From The Horses Mouth: The Keith Haub Story

By Mike Dillon

there are few New Zealanders of whom it could be claimed they have been richly entertaining for virtually an entire lifetime. But Keith Haub is one.From the moment he embarked on a wisecracking career as a barber, through the halcyon days when he not only enthralled the nation’s turf fans with his masterly race calling but owned a speedster called McGinty (an icon in its own right) to being in hot demand as a brilliantly funny after-dinner speaker, Haubie has been a truly unique character.His often outrageous but always entertaining and amusing career is wonderfully portrayed in From the Horse’s Mouth, written by leading New Zealand racing journalist Mike Dillon, who has long been a friend and confidante of Haub’s.together they have produced a magical book, offering a rare mix of sporting drama and achievement, hilarious adventures and misadventures, and a superb insight into the Sport of Kings.For Aucklander Mike Dillon, who delights readers of the New Zealand Herald daily with his colourful racing accounts, this is his first book, but given the rich material he has extracted from Haub it is unlikely to be his last.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780730491743

Mike Dillon

Dillon is the senior racing correspondent for The new Zealand Herald, having written about racing for more than three deacades. He lives and works in Auckland, and is a close friend of Keith Haub.

Book preview

The beginning

For at least a couple of generations, the Haub family believed they were descended from bush ranger Ned Kelly, the iconic Australian hero. This would have explained a lot, but the true story was a bit different—albeit still remarkable.

Keith’s great-grandfather, Conrad Leopold Haub, arrived at Reefton on the West Coast from Frankfurt in Germany in around 1880, and met and married Marianne Kelly. Marianne was a midwife from England, not the daughter of Ned Kelly’s brother, as family folklore would have it.

Conrad had two sons in New Zealand, Andrew and Rueben. Andrew became a judge, and brother Rueben, Keith’s grandfather, while he didn’t exactly go to the other side of the law, instead lived right on the edge.

By the 1920s, Rueben Leopold Haub had gained a reputation as a well-known public entertainer, and when necessary he could turn his hand to making money as a card-sharp. Much like his grandson, Rueben Haub had a larger-than-life personality. ‘He was a terrible bastard,’ says Keith, with a hint of affection.

Terrible or not, Rueben Haub learned quickly how to live in hard times. He became an escape artist in the mould of Houdini. Locked in chains, he would be thrown into Sydney Harbour, or any stretch of water where he could draw a crowