A classic ride by J Mac on Matusalem
Presenter: Terry Rea
There’s something a little different about this week’s Country Cup.
Usually, Race Day Co arrives in town as a visitor.
We do our homework, dig through the history, find the characters, look for the places worth visiting and try to discover what makes each town tick before eventually finding our way to the racecourse.
This week we don’t have quite as far to travel.
We’re home.
The Wyong Cup brings us to the Central Coast, and this time Terry is taking over the tour.
So before the horses head onto the track on Friday, come for a wander.
There’s a racecourse with a story stretching back more than 150 years, a town built on timber, farming and the railway, a lighthouse that has watched over the coast since 1903, a few good places for a feed and a cold drink, and some people who have helped make the Central Coast what it is.
And somewhere at the end of all that, there’s a Cup to be run.
Cup days have been bringing Wyong together for generations.
Before There Was a Wyong Racecourse
Horse racing around Wyong goes back a lot further than the racecourse we know today.
The story begins in 1875.
The first racecourse was established in a paddock south of Woodbury’s Inn at West Wyong. There was just one rather significant problem.
The track was considered too rough on the horses.
So racing moved around.
Meetings were also held at Blue Gum Flats around the Ourimbah district before another course was established near Tuggerah Lake.
And it was there, on 26 and 27 January 1898, that the Wyong Jockey Club held a two-day meeting regarded as the forerunner of the Cup carnival.
The club’s first secretary, William B. Woodbury, certainly knew how to promote a race meeting.
He promised racegoers a carnival of merrymaking, drinking, feasting and dancing.
More than 125 years later, we’re not entirely convinced the Country Cup formula has changed all that much.
Special trains brought racegoers from Sydney and Newcastle at a time when Wyong township itself had a population of only around 200.
Getting there was one thing.
Getting home was another.
There was no traffic bridge across the Wyong River, so people returning from the Tuggerah course could find themselves waiting with horses, buggies and sulkies for their turn on a primitive winch-operated punt attached to a wire rope.
Then there was the weather.
The Tuggerah course was prone to flooding.
Eventually racing needed somewhere better to call home.
Around 1912, sawmiller and timber merchant George Goldsmith and John O’Neill were involved in establishing the first racecourse in the town of Wyong itself.
More than a century later, racing is still there.
Today Wyong Race Club conducts 22 meetings a year and has become an important part of provincial racing in New South Wales, with modern training facilities including a Polytrack surface and two sand tracks.
It’s quite a journey.
From a rough paddock in 1875…
to horses and sulkies queuing for a punt across the river…
to the modern Wyong Racecourse preparing once again for Cup Day.
And on Friday, another little piece gets added to the story.
The railway didn’t simply bring people to Wyong. It helped build the town.
The Town the Railway Helped Build
To understand Wyong, you need to look beyond the shops and traffic of the town you see today.
The district was once very different.
Timber was king.
When the Sydney–Newcastle railway opened up easier transport in the late nineteenth century, the timber industry around Wyong boomed.
The forests around Wyong, Jilliby, Yarramalong and Wyong Creek provided enormous quantities of hardwood, and Wyong became a major centre for the industry.
So much timber was moving through Wyong railway station that in 1892 another crane was authorised to handle logs weighing up to ten tons.
Think about that next time you’re waiting for a train at Wyong.
The railway didn’t simply carry passengers.
It helped build the town.
But industries change.
As timber declined, dairying grew.
By the 1930s more than 200 local farmers were sending milk into Wyong for processing.
Then poultry farming became another major industry, particularly around Kanwal and Warnervale, which grew into important egg-producing areas.
And gradually another Wyong began to emerge.
Better transport, tourism, new industries and the growing attraction of life between Sydney and Newcastle brought more people to the district.
Farms became suburbs.
Quiet roads became busy ones.
The little township grew into part of what we now know as the Central Coast.
Yet look around carefully and pieces of the old district are still there.
The railway still runs through the heart of Wyong.
The river still winds its way past.
The valleys and rural country are never very far away.
And the horses are still racing.
Perhaps that’s one of the nicest things about Wyong Cup Day.
For a few hours, in the middle of a region that has changed enormously, people gather around a sport that has been part of the district since 1875.
A Central Coast landmark keeping watch over the Pacific since 1903.
If You’ve Got Another Day…
Now this is where Terry takes the tourist brochure off us.
Because if you’ve come to Wyong for the Cup and you’ve got another day to spare, there’s somewhere he reckons you should go.
Head towards Norah Head.
Leave the car behind for a while and take the walk through the coastal bush towards the lighthouse.
And then suddenly there it is.
White against the blue of the Pacific, Norah Head Lighthouse has been standing watch over this stretch of coastline since 1903.
It was built after years of concern about ships navigating the coast between Sydney and Newcastle, and its light was first exhibited in November that year.
More than 120 years later it remains one of the Central Coast’s great landmarks.
But you don’t need to be a lighthouse historian to enjoy it.
Walk.
Take your time.
Look out across the Pacific.
Head down towards the rock platform or Lighthouse Beach if the mood takes you.
And when you’ve finished, you’ve got decisions to make.
If coffee is your cup of tea, Terry reckons the Norah Head Beach Haus is worth a visit.
If you’d rather sit back with a cold drink and an ocean view, wander towards Soldiers Beach Surf Life Saving Club.
A local watering hole, a good feed and, according to Terry, a very well-kept beer.
Nothing Beats a Cold Beer and Pizza
But if the day has reached that wonderful stage where a great pizza and a properly poured beer sound about right, there’s another local recommendation. Norah Head Sporties.
It’s the sort of place a group of mates can settle into very comfortably. And apparently there’s a reason the beer has a reputation.
Rusty has one important job handed down by the old directors: Keep the lines clean and keep the beer right. According to Terry, Rusty takes the responsibility very seriously.
And if Greg and his lovely wife Jenny happen to be around, say hello. Greg is one of the dedicated directors and, between the two of them, their heart is very much in the club. Places like this aren’t really built by bricks, bars and bowling greens. They’re built by people who care about them.
So grab the pizza, enjoy the company and sample what Terry reckons might just be some of the best-kept beer on the Central Coast. There is, however, one important piece of Race Day Co travel advice. Choose the designated driver before the first round.
If Terry’s assessment of Rusty’s work is accurate, you may be there for a while.
From football to local government, Lawrie’s story became part of the Central Coast story.
The People Who Make a Place
Every town has buildings.
Every town has dates.
But eventually the story of a place comes back to its people.
And there are plenty of Central Coast stories we could tell.
For this first visit, though, one bloke seems particularly appropriate.
A Scotsman named Lawrie McKinna.
Lawrie came to Australia through football and eventually made the Central Coast home.
When the new national A-League competition began, the Central Coast Mariners were one of its original clubs.
They weren’t expected to set the world on fire.
Lawrie was their inaugural head coach.
And in that very first A-League season, he took the Mariners all the way to the Grand Final.
They lost 1–0 to Sydney FC, but something much bigger had happened.
The Central Coast had a team of its own.
A team people could identify with.
A team kids could grow up supporting.
Lawrie would ultimately take the Mariners to two A-League Grand Finals, as well as a minor premiership, and became one of the most recognisable sporting figures on the Coast.
But his connection with the community didn’t finish when he left the coaching bench.
In 2012 he stood as an independent for Gosford City Council, was elected, and shortly afterwards his fellow councillors elected him mayor.
And today, after returning to local government, Lawrie McKinna is Mayor of the Central Coast.
There’s something rather fitting about that journey.
A Scottish-born football man arrives on the Central Coast, helps build a football club that gives the region an identity on the national stage, makes the place his home and years later becomes its mayor.
Sport has a funny way of connecting people to places.
Which, when you think about it, brings us rather neatly back to where we started.
AND NOW… THE CUP
Wyong has changed enormously since horses first raced across that rough paddock in 1875.
The timber trains have gone.
The dairy farms have largely disappeared.
Nobody needs a horse and sulky to queue for a punt across the river after the last race.
But the racehorses are still here.
And this Friday, people will once again make their way to Wyong Racecourse for one of the great days on the local racing calendar.
Later in the week, when the final field is known, Tommy can look up from his desk, Kenny can cast his eye over the runners and, if anybody manages to locate Finn, perhaps he’ll have something to say as well.
