BASHA FELIKA

Basha Felika is in many ways a forgotten horse in Australian Racing. He is still revered in Queensland where he is talked about almost in the same terms as Bernborough in some circles. His failing to win a Melbourne Cup relegated him to the annals of the also rans for many in the south. Combine that with chronic leg issues and we have a horse that follows the similar pattern of what might have been. The Melbourne Cup loss was not his fault, and he was another certainty beaten as he had to hurdle a fallen horse in the race yet still managed to finish fourth.

To begin the story though, we are going to go back in time to another great galloper in Rivoli who won the 1922 AJC Derby and five other stakes races the following year. He was later to become a quality sire at Canning Downs Stud in Qld. The story of Rivoli though is a story of a family that would shape Queensland racing in particular. This was the Barnes family that developed the wonderful Canning Downes near Warwick in Queensland. Henry Barnes was born in February 1818 at Low Braithwaite, Cumbria, in the Lake District of England. Barnes learned practical husbandry on the home farm and bookkeeping and land surveying skills at elementary school. He emigrated to NSW in 1840 and his first job in the new colony was as