Team effort of volunteers powering Prairie Jockey Club

By Andrew Smith

The saying goes that many hands make light work and that has never been truer than at the Prairie Jockey Club.

Such is the team effort from all the volunteers there, they could not land on just one person to nominate for the Racing Queensland Cheer A Volunteer Award.

Instead, the entire 15-person committee of the Flinders Shire club are the proud recipients of the prize for this month.

Club secretary Christine Bode said she had a difficult time when it came to submitting the nomination.

“There is not one person at the Prairie Jockey Club I could single out because everyone puts their heart and soul into our club,” Christine said.

“We a small country outback racing club town where 95 per cent of our volunteers come from properties where they live and work around the district here.

“When it comes time for committee meetings, working bees and the race meeting, everyone just pulls together and we get jobs done.

“We’ve got a great committee and community that is behind us 100 per cent of the way.”

Christine herself has been involved for the club for around 30 years, and secretary for the last five, while husband Bob takes care of the track which sits around 30 minutes’ drive outside Hughenden.

The club hosts one race day a year, usually around August or September, with the 2024 meeting attracting the biggest crowd ever of about 450 people.

While it may not seem like a significant figure, it is a huge turnout for a town that has a population of just over 100 people.

Of that population, around half of them are regularly engaged to help out on the big day.

“We have to have about 50 volunteers on a race day, and we all have our different parts to play on the day, but when it comes to working bees, we’re all in it,” Christine said.

“There’s welding and doing whatever else we have to do before the races and then we have many of the community that come and help us on the day that do video or help with barriers.

“The school kids even have a day where they come out on the Friday before we race and they pick up rocks and they put in the hard work too, those little kids.”

That community spirit will be put to good use with the club needing to do a big clean up ahead of racing later in the year.

The track facilities were inundated following a flood in January.

“It went through all the buildings - through all the toilets, showers, the stewards’ room, the jockeys’ room,” Christine explained.

“We have a creek that backs on to the track…the same thing happened in 2019 where we had another flood go through everything.

“We will have to clean out everything again so we are going to have a very big working bee coming up!”

Christine and Bob are not close to stepping away from their roles anytime soon but are confident the future of their little race club is in good hands.

“There’s quite a few older generation people still around on the committee but it is made up of a very younger generation which is good,” Christine said.

“It is so important to keep racing – most of it is down in the big cities and for us to keep our little town racing is an effort to everyone.

“It’s a big effort put in by everyone around here because they love their little town and community.

“We’ve been going for over 100 years and we want to keep it going for sure.”

Clubs are encouraged to nominate their valued volunteers for the award, which is sponsored by Neil Mansell Transport & Mittys.

State-wide, there are more than 8,300 volunteers who make an invaluable contribution to the industry, providing their time and expertise to sustain Queensland’s three codes of racing.

Click here for more information on Cheer A Volunteer and to nominate.