By MAX AGNEW

The first member of the Cochran clan to be a trotting enthusiast was William, a farmer in the Ballarat district who had five sons -- Jim (1880) who became president of the Victorian Pharmacy Board. William Jnr. (1885) a newsagent at Ballarat. Duncan (1888) a farmer and trotting driver. Eric (1890) Victoria's leading studmaster for some years and inaugural president of the modern day club at Ballarat, and Ron (1896) a pharmacist and trotting owner.

Like many farmers around the turn of the century who found the trotting gait to be invaluable for road transport, William Cochran kept numerous trotters before joining the racing side when boom times saw the sport blossom at Melbourne's Richmond track from 1907. Among the mares who came into his ownership was Celmar, earlier owned by the famous Allendale Stock Farm at Mentone. The progeny from Celmar helped develop the interest of Cochran's sons in trotting, with Celmar Chimes and Celmar Style both highly successful offspring they raced. The family of Celmar survives to this day in the ownership of Graeme Cochran. There have been several smart performers from Celmar's descendants in recent years.

The Cochran farm was at Pootilla, less than a half-hour drive by horse and cart to the east of Ballarat, not far from where the Frawley family and their stallion Vanderport have enjoyed success in recent times. Eric, the best known of the five Cochran brothers in trotting, became a fuel merchant (handling and delivering briquettes) which enabled him an income in the 1920s to obtain standardbred mares to be the foundation platform on which he would launch his stud farm at nearby Mt Rowan.

Graeme was the son of Ron. He was born at Maryborough at a time when his father managed two pharmacies, at Horsham and Maryborough. Thus the oldest and the youngest sons of William were in the chemistry business. Ron later moved his family to the Melbourne suburb of Clifton Hill, then in 1935 he obtained his own pharmacy at Healesville, a move which led to his family developing a close involvement in trotting in that district.

It would have surprised no one that Graeme Cochran was fascinated by trotting from his earliest days. Many a time as a boy he would holiday with his uncle Eric at the Mt Rowan stud farm where he learned a great deal about breeding. This involvement developed a fascination for studying pedigrees, with Graeme becoming extremely knowledgeable on standardbred bloodlines. The first horses he raced as an owner would be bred by his uncle. In later years he and his friend the late Lindsay Nicholas would have as many as 70 standardbreds on their property in northern Victoria.

Because of the influence Eric Cochran had in moulding the interests and actions of two presidents of Victorian Trotting Control Boards, it will be of interest to delve a little into the success of this noted breeder. The first well known sire he stood at Mt Rowan was the much travelled Lulu Boy (Huon Jnr.-Greta), who first stood at Cowra in 1917, then Wagga and Junee before being sold to Tasmania's Edgar Tatlow as companion sire to the great Globe Derby. Eric Cochran obtained Lulu Boy from Tatlow when the horse was 23. When it died in 1935, Lulu Boy had sired 157 pacers and one trotter. Its daughter Lulu Love (bred when at Junee) became one of the finest broodmares ever in our Stud Book producing Admirer, Amorous and numerous other classic winners.

In an era when Globe Derby and its sons were all the rage, Eric was quick to realise breeders also needed good outcrossing blood. He appreciated the efforts of NSW importer and breeder Robert Simpson -- a dentist at Armidale who was prepared to fly in the face of the remarkable success of the Globe Derby line by importing stallions and mares despite times being tough. Three of Simpson's imported stallions would stand at the Cochran stud. The first of these was Don Pronto, perhaps the most successful imported sire of the 1900s until the later arrival of Raider. Arriving at the Cochran farm in 1930, Don Pronto stood just one season before its demise from old age. A daughter of this horse was the grand-dam of Ribands, and another daughter became grand-dam of Safe Return, who produced the outstanding trotters Tony Bear and Adios Bear and the pacer Gyracus.

Simpson was a colourful gentleman considered by some to be eccentric and outspoken, prepared to spend good money proving a point. While he came over as being rather prickly and impatient to many, if he took a liking to someone, his loyalty would also be in the extreme. Impressed with his first dealings with Eric Cochran, the second stallion Simpson sent to the Victorian breeder in 1934 was Roy Redmond, a male-line Axworthy stallion bred in the US in 1927 with no pacing blood in its pedigree.

