Unloved and unvarnished for 25 years, Warwick Farm, under the gun from the very start of Peter V’landys’ tenure in charge of Racing New South Wales, has remarkably emerged as the possible saviour of the Australian Turf Club’s plan to sell Rosehill.
The Liverpool City Council has been imploring the Australian Turf Club to spare a tin of paint for the fence at Warwick Farm racecourse for the better part of 10 years.
Former Council CEO Kiersten Fishburn told a parliamentary inquiry last year that she spent four years in the job, from 2016 to 2020, badgering the ATC to paint the external fence of the much-worn western Sydney racecourse.
“I'm sad to say it has not yet been completed,” she said. “I'll keep on trying until I see that fence painted.”
It was a rare humorous exchange in an otherwise tense Rosehill parliamentary inquiry, but one which pointed to how neglected Warwick Farm had become in an era where New South Wales racing has never had so much money.
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