Written In The Stars – Basil Nolan and a Raheen tale of triumph and tragedy

They say that loss teaches us the worth of things, but Basil Nolan will tell you it’s a lesson he didn’t need to learn.

Eight years ago, his life was reset when his son and heir apparent, Basil Jr, was killed in a baling accident at just 45 years old. For Nolan, there was life before that day, and there’s the life he has lived every day since.

“They say that time heals everything, but it will take a long time to heal this,” he tells The Straight. “You just keep going because that’s what he’d want us to be doing.”

The accident that took Basil Jr’s life shook the foundations of rural southeast Queensland, where the Nolan family has run Raheen Stud since 1957. Basil Jr left behind Natalie, his wife, and their four young children.

In a television interview, Natalie confessed that she didn’t want the tragedy to define her children, but, inevitably, it is something that is twisted and weaved into the story of modern Raheen. At one point, it got too much.

“Everyone has those thoughts, at times, that maybe they should get out,” Nolan says. “I had a fleeting moment in the middle of 2019 when we’d lost Bas the year before and then we had the worst drought ever.

“When Bas died, I also said I was going to cut down, but I’ve done a bugger of a job doing that.”

Nolan is 80 years old. He is still doing the work of a man half his age. He doesn’t complain about it or martyr himself, and he’ll tell you only that it’s been hard but you get on with it and do the best you can.

“You don’t get everything right but you try your best,” he says. “And that’s all you can do because you can’t undo things, that’s for sure.”

Raheen is one of Queensland’s most well-known generational farms. It was established in 1957 by Nolan’s parents, initially as a dairy farm.

Nolan’s mother, along with older brother Paul (who died just last year), were responsible for leaning the family business into racehorses, and it was shortly after the establishment of the farm that they bought the imported stallion Boxwood from their neighbours at Lyndhurst Stud.

Boxwood had already sired the brilliant Queensland horse Earlwood, and he was a worthy foundation stallion for Raheen. He was followed in later years by horses like the grey Gracious Knight, which Nolan considers among the best of sires the farm has seen.

“We bought Boxwood before we even had any mares, so we went about it the wrong way,” Nolan says. “The stallion game is something you need to be mindful of. It can be very fruitful if you get a good stallion.

“Gracious Knight was probably the best we had. He got 18 foals in his first year and he only stood for three years, which was a tragedy. We’ve had a bit of luck with a few stallions like him. None have been leading sires, but they’ve been quite good in their own right.”

In the years since Gracious Knight, which have seen Raheen stand horses like Heroic Valour, Golden Archer, Dodge and Shovhog, only one other has been a grey. It was Top Ranked, who won the Epsom Handicap at Randwick in 2022.

The Irish import promised the world through two breeding seasons that attracted over a hundred mares apiece, but on the anniversary of Basil Jr’s death last year, the horse was put down after a long illness.

“They’ve got a bad record, the greys,” Nolan says. “At the time I got Top Ranked, I’d said I wasn’t going to stand stallions, and since Bas died I’ve refused so many horses. But Luke Murrell (of Australian Bloodstock) sent me his pedigree and I thought he was the ideal horse for Queensland.

“He was a good two-year-old himself, but better at 1400 and that’s what we need in Queensland as a lot of our horses are thousand-metre types, and a lot of Queensland mares are bred like that. He was a lovely horse to do anything with and it’s a shame because he has thrown some nice foals.”

Raheen has averaged two stallions at a time through its 70-plus years. At one time there were four, and right now there are none.

Possibly in different generational circumstances, there might be a stallion or two still in residence.

And that is the tragedy of the modern Raheen story, because with generational farms like this one, the patriarch often steps back to allow the next ones through. Nolan hasn’t been able to do that, having no choice but to keep on at his age.

And it’s been a long road. He took over Raheen in 1972, when just 26 years old with two little girls.

“My father had a tumour on the brain. He went to 13 specialists and they couldn’t find out what was wrong with him. He was sick for 18 months before he died, so I was 26 when I took over the place,” he said.

