Romanos Hotel, Wagga, Bernborough and the allure of SHONK

 

    For mine, there’s an irresistible attraction in tales involving shonk. 

     Shonk as we Australians use it, as in a bit ropey. 

    Shonky businessmen, shonky politicians, shonky repairmen, shonky retreads on a suss looking car bought from a shonky used-car salesman. 

     Shonk is the bloke who talks out the corner of his mouth, who slips you some folding from the back of his hand as he scans the room, who’d prefer to make a dishonest 50 cents than an honest dollar. It doesn’t have the stench of corruption, just a way less acrid wiff. And give me a sniff of shonk and I’m out of my seat. 

     And right now that trail’s led me to Wagga Wagga because it was a total shonk who first put this place on the world stage. 

    From 1866, when Thomas Castro, the town’s own local butcher first claimed to be a member of the British aristocracy, dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of editors around the globe set ‘Wagga’ into type
for the very first time. And very soon they used it again. And again. Castro, who also called himself “Arthur Orton” reckoned he was the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy. And he went to court in England in a wasted effort to prove his case. He failed, was convicted of perjury and had a decent stint as a guest of HM. 

     Obviously Wagga Wagga had a soft spot for this bloke who blazed the trail so that other versions of those special bullshit artists who invent their own pasts - from Breaker Morant (who claimed to be a

noble bastard), to King O’Malley (who was sure at various times of being born in 3 different places), to James Crouch/Keatinge (who loved impersonating priests of all things) – had a guiding light.

     Castro/Orton was known to all as the ‘Tichborne Claimant’ and there’s a street named in his honour in one of the better parts of Wagga. The claimant was royalty of shonk and fully deserves his own column (he met his future wife – pregnant at the time- at the Black Swan at the north of town) but I mention him now because I’m chasing another shonk-infested story that, 80 years after the Barren Baron, brought Wagga into the news again. 

    This time it was because of a fella – also not using his birth-name – who bought the town’s Commercial Hotel which’d been taken over by the RAAF during WW2 and whilst commandeered by them, the upper storeys had been destroyed by fire. When the air-force vacated, only the ground-floor was operational and the place was ripe for the picking by a cashed-up entrepreneur with experience in hospitality and a vison and imagination of the joint’s potential. 

     

Step up “Dazzlin’ Azzalin” as the newspaper, ‘Truth’ dubbed him. 

        Now even the esteemed Australian Dictionary of Biography gets the name he was christened in Padua, Italy wrong but by the time he arrived in Sydney he’d changed - legally by deed poll - from ‘Orlando Azzalin’ to ‘Azzalin Orlando Romano’ because he was ‘tired of spelling my surname for people’. 

     By 1945 Romano had high visibility in Sydney, running one of the town’s most fashionable restaurants but soon his national profile went sky high when he became the owner of a horse which grew to become the entire country's favourite racehorse. 

     In October ’45, just a month after the end of the war, and for just £2,600 Romano had bought a stallion called ‘Bernborough’ from its connections in Queensland. I’ll get back to these connections in a bit, but “Bernie’s” first race under Romano’s ownership was in the Villiers at Randwick 3 days before Christmas. And Bernborough won. 

     Four days later he won the Carrington at the same track and a month later, again at Randwick took out the Australia Day Handicap. Next month he was taken to Melbourne where he lead the field home in the Futurity and the Newmarket before heading back to New South where on consecutive weeks in April Bernbourough won the Rawson, the Chipping Norton and the All Aged Stakes. 

    Then Romano took this wonder horse north where he led the field home in the Doomben Ten Thousand and repeated the performance a week later in the Doomben Cup. Bernborough was the Tulloch, the Phar Lap, the Winx the Black Caviar of his time, only (figuratively) on steroids. He was the idol of millions, giving hope to a nation just coming out of 6 years of war. 

     Now Romano’s eponymous restaurant in Sydney was an inexhaustible cash-cow but the endless prize money made for even fuller pockets. And bulging pockets are restless pockets. 

     The Bellair family had run the Commercial Hotel in Wagga – midway between Sydney and Melbourne – from 1885 until 1928 when they sold it to a Wagga syndicate. And when they in turn decided to call stumps on the mostly non-operational pub in early 1946 Romano saw the opportunity, pulled the whip and rode his luck along the rails. 

     The Border Mail of Feb 7th reported the sale was a done deal but there must’ve been some stone in the shoe – maybe a red-tape issue because it was sold ‘pending approval

from the Federal Treasurer’ and – seeing as it was just five months since the end of WW2, they might’ve had other stuff in their pannikins to worry about. 

     Anyway, there was some hitch and then six months later when the place went to auction Azzalin O Romano was the only bidder. He sure knew how many beans make five and he wasn’t going to bid against himself. The Commercial was passed in but following a chat, the vendors were sweet when he offered to stump up thirty-five large. 

    In folding. 

 The local paper announced the purchase and advise Romano that all he had to do to get the entire town onside would be to ride Bernborough down the main street. Dazzlin Azzalin didn’t saddle up, but every time Bernborough won, raced, travelled or just trained Romano and Wagga were mentioned. The horse’s success brought people to the town and to the owner’s hotel. 

     The pub was a decent fit for a racing man - for a bloke who one day shared a newspaper page with what came to be known as ‘colourful identities’ like Sammy Lee and Perce Galea. For thirty years out front of the Commercial loitering had been an issue, usually by ‘cockatoos’ for, and customers of, the SP bookies inside the pub. Arrests and charges were regular but a bookie at the pub was something you could bet on. 

