Volcanic Express
You think of the sons of Street Cry (Machiavellian) enjoying success at stud and you think Pride Of Dubai, Per Incanto, Street Boss and of course Hualalai.
Whoa. Huala-who?
He’s a ten-year-old, he’s had only 16 runners, and on Saturday he became Australia’s newest stakes-winning stallion when his first-crop five-year-old Volcanic Express swooshed home from last to take the SAJC Hills Railway Stakes (Listed, 1100m) at Oakbank.
Pity Dad wasn’t around to enjoy it. Hualalai was sold last August – to Indonesia – where there’s some small scale racing and breeding going on. Cluster (Fastnet Rock) – sire of the Group 1 placed Promises Kept among others – also went there a couple of years ago, from Victoria’s Larneuk Farm.
That move took Hualalai well off breeding’s beaten track. He was already off it, having stood six seasons at South Australia’s Ducatoon Park at Kadina, some 90 minutes’ drive north-west of Adelaide at the top of the York Peninsula.
While he’s had a stakes success among five winners from little more than a dozen starters, and 108 live foals, clearly Hualalai hasn’t really made the Street Cry hall of fame.
He’ll go down as another who’s failed to quite breach the challenges of standing in South Australia, where the broodmare band has diminished in recent years to number, by estimates, less than 300.
Which is a shame, because he’s a beautifully-bred animal.
He was bred by Gerry Harvey, his first five dams were stakes winners. And he’s an older half-brother – out of Coolmore Classic (Gr 1, 1500m) winner Aloha (Encosta De Lago) – to two more stakes winners in I Am Invincible full-siblings Libertini and Hawaii Five Oh. The latter of those two is also setting out on his breeding career, about to serve his second book of mares at Vinery Stud for $16,500 (inc GST).
Hualalai (it’s a volcano in Hawaii) was a $625,000 purchase at the 2016 Magic Millions Gold Coast sale from Harvey’s Baramul Stud for Spendthrift Farm. Like that operation, he was a little ill-fated himself.
Trained by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, he raced seven times for two wins, topped by a 1400-metre Rosehill two-year-old handicap. He was being prepared for a Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) mission, with a fifth and a sixth at lower stakes levels in Melbourne, when a sesamoid injury ended his career.
Ducatoon Park’s Mark Toole, representing the third generation of one of South Australia’s most famed breeding families, received notification the horse was available with some urgency. His brother Steve was stallion manager at Spendthrift, having handled some fine sires in previous jobs including Redoute’s Choice (Danehill) and Street Cry himself.
“I got a phone call from Steve at about 4am one morning saying Hualalai was available,” says Toole, which begs the question of why the ungodly hour?
“I dunno. He was up, so he thought I should be up as well. That’s what brothers are for, I guess.”
Spendthrift had fancied standing Hualalai themselves, Mark said, but his injury came before he could acquire the necessary credentials to stand in Victoria. He was bound for South Australia.
There, he’d stand the next six seasons at $4,000 as Ducatoon’s second stallion beside the similarly-priced Barbados (Redoute’s Choice), the now-16-year-old who’s still going as one of only seven stallions listed on Arion as standing in the state.
“Hualalai wasn’t quite up to the Victorian market, but Spendthrift rehabilitated him and then sent him over here,” Toole says.
“We were keen on his pedigree. For South Australia, you’re not going to get a top class multiple Group 1–winning stallion, like in the eastern states. So you’ve got to forgive the racing form for the pedigree.”
Hualalai had at least landed in the right place to have the best chance.
Ducatoon is run by Mark’s parents Peter – now 84 – and Valmai. Peter and brother Brian took over breeding from their father Laurie, before Peter branched out from their jointly-run Kambula Stud to start his own farm. In 2005 Peter and Brian won SA’s prestigious Matrice Honour Award for their lifetime in breeding, a year before the title went to another icon of the state, Makybe Diva (Desert King). Brian died early last year.
Sharp and fit, Peter is still the first to the stable every morning.
“I’ve got no ambition to retire,” he tells It’s In The Blood. “It’s like an old car – you’ve got to keep using them. I can still mend a fence or weld something together, or as Mark says I can stand there and hold a hose well enough.”
The farm is named after the best horse Peter and Brian bred, and co-raced, but one who still leaves painful memories to this day.
Ducatoon (Gay Gambler) quickly became a folk hero around the tiny town of Kadina. A series of wins in Adelaide for trainer Lenny Smith launched an eastern states campaign, where as a three-year-old filly she ran fourth in the 1980 All-Aged Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m), prompting a Brisbane mission.
After running fourth in the Katies Cup (Gr 3, 1200m), it was decided to push on to the Stradbroke Handicap (Gr 1, 1400m).
“I watched the Katies Cup with [Melbourne trainer] Geoff Murphy,” Peter Toole tells It’s In The Blood. “He said she was on the wrong leg the whole way, so it was a pretty good run, so we decided to back up a week later in the Stradbroke.
“Peter Cook came looking for the ride. He was a genius on a horse that bloke. He rode her work on the Thursday and said, ‘That was good work; she’ll win’. Just like that.
