Dar Lunn reckons he was 14, maybe 15, but they’re only minor details. He does remember it was the old dusty Baradine races, though. He was minding his own business as a horse-mad teen, one who had dabbled in bull and steer riding as a kid, when the PA crackled to life.

Dar Lunn, are you on course?

He was, but so were many other people. What could the stewards and the secretary possibly want to see him for?

“They said, ‘Are you still riding trackwork?’ I wasn’t an apprentice or anything,” Lunn said with a laugh.

They were down a rider for the next race, and in true country style, needed someone to step up for it to go ahead. Lunn wasn’t even an apprentice, let alone a fully fledged rider, but he chucked on some gear and was legged aboard a horse with apparently no rider.

“The horse ran third,” he said. “They said, ‘When you turn the right age, you can just start riding’.”

So he did, fulfilling an ambition that still has him riding his best horse in trackwork most days at the age of 64 – nearly 50 years since his first race ride.

“We weren’t big people [in our family],” Lunn said. “I went to school at Walgett – 44 miles in, 44 miles out on the bus – and I had an old uncle in there, and he said, ‘Why don’t you come in and stay and ride trackwork for me?’ I was about 10 or 11, so that’s what I did; I rode work in the morning and then went to school.

“When I was about 14 years and nine months the teacher said, ‘What are you going to do when you leave school?’ I said, ‘I’m going to become a jockey’. He said, ‘You can leave when you’re 14 years and nine months’. The very next day I brought in a letter to him and said, ‘I’ll be gone tomorrow’.”