But that can wait.
Because the Wyong Cup isn’t only about which horse crosses the line first.
It’s an excuse to come to town.
To discover somewhere you haven’t been.
To meet somebody you didn’t know.
To take the long way home.
And perhaps to find a good pizza and a very well-kept beer along the way.
For most of our Country Cup journey, Race Day Co has been traveling around New South Wales discovering other people’s towns.
This week feels a little different.
This week, welcome to ours
The morning of the Cup has arrived
Tommy & Terry Talk the Wyong Cup
TERRY: Cup Day tomorrow, Tommy.
Have a look at this field. What are you thinking?
TOMMY: I’ve done the form. Matusalem, Bella Montagna and Elliptical. Box the three in a quinella and now you can leave me alone.
TERRY: Is that it mate ? You’re not even going to shop around ?
TOMMY: Nope, no need to.
TERRY: Matusalem’s $2.50. I reckon we’ll find better than that somewhere.
TOMMY: And there you go again Terry, just like a few years ago.
TERRY: What do mean Tommy ?
TOMMY: Remember the ‘97 Melbourne Cup? I settled on Might And Power and Doriemus for the quinella. You spent half the day running around trying to find the best price for Nick Moraitis’s Might And Power.
TERRY: And I found it !
TOMMY: You did. I sat down, socialised, watched the race and still got the bickies with the quinella.
TERRY: It was only a whisker in it, mate. Even Greg Hall thought he’d won on Doriemus.
TOMMY: Didn’t matter. Still paid. 😏
TERRY: Righto, Mr Sensible. I’m having something on Eliyass.
TOMMY: With 62 kilos?
TERRY: Nash Rawiller. Last-start winner. It’s Cup Day. You’ve got to have a little adventure and the class runner.
TOMMY: Fine. You have your adventure. I’ll have my quinellas
TERRY: If he was here now, the olde man would be sitting here grinning at the pair of us.
TOMMY: Yeah, Dad would probably have already backed the winner. ❤️ That’s enough now Terry, I'll mind your spot.
Home of the Wyong Gold Cup, and more than 150 years of racing history.
A DAY AT THE RACES
Wyong Country Cup Review 2026
The Wyong Cup delivered exactly what a good Cup day should: a big crowd, plenty of colour, a wonderful atmosphere and, when the feature arrived, a performance worthy of the occasion.
Matusalem claimed the 2026 Wyong Cup for trainer Chris Waller with James McDonald aboard, adding another chapter to one of the Central Coast’s great racing days.
For Race Day Co’s Terry, however, Cup Day was about much more than watching one race.
After months spent writing about country racing from behind a computer screen, this was an opportunity to get amongst it. From the packed public areas to the parade ring and the excitement surrounding the horses and jockeys before the Cup, Wyong offered a fascinating look at what a modern race day has become.
“It was great to mingle in the crowd,” Terry said, “but also to be fortunate enough to get close to the action.”
And there was plenty to observe.
One particularly interesting encounter came with one of the on-course bookmakers. It started as a simple hello and became a fascinating conversation about a part of racing that has changed enormously over the years.
The bookmaker’s bag and betting tickets may have largely given way to laptops, screens and electronic transactions, but the bookmaker himself is still there.
Race Day Co hopes to explore that changing world further, perhaps through an exclusive conversation with an on-course bookmaker about what it is like to operate today, how Cup meetings differ from ordinary race days, and whether there is still a future for one of racing’s oldest traditions.
For Terry, Wyong was also the first opportunity to experience a major Cup meeting through the eyes of Race Day Co rather than simply as another racegoer.
And perhaps that was the biggest lesson of the day.
Country racing isn’t only about what happens during the couple of minutes when the horses are running.
It’s the people, the traditions, the characters, the conversations and the thousands of little stories happening around the track.
We went to Wyong looking for a Cup winner.
We came home with a notebook full of stories.
WYONG - WYONG CUP
The Markets Had been Set on Friday
Matusalem earned Big Dance eligibility through the 2026 Wyong Cup.
Follow the 2026 Big Dance field, qualifiers and ballot picture on Race Day Co’s
Road to Randwick.