devastation caused by the Longwood bushfire, there has been countless heart-warming stories of the community rallying together to support those in need, and the generosity on show at the SRC is another example of that.

Renaming the meet ‘CFA Appreciation Day’, the club donated all admission fees to the Whiteheads Creek-Tarcombe CFA brigade, the closest to the Kobyboyn Rd racecourse, and then matched that figure, while also rattling tins and then rounding up the donation.

Seymour Racing Club chief executive Chris Martin said the decision to hold the appreciation day was made quickly, and was born simply from a desire to help those who had been impacted by the bushfire.

“It was very quick, the fires were on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of the week prior,” he said.

“We just heard bits and pieces about things that people were doing for people impacted by the fire, and just sort of informally had a bit of a ring around to say, well, we had a race meeting that was coming up, what could we do?

“We thought, well, we, we could match dollar for dollar the admissions for that particular day, and along with just having collection tins around the place with the board members.

“We came up with just some rough ideas on what to do, and then ran it past the Whiteheads Creek-Tarcombe CFA, because they're our closest CFA to the racecourse, and just talk them through what we wanted to do and they were more than supportive.

“So, it was a couple of people ringing around briefly on that weekend to say, well, you know, what could we do, and that's sort of how we landed with the appreciation day.“

The generosity of punters on the day rendered the club almost speechless, Martin said.

With strong patronage for a Thursday, the admission fees amounted to over $700, which the club doubled; however, it was the donation tins that saw the money flood in, which — thanks to a top-up from the club — saw $5000 donated to the Whiteheads Creek-Tarcombe CFA, much to the delight of everyone involved at the SRC.

“We were gobsmacked,” Martin said.

“There was five or six tins around the place, and we had one of the board members, Frank Butler, and another board member's wife, Lauren Anderson, out the front, and the generosity there with people coming into the course, and going out, was amazing, I think that tin had about 1400 bucks in it.”

“We raised $5000 altogether, which was made up of $745 admissions, then we matched that, so that was $1490. I haven't got the exact figures in front of me, but there was roughly, about $1600 in donations on the course, and then the race club paid the difference to make it up to $5000, so it was amazing.

“The generosity of people on the track was very pleasing.”

In terms of the actual racing it was a successful day too, including a dream double for the Hayes brothers in race one with Jacaranda and race five with Macedon Rose, providing a small bit of joy following the loss of over 90 per cent of their Lindsay Park property at Euroa to the fires.

While no local trainers managed to salute, Martin was still pleased with the quality of the card.

“The racing, generally, on those (Thursday) meetings that we have, is excellent,” he said.

“We had I think it was an eight-race card, lots of the top trainers had winners.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have a local horse win, the Hopes had a third in the last race (with Warakurna), but it was a good day’s racing.

“We had good patronage, like I said, 750 bucks through the gate, which is pretty good for us on a Thursday.”

There’s still plenty of racing to come at Seymour, with a Tuesday meet set for February 3, followed up with a super Sunday on February 15.

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Sunday, 13th December 2026

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