OBE UNPLUGGED - THERE IS NOTHING NEW ABOUT A WET SUMMER IN QUEENSLAND!

By Mark Oberhardt | Monday, March 4, 2013

Mark Oberhardt has been a racing and sports reporter for 40 years. He has written racing for the Courier Mail, Brisbane Telegraph, Sydney Sunday Telegraph, Sportsman, Australian Associated Press, etc. He has also written many sports columns including the Courier Mail’s The Ear. Mark has also been a regular on RadioTAB for 20 years. Mark’s personal blog, Obe Unplugged, will appear every Monday on HRO.

ANYONE who is born and bred Queensland would not be surprised that we have lost a few race meetings due to rain and floods of late.

I sometimes have a chuckle about the media's constant obsession with the weather. You would think wet weather in Queensland was something new.

I certainly feel sorry for those who have been hard hit by floods in recent years. I have several friends who have really been devastated, but the bottom line is that it is Queensland and between November and March we get heavy rain.

And that isn't just in the southeast corner!

Sure we go a few years where it is dry but generally it is our rainy season and every few years we get a bad cyclone.

The whole thing goes in cycles and that is a fact.

During my first few years as a journalist, in the 1970s, it felt like I covered nothing but floods. My workmates once joked if a bath tub overflowed in Cairns or Charleville I would be there.

Now that doesn't have much to do with a racing blog other than over the years it has obviously impacted greatly on meetings.

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I don't reckon anyone has ever come up with a solution.

For many years in Brisbane we had the all-weather Albion Park racetrack and the old BATC ran many of its December-February meetings at the old sand track.

I can even remember when the Queensland Turf Club ran four meetings on its sand inner track. The Gold Coast also regularly ran meetings on its sand track but since the Albion Park track was closed in 1981 we have struggled with the big wet.

Remember the super soppers which were the vogue in the 1980-90s.

I can remember writing a story for the now defunct Sunday Sun in which I declared we would never lose a meeting again after the introduction of super soppers. We had just raced at Eagle Farm after something like 400mm of rain in three days … but the soppers eventually were shown to run tracks into cement and are a thing of the past.

We have had all weather cushion tracks which I don't mind betting on. But I am in the minority there and we seem likely, once Toowoomba's is torn up, to only have one.

Luckily, Doomben and Eagle Farm have remained very good wet weather tracks, but you would be a fool to think they can stand up to all the big wet can bring.

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I see where there are plans for a new grandstand at Albion Park for harness racing.

I wonder if it is again time to think about reopening the "creek" for racing. By that I mean some night meetings and maybe as a back-up track when we do get the massive rainfalls.

I must admit to being biased as I loved creek meetings. I reckon the track would be ideal for night racing and it could only be a help to the current tenants of pacing and greyhounds.

But I wouldn't be holding my breath for it to ever happen.

Which means in the long term we will just have to take our chances with the wet … just as we have been doing for 40 years.

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