Trading places – Tamac’s Mark Taylor prepares for life after the farm

Tamac Farm Stud, a NSW bloodstock operation that has ridden the highs and the lows of the thoroughbred industry over six decades, is on the market with owner Mark Taylor hoping to make one final splash during the Magic Millions National Sales series.

In a lifetime of dealing in bloodstock, Mark Taylor may have well saved one of his best trades for last.

Taylor is taking a step back from the thoroughbred game. He won’t be lost entirely but for now, the moment has arrived to share more of his days with his wife, go fishing and escape the bitterly cold inland NSW winter mornings that play havoc with his health.

It’s time to enjoy something else that life might have to offer other than running a boutique farm that has been in the Taylor family for six decades.

The “for sale” sign has gone up on Tamac Stud Farm near Walcha on the south-eastern fringe of the NSW Northern Tablelands.

Taylor says Walcha “is brilliant horse country, as good as any horse country in Australia” and who can argue?

Two Melbourne Cup winners, including one of the unlikeliest of them all in Knight’s Choice, and a Golden Slipper hero, were raised in the district.

The air is clean but it gets cold in Walcha. Winter is approaching, bringing the end of an era closer for a farm that started as a sheep and cattle venture and morphed into a property dedicated to breeding racehorses.

Taylor and his wife Cath will take another step towards their retirement plan when they present a Tamac draft during the Magic Millions National Sales series.

They will offer weanlings and broodmares to sign off as longstanding but unheralded commercial vendors who were among the first to support the Magic Millions concept when it was launched in unison with a Gold Coast economic boom in 1986.

“We’ve been in the game a long time … in the inaugural year of the Magic Millions operation we were selling horses here,” Taylor told The Straight from the auction house’s Gold Coast complex during the week.

“We’ve got six weanlings up here and five mares, and that’s pretty well cleaned me up. A couple of mares I’m going to keep.”

One of those mares staying put is the dam of Lisztomania, a horse Taylor sold for $27,000 as a yearling and bought back online for $1000 as an unraced three-year-old needing an operation to remove a bone chip.

It’s been good business.

Lisztomania breaks a 733-day drought in winning the TAB Highway at Randwick with @mcacajamez in the saddle for Todd Payne pic.twitter.com/gHnp3WcLmE

— SKY Racing (@SkyRacingAU) February 8, 2025

Lisztomania has amassed more than $460,000 in prize money with the promise of more to come after he was narrowly denied in the Country Championships Final at Randwick.

“He would be the highlight of my racing and breeding career,” the 64-year-old Taylor said.

“I’m just very fortunate that he’s come into my life this late in my life. I haven’t had one as good as him.

“And we’ve had some pretty fair horses, but I think he’s probably as good a horse as we had.”

Taylor’s father Geoff founded Tamac in 1965 when one broodmare purchase turned into another. And then another.

“We’re going back a few years now but it just accumulated from there. As it does,” Taylor said.

“I think Dad told Mum he had three mares and he might have had 10 tucked away in a paddock somewhere. It just kept going.”

Stallions followed such as the 1971 Goodwood Cup winner Rock Roi, Star Way’s brother Piazetta and Mosgiel, a son of Noble Bijou, the champion New Zealand stallion who has had a profound and ongoing effect on Taylor’s relationship with the thoroughbred.

He first crossed paths with Noble Bijou when learning his trade under Brian Anderton, the founder of White Robe Lodge who is revered as a legend of the New Zealand thoroughbred industry.

“Brian was extremely influential in my life and you remember those things,” Taylor said.

“You grow up with the things you learned. It’s funny because of where we’re situated in Walcha, we’re a little bit isolated from the Hunter Valley and I’ve still kept the same procedures going that he taught me back in the late 1970s.”

But while old-school horsemanship will always be relevant, the dynamics of being a small breeder have changed, especially since Taylor took over the running of Tamac after his father died in 2014.

There has been an abrupt shift in the Australian ownership model that has had an impact during sales time and buyers have become more risk-averse and discerning.

Another factor is the proliferation of imports purchased for their stamina has also lessened demand for Australian horses bred on staying lines.

Sourcing better broodmares to keep pace with industry leaders has also become problematic.

“That bottom end of the market is well is truly gone … that just how it is,” Taylor said.

“And it’s very hard to buy mares to get you into the top end of the sales when you’re competing against the big boys like Coolmore, Yulong and Newgate. They’ve got the money.

“I think from five years ago, you could see it coming. But I don’t think that anybody in the industry – in small business in this industry – saw how quickly it was going to evolve. 

“It’s hard to sell horses that are sort of on that next level down.”

“That bottom end of the market is well is truly gone … that just how it is.” – Mark Taylor

What isn’t lost as the Taylors step away will be the friendships made and the goodwill created over the years.

Taylor says there is a grassroots connection to his clients that has never been taken for granted and that has been the lifeblood of Tamac’s existence.

“Everybody’s interested in small business because generally small business is a mum-and-dad entity,” he said.

“You know every customer that comes through the door and that’s important. My clients are the same. They’ve been with me for a long time.” 

Taylor is well advanced in his plans to move to the NSW north coast where the climate is more agreeable with his rheumatoid arthritis and the fishing is good.

There are contingencies in place if Tamac remains on the market for an extended time but the national sales loom as a final hurrah.

“I’ve left my best mares to last, and I’m hoping they will go out in a blaze of glory. I’m hoping that they’ll be well-received at the market,” Taylor says.

“They’re the mares that I have spent a few years trying to accumulate. But hopefully, we’ll be able to get out of them and from there we’ll just see how we’re going.

“It’s sad that way, but look, things go on and life goes on. You’ve got to think of your health and your family more so than the industry that you love at the moment.”