Nolan was the middle son, named after his father. Older brother Paul became a notable trainer on the Darling Downs, and the Nolan clan is dotted widely around the districts. They are big families, and well-respected.

Basil met his wife, local girl Diane, at an Australia Day party and they married young, eventually having six children.

“I love him dearly,” Di tells The Straight. “We’ve had a long and happy life together with some ups and downs, but we think to find a way through them.”

Last month, at what was always known as the Magic Millions QTIS sale, Di was at home in Gladfield when her husband learned that he will be inducted into the Queensland Racing Hall of Fame in August. The honour was overwhelming, but so also was the fact of Di’s absence.

“I hated that she wasn’t there with me, to be quite honest,” Nolan says. “But it was a great honour.”

Often, with country folk raised on hard work and humility, words fail them when it comes to themselves. Nolan was standing next to Racing Queensland board member Graham Quirk, addressing a barbeque crowd of Queensland breeders, when he was surprised by the induction.

Quirk said that evening: “They say you shouldn’t single people out, but I’m about to.

“When you talk about the identification of racehorses through microchipping and DNA testing, when you talk about the breeders’ bonus scheme – QTIS – which has been fundamental to our state… I’m not saying you did all this by yourself, but you had a hand in all of these things and many other issues along that journey.

“I think it’s important, ladies and gentlemen, that you know and understand and recognise what has been a tremendous voluntary effort on the part of Basil Nolan.”

Nolan has been on breeders’ committees in Queensland since 1969, and, at a national level, on the board of Thoroughbred Breeders Australia (TBA) since its inception in 2005. He has been its president since 2014.

Enormous chunks of his personal life, away from running Raheen, have been spent on unpaid administration.

Quirk said that “at a time in life when other people would be putting their feet up, Basil is soldiering on, fighting the good fight and fighting it hard. He gets right to the core of an issue and he’s a fighter. Those three ingredients make for good, strong leadership.”

Trainer Peter Moody, though Melbourne-based these days, is one of the original boys of the bush and has been a friend of the Nolans for decades.

“It’s nearly kinship, to a degree,” Moody tells The Straight. “I feel very comfortable in their presence, and very comfortable in any sort of business relationships we’ve had. I was very good mates with Basil Jr, who’s sadly no longer with us.”

For trainers like Moody, who buy horses from and train horses for the Nolans, the succession stories that follow these intergenerational farms are important, be it Raheen, Widden, Yarraman, Waikato or Newhaven Park.

Inevitably, there is scrutiny about who is coming through and how. In the case of Raheen, all four of Basil Jr’s children have remained on the farm, with his oldest, Basil (the fourth Basil in the line), fully invested in his early twenties.

“You need the younger generations coming through,” Moody says. “But also, the dynamics of it probably get harder with each generation because there’s more kids and more mouths to feed.

“But whether they are hands-on on the farm or they go off and do their own thing, as Timmy Nolan (Basil Jr’s brother) did with Murrulla, you still want those people within the industry.”

The Nolans are well-practised in the delicate topic of succession. Nolan himself went through it with the death of his own father, though today his is a situation made more public by the death of Basil Jr. Quietly, people will talk about who will get Raheen and when, and like most bush families, the Nolans keep their business inhouse.

“Most people would find Bas a hard, tough bugger,” Moody says. “But if you needed a hand or you needed an ear to chew on, he’d be the first bastard to help you, and that takes you a long way in life.”

Nolan’s surprise at the Hall of Fame news last month demonstrated genuine humility. Before an audience, he nearly melted into the woodwork of the Magic Millions sale ring.

For a man who prides himself on knowing what’s going on all the time, he had no idea it was coming.

“There are a lot of unsung heroes in this business, so I don’t know why I should be singled out, but anyhow, that’s what happened,” he says. “The industry has been very good to me and very good to my family”, which he has repaid through decades of voluntary administration.

Still, it was never work to him. Paying it forward comes easily to this family.

“I didn’t realise it was a job,” he says. “I never, ever thought of it as a job.”