Mount Gambier Greyhound Racing Club

Tara Raceway, Lake Terrace East, Mount Gambier, SA

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Clubroom renovations ‘run into a brick wall’

Tara Raceway’s feature wall pictured in the late 1990s.

Steve Bartholomew’s involvement with the Mount Gambier Greyhound Racing Club goes back to where it all began – out at the Glenburnie racecourse in the late 1970s.

In fact, he handled Tara Topar, the first Mount Gambier Cup winner in 1981. Thirty-eight years later he would train his own winner in Galactic Athena. In between there had been a long stint as club president and life membership.

Last week he came into the under-renovation club office enquiring as to what had happened to his brick. He was, of course, referring to the brick feature wall in front of the stairs that led to the area housing stewards, lure driver and video operator.

Most certainly a labour of love, the feature wall had been part of a fundraising exercise instigated by volunteers to facilitate the building of the original clubrooms at Tara Raceway on Lake Terrace East.

Red bricks were sold with purchasers’ names later placed on the individual bricks which made up the feature wall – in place prior to the club’s first race meeting at its new track on January 25, 1997.

Brick purchasers came from far and wide. Even Brenton Scott, the current day Greyhound Racing SA Chief Executive Officer, had his name attached to a brick.

But Bartholomew and Scott’s names, along with plenty of others, have found their way into a brown paper bag after being removed from the feature wall which has now been covered with Gyprock.

Many long-term members of the South East Greyhound Racing Club/Mount Gambier Greyhound Racing & Coursing Club Inc., it would seem, believe they are quite within their rights in calling for the return of the red brick feature wall.

Bartholomew conceded that it went without saying that those associated with greyhound racing in the south east were certainly more than appreciative of the amount of work that is currently being undertaken in the clubrooms.

“But surely the feature wall is part of the club’s history and deserves to be treated as such,” he said.

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