“She was a leader. She drew barrier 18, but Cook had her in front after only about 100 metres and she stayed there and won.”
Pandemonium ensued. Toole beamed with pride at the presentation ceremony, after Ducatoon became just the second three-year-old filly to win the time-honoured race. Kadina was going off. Mark Toole still has a photo of himself with the Stradbroke silverware, aged three.
“The trophy sat in the window of a shop in the main street of town for a couple of weeks, and everyone admired it,” Peter Toole says. “The mare was much loved around town. People would have bets on her all the time and tell me about it, even if she was long odds-on.”
But after the hubbub came a disorienting silence – one of those weirdest, most surreal, and most gut-wrenching of feelings racing can bring.
A few weeks after the triumph, news came through that Ducatoon had returned a positive swab, to collavet, a restorative and appetite booster.
“When we decided to back her up in the Stradbroke, we thought we’d give her a little pick-me-up at the start of the week,” Toole said. “It was only supposed to last in her system for a few days, but it lasted the whole week, and there was a little trace in her system.
“After the thrill of winning, that was like a kick in the guts. Lenny was heartbroken. It would’ve been his first Group 1. But, the rules are the rules. But we still have the photo of the presentation on the wall.”
The prize-money, a princely $68,000 back then, hadn’t come through yet of course, but that much-adored trophy had to be sent back – to the owners of the horse promoted from second, Bemboka Yacht (Royal Yacht).
Toole and Smith consoled themselves that with much racing ahead, Ducatoon could still lift a Group 1. Sadly, in an era of great horses, she would manage only second three times at the top level: behind Manikato (Manihi) in the Futurity Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m), Lawman (Boucher) in the Doncaster (Gr 1, 1600m), and Marjoleo (Indian Conquest) in South Australia’s marquee event, the Goodwood (Gr 1, 1200m).
As well as a Group 2 and a Group 3, Ducatoon did win Sydney’s Queen Of The Turf Stakes (1500m) in 1981, but it was Listed then and wouldn’t be classed as Group 1 for another 24 years.
Still, when Peter and family bought a run down sheep and wheat property in the mid-90s and turned it into a thoroughbred farm, there was no hesitation in choosing the name.
Ducatoon Park is now a 400-acre boutique breeding base with some 30 mares, plus 20 more for clients.
Hualalai perhaps hasn’t added much to the annals of the Toole dynasty – not yet, anyway – though the family felt he could have.
“My brother handled Street Cry at Darley, and said the similarities were unbelievable – looks, type and temperament,” says Mark.
“In South Australia, you’re not going to get big books, which makes it tough over here. But every stallion can throw a half decent one.”
That was the case with Volcanic Express. The Tooles bred him after leasing his dam Rugged Angel (Time Thief) from friends Warren and Barbara Fargher. She’d been handy in winning seven races, five on the red dirt of the Fargher’s home town Port Augusta, but also a Benchmark 82 at Morphettville.
Volcanic Express is her first foal, and it says something about his type that the Tooles refused to budge when he fell $5,000 short of a $50,000 reserve at the Adelaide sale of 2021. He’s now raced by the Tooles with a group including the Farghers.
“He’s always been a favourite of ours,” Peter Toole says. “He was a magnificent yearling, he’s got a helluva good trainer in David Jolly, and he’s always said he’s got a future.”
With stallions so scarce in SA, intricate pedigree blending is a luxury. But putting Rugged Angel to Hualalai brought a couple of notes of intrigue.
Volcanic Express has the slightly most favourable variety of the tricky double Danehill – gender balanced – and at key places at 4f x 4m. He’s Hualalai’s second damsire, and Rugged Angel’s third sire, flowing through the great Redoute’s Choice into the dam’s father Time Thief.
The great Mr. Prospector (Raise A Native) is duplicated at 4m x 5m, as Hualalai’s third sire and as the sire of Time Thief’s damsire.
For some strong Australian blood, Bletchingly (Biscay) is in strong spots at 5f x 6m, 6m. He’s Hualalai’s third damsire and comes twice into Rugged Angel via Canny Lad – Redoute’s Choice’s damsire and Rugged Angel’s third damsire.
And the sprinkling of Natalma (Native Dancer) in putting Street Cry or his sire Machiavellian (Mr. Prospector) over Danehill is a useful one. In Volcanic Express’s first seven generations, Natalma appears six times through two daughters and her most famous son, through Raise The Standard – Machiavellian’s second dam – as well as Northern Dancer (Nearctic) (thrice) and Spring Adieu (Buckpasser) (twice).
Northern Dancer is also well applied with five spots in the first seven columns through three sons, Fairy King, Danzig (twice) and Nijinsky (twice).
The octogenarian Toole says he doesn’t bet. That’s a factor of where he lives. Not that Kadina is too small to have a TAB but because “if you go to the races at Morphettville, it’s a bugger of a long drive home if you lose your money”.
So he’ll be watching on this Saturday when Volcanic Express backs up seeking a second black type win, and his fifth in 11 starts, in the newly-renamed John Hawkes Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m), formerly the DC McKay Stakes.
Success there would be cheered on the York Peninsula. And somewhere in Indonesia.