     Now any echo room in Romano’s pockets from his cash purchase was soon sorted when Bernborough won the Warwick Stakes at Randwick two weeks after he forked over for the hotel. 

     Back in November 1864 when Wagga’s spanking new Commercial hotel was advertised for sale, it was modestly described as “the best house between Sydney and Melbourne,” and A.O.R. was
determined to restore it back to this mantle. He didn’t waste time getting out of the gate engaging an architect, Reg Grout, to design a new magnificence around the old brick shell, and he got Max Cooper to build it. 

     A month after the purchase, the Wagga licensing board met and ordered the Commercial hotel to be demolished and rebuilt, stipulating that the new hotel must contain at least seventy bedrooms for public accommodation. Romano submitted his plans and on March 8th 1947, received permission to renovate the hotel at a cost of £25,000. The build ended up taking two years and Romano was charged for exceeding the permitted spend of £25,000 by about double. The wrist-slap fine was just £50. 

     In Sept 1948 the building site was declared black by the BWIU because they didn’t like the attitude of the overseer and in April 1949 charges were brought against Romano that he built parts of the hotel without consent. The CSM found the offences proved but that they ‘were of a minor nature and would probably conserve materials’ and dismissed the charge 

     The hotel – featuring Wagga’s first lift - finally opened in 1949 to much fanfare and in the next few years it hosted Field Marshalls, Knights, Consuls, Government Ministers, dignitaries of every shape and of course regular punters bent on brushes with fame. In 1951 it hosted the All Blacks Rugby team who were probably oblivious to the fact that the 76 years earlier, the Commercial had hosted the English “Shaw’s Cricket Eleven” led by one of the truly great sportsmen of the time: Alfred Shaw. 

     Shaw took the first wicket in Test Cricket and helped organise the inaugural British Lions Rugby Union tour of Australia and New Zealand – a tour which involved 55 matches, 35 under rugby rules and the rest under Australian rules. These were interesting guests. 

     Eventually in February 1952 the Courts gave Romano permission to change the name of his hotel and “Romano’s Commercial Hotel” became simply “Romano’s Hotel” and that’s the way it’s stayed. 

     Azzalin Romano finally put his pub on the market in Valentines Day 1966. After a luncheon for bidders at the Duke of Kent Hotel, bidding began slowly until it was passed in at ninety-seven thousand. Later that day Romano phoned Bill Morgan, the highest bidder, and they agreed on a neat one hundred grand. Morgan offered to have the deed drawn up. 

     But this was no ordinary February 14th. Decimal currency had been introduced to Australia that morning and old-school Romano had been talking pounds, but Morgan was dealing in dollars that were not yet 24 hours old. And he was canny enough to not mention it. When the dust had settled, words of honour given and hands shaken, Morgan had locked Dazzlin Azzalin into a sale for half of what Romano had thought was agreed. 

     Bill Morgan enforced the contract and A. O. Romano was out of his showpiece pub, the hotel that Bernborough had built and for the rest of his life, Morgan was known as “Half Price Bill”. 

     Now shonk don’t get purer than that sort of caper but if Romano had time to sit back and ponder, he just might’ve caught the irony of it all. 

     See, you know those Queensland connections from who he bought the stallion back around Christmas ’45? Well, get your feet in the irons because we ain’t finished with the shonks of this saga just yet. 

     Bernborough, by Emborough (imp) out of Bern Maid, was bred in Oakey, Queensland in 1941 by a bloke named Harry Winton and when Winton died soon after Bernborough’s birth, the dam and foal were sold as a single lot to, (maybe) John (“Jack”), but probably his father, Frank, Bach. 

     Now six months before he paid for Bernborough, Frank Bach had another runner win a Trial at Ascot in Brisbane. It ran under the name of ‘Daylate’ – a four year-old gelding - and, heavily backed, the thing trounced the other runners. By chance an off-duty QTC country stipe, Steve Bowen, was at Ascot that day and he thought this roughie looked familiar - too familiar - to a rising 2 year-old he’d seen in the bush named ‘Brulad’. 

     Long story short, this was a classic old-school ring-in. Bach and Brulad were the Hayden Haitana and Fine Cotton of their time. Brulad couldn’t be found (Bach said later he’d died and been burnt). Bach senior and Daylate were banned

for life whilst both Bach and his son, Jack, stood trial for conspiracy. They got off but Frank, the father, was forbidden any further involvement in racing and banned from all racetracks for life. 

     And this is where it gets murky because it was Frank who signed the cheque to buy Bernborough and his dam despite him claiming it was just a loan to his son. The racing establishment thought this way too shonky and banned Bernborough – because it was owned by a warned-off identity - from all tracks except Toowoomba. 

     There was what was probably a sham sale to a mate – Albert Hadwen - which again the QTC didn’t buy and so after the horse had won eleven races at Toowoomba, Hadwen asked Harry Plant, an ex-Queenslander then training in Sydney, to take the horse on. But the NSW racing authorities wouldn’t let Bernborough start either so on October 5th 1945 the stallion was put up for auction. 

    Plant had a colleague who he knew was looking for a promising horse and he encouraged this man of ‘swarmy charm’ to buy the horse. That man was Azzalin Romano and the rest is history. 

     And so, as he sat back in 1966 after being dudded in a shonky deal, from 50% of the sale price on his beloved hotel, the hotel that Bernborough helped build, maybe, just maybe Dazzlin Azzalin appreciated the irony that, without another, a race-fixing ringer-in shonk up in Queensland, none of any other would’ve happened. 

     Aaaah shonk, don't you just love it?