This horse had actually been a gift to Simpson by its American breeder W.F. Redmond. Some months earlier Simpson had purchased from Redmond the mares Carlotta The Great in foal to Arion Guy, and Miss Featherstone, in foal to Peter Volo. Unfortunately, both colts died in the US before they could be sent to their Australian owner, and Redmond sportingly made a gift of Roy Redmond to Simpson. Because the two mares Simpson had purchased both become famous broodmares in Australia, one can only wonder at what might have been had fate not robbed the NSW breeder of two such superbly-bred colts.

However, Robert Simpson did do well out of his dealings with Redmond, as the colt given him was destined to achieve greatness for the trotting gait in Australia. Arriving unraced in Sydney, Simpson placed it in work and soon found Roy Redmond to have considerable trotting ability. Because of this fact, what he did next has puzzled many historians. More interested in breeding winners than racing top horses himself, the controversial breeder sent the colt to stud without racing what would surely have been a top trotter on the track.

Roy Redmond was a siring success from the start, and later in the hands of Cochran did a great deal for the trotting gait in this country. Among its progeny to win Derbys were David Redmond, Betty Redmond, Dot Redmond, Gay Redmond, Hilronto, Dandy Redmond, Paismond and Blonde Redmond. Perhaps its best son was Bingen Redmond, the smart trotter which gave a then 16-year-old Gordon Rothacker his very first winner. Another was Way Yonder, a stallion that would become a particular favourite of Chris Howe when this noted breeder stood it at stud.

The third Simpson sire to stand for Eric Cochran was Louis Direct, a 1922 stallion that saw the dentist go into debt when in the middle of the Great Depression in 1930 he paid the then huge price of more than $10,000 for it in the US. This horse moved to the Cochran farm in 1936 and continued enjoying good success, though never really achieving the heights its importer had hoped for. Louis Direct's best sons would be Direct Heir and the Victorian grey Derry Down, while two of Australia's finest ever pacers -- Uncle Joe and Minor Derby, were from two of his grand-daughters. Louis Direct did help Cochran consolidate his place in Australian breeding at a time when breeders using sons of Globe Derby had a walk-up start to their success.

In one season Eric Cochran had the pleasure of breeding the champion trotter Carlotta's Pride (from a mare he got from Simpson), New Louis, Black Moth and Van Louis -- all outstanding on the racetrack. The horses raced by Eric were usually trained for him by George Gath, and were more often than not trotters. Stories handed down about Robert Simpson are usually associated with him being difficult to get along with. However, his relationship with Eric Cochran was special, as their only known disagreement came when an arrangement of them going foal-for-foal with the progeny of a mare struck a snag when the broodmare died soon after giving birth to its first foal. Both men for some months insisted the other should take the foal!

In the late 1940s when Graeme Cochran was preparing to become a chartered accountant, his uncle Eric was spearheading the revival of a trotting club at Ballarat. A shrewd old campaigner, it has never been made public just how much his influence achieved for the industry through an old farming friend he had. Russell White in the 1930s had raced several standardbreds, and had later left the farm for a seat in State Parliament. His heart was always in the right place, but the one-time dairy farmer had a habit of shooting from the lip, often not endearing himself to his Parliamentary colleagues. White was one of several politicians who worked hard to have the Racing Act changed to enable night trotting to come to Melbourne in 1947. He later retired from the State Ministry to become Chairman of the Victorian Trotting Control Board where he would depend heavily on the advice he constantly sought from his old friend. There is no doubt Cochran was a steadying influence on the likable but crusty old Russell White. After the breeder's death, the Chairman of the TCB was prone to shocking friends and foe alike with some of his spur-of-the-moment actions.

Meanwhile, having achieved his initial goal of setting up as a chartered accountant, Graeme Cochran in 1952 moved to become a management consultant in what was then very much a new area. With a partner, that year they took over what had been Australia's very first business consultancy firm operating out of Melbourne. In the following years Cochran says he is extremely proud of having brought to Australia numerous new ideas to management practices in this country.

In 1957 he was appointed to the Victorian Trotting Control Board for the first of what would be 27 continuous years on this Board, graduating to State Chairman in 1972 and becoming treasurer of the Australian Harness Racing Council. It was a time when State presidents were paid little for the long hours of meetings and traveling on behalf of the industry, and for one in business such as Cochran, to serve harness racing then could leave a chairman well out of pocket.

When he first became involved at board level he adopted a policy of preferring not to race horses, coming to lease out the pacers and trotters from those he bred. By now he and friend Lindsay Nicholas (a member of the famous Aspro family) and also a Board member, had expanded their broodmare interests considerably. Some of their horses were sold, but many continued to be leased. When Eric Cochran passed away in 1976, his estate made provision for leaving several broodmares to his nephew. The same year of his uncle's passing, Graeme was elected chairman of the Australian Harness Racing Council.

If Graeme Cochran had management skills and a knowledge of breeding beyond any other administrator to have served the AHRC at the highest level, he would emerge as an enigma for one holding such a lofty office. Despite his years as an administrator, he was always an extremely shy person. He could sit for hours with some acknowledged breeding authority and provide interesting and accurate dialogue that would have surely surprised many at his incredible knowledge. But then, often his shyness would see him reluctant to mix and communicate with rank and file members of the industry, wrongly branding him in the eyes of some as being arrogant and aloof. He was never flamboyant or the kind of chairman who could deliver an inspiring address with a message of "follow me" to the industry, which has been a real trademark of his successor and long-time AHRC chief Dr. Ern Manea.

In the late 1970s when crowds at the major tracks of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide suffered a decline in attendances, many breeders began urging their State officials to introduce a Sires Stakes Program with Government support, similar to what had occurred in the US. Victoria was the first to get theirs up and running, and the very first Sires Stakes champion in this country was a pacer named Grand Victory, bred by Graeme Cochran and Lindsay Nicholas.

Unlike his uncle Eric, Cochran was never in the stallion business, but he was instrumental in having the stallion Bye And Large come to Australia. During one of several trips to the US on business for the AHRC, he was most interested to discover that the noted establishment Castleton Farm was prepared to let one of its sires go. Bye And Large, considered a successful sire, was a son of Bye Bye Byrd, a sire line US breeders were then moving away from which had led Castleton to adopt the commercial decision the horse had reached its "used-by" date. Negotiations through the Australian chairman-breeder led to its sale Down Under where Cochran maintained his confidence in the horse by joining numerous successful breeders in being a shareholder in the stallion. Bye And Large was to fall short of the high expectations for it here, though in fairness to this horse, it should be pointed out he did sire Derby winners in Victoria and some of his daughters in the US and Down Under have become highly successful producing mares.

Power struggles are nothing new to Australian harness racing, and there have been some very public and major spats -- twice in Perth (1929-30 and the late 70s), a lengthy fight in Adelaide during the 1920s, and the long years of struggle involving the unpopular Victorian Trotting and Racing Association before legislation was changed in 1946. There was a more recent power struggle in Melbourne, with this one in the early 1980s involving members of the Victorian TCB. It was difficult for board members to remain independent in the turmoil that followed, virtually dividing this body down the middle. The Minister (Neil Tresize) in 1984 finally lost patience, sacking the entire Board. The loss of his place on the State Board automatically cost Cochran his position as Chairman of the AHRC, with this then being filled by West Australian delegate Dr. Ern Manea.

Since then Cochran has been happy to take a back-seat within the industry, but has continued his breeding activities, even since the passing of his friend Lindsay Nicholas. The best of his breeding efforts currently racing is the Victorian star Shakamaker, trained and driven by John Justice. Other recent city winners include Mary Contessa and Diamond Blue Chip. There have been many winners bred from his mares, with one of his favourites being the well-bred Seachase, a pacer that promised so much until going amiss and being prematurely retired.