John “Patto” Patterson, Flemington’s legendary clerk of the course, is gravely ill. Matt Stewart reflects on the remarkable racing life of a man who was the greatest horseman Bart Cummings ever knew.
If you’ve been among the thousands to arrive at Cup Week via the Epsom Road ‘carpark’, you may have caught a glimpse of them. It’s like a scene from 100 years ago.
A handful of horses, usually grey, meander down Crown Street, which is up near the Smithfield Road roundabout, and wait for a break in the traffic.
When the gap comes, they join the other patrons arriving by foot and wander down to the famous track, ridden by men in striking red blazers.
It is a cute little sideshow to racing’s biggest festival but it hints at a remarkable story within Flemington’s rich history.
It hints at the legend of John Patterson, regarded by many as the greatest-ever horseman in and around our greatest racetrack, but whose name never appeared in a formguide.
The ‘old Flemington’ is long gone. The side-street stables have disappeared, bar one. Saintly Lodge up on Leonard Crescent is now buried under the Saintly Place apartment complex. Others were razed years ago.
The only one left is Patto’s joint at Number 8 Crown Street.
John “Patto” Patterson, the knockabout legend who educated hundreds of kids, broke in thousands of horses and was the greatest horseman Bart Cummings ever knew, is gravely ill and in the shadows of the post. He is 86.
Patto’s sons Shane and Peter, the next generation of great red-jacketed Patterson horsemen, are doing it hard as they reflect the life of an extraordinary father whose contribution to horse racing, to the story of Flemington, was recognised with a Queen’s Birthday gong in 2021.
The lane of roses that has funnelled 163 Melbourne Cup winners back to scale is now known as Patterson Avenue. As a Flemington Clerk of the course since 1961, and chief Clerk from 1966, Patto led 44 Melbourne Cup winners back to scale. One of them, the 1973 Cup winner Gala Supreme, held a special memory.
Patto educated the horse some years earlier. He’d harness him up and trot him through Kensington, a little trick that many years later would pay off.
Patto had escorted or held the collar of Rain Lover, Think Big, Kiwi, Empire Rose, Let’s Elope, Subzero, Vintage Crop, Saintly, Might and Power and Makybe Diva. When Damien Oliver kissed the heavens aboard Media Puzzle in 2002 to commemorate his late brother Jason, Patto led the emotional parade back through the roses.
Fiorente, in 2012, was Patto’s last as Clerk of Course. The reins were then taken by his sons.
Patto was the constant factor in a world, and a race, of great change. Heroes came and went. Grandstands were knocked down and replaced by buildings that looked like cruise ships.
Horses he nursed to and from the gates, like Makybe Diva, and great mates, like Bart, remain at Flemington but only as statues.
Three-time Melbourne Cup winner Damien Oliver said Patto was part of the fabric of Flemington. “So much has changed but Patto was there for most of it,” he said.
Patto broke in Clydesdales for CUB, fixed unruly ponies and racehorses by hitching them to a cart and trotting them through suburban streets, was a one-time drover and a raconteur who sat on an upturned bucket at Number 8 Crown Street and told colourful yarns about times-past.
And he was the fatherless kid from Coleraine who arrived at Flemington 73 years ago and never left.
Patto lost his father at Tobruk during the Second World War and said goodbye to his mum when she deposited him at Phil Burke’s Crown Street stables in 1951. Neither Patto nor his mum had previously been to Melbourne.
The kid’s lodgings were an old railway carriage. Chooks were everywhere and one of Patto’s tasks was to try to catch them for the local chicken yards. Burke convinced Patto to abandon his fledgling apprentice jockey career and instead turn his hand to educating horses.
This is where Patto crafted his legend; the suburban horse whisperer.
Peter Cox, who worked alongside Patto at the saleyards across the road from the track, said: “He always stood out as a great horseman. He gets to the bottom of what a horse is thinking very easily. He has a great understanding of them and the horses seem to trust him. I’ve never seen a horse whisperer like him.”
Bart Cummings felt the same.
According to former footballer and long-time Flemington identity Peter “Crackers” Keenan, Bart once said of Patterson: “He’s the best horseman I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a few.”
Asked why he never hired Patto to break in his horses, Bart allegedly replied: “He’s too dear.’’
"He gets to the bottom of what a horse is thinking very easily. He has a great understanding of them and the horses seem to trust him." - Peter Cox on John Patterson
When Patto arrived in the early 1950s, Melbourne was only half grown-up. “At the time, Flemington and Newmarket were a country town in the middle of the city. There were sheep and cattle walking around everywhere back in those days,” Patto told the Herald Sun in 2021.
Patto, and now his sons, connect racing’s present to its past, and not just because they ride horses across busy roads to work, even during Cup Week. There is a trick to that by the way, as Shane explains.
“You’ve got to call their (motorists) bluff. It’s common sense but if there is a bit of a gap, you take it. Some won’t slow down or will flash their lights but they aways give way once they realise they might have a horse for a hood ornament.”
These escorts in red jackets astride white horses are often featured in racing portraits dating back centuries.
Patto never thought his job was complicated, telling a VRC media crew that “it’s just common sense.”
“You need horse sense and a pretty handy horse under you. That’s what you need to be a Clerk of the Course in my opinion.”
He told the footyalmanac: “Everybody thinks how wonderful, you lead this one or that one…it makes no difference to me, Melbourne Cup or a bloody maiden. If a jock needs a lead, wants a lead, you give them a lead.”
There have been occasional heroics, flash moments where race crowds saw the Patto horse skills that Bart so admired.
On Newmarket day in 2010, a riderless horse bolted towards the crowd and Patto set out after him and collared him to roars of acknowledgment.
“You don’t know these things are going to happen until they bloody happen. You don’t have time to get frightened,” he said.
Patto taught racing to kids at schools, the precursor to a teacher he knew well, old Subzero. Many of these kids lived within a furlong or so of Flemington.
A book called “John “Patto” Patterson – from Legacy Larrikin to Living Legend” was penned by Trevor Hastings in 2020.
In one line, Patto summed up his own story.
“It’s been a wonderful area, this racecourse, to me.”
Editor's note: John Patterson died on October 9, 2024. Vale, Patto.
Matt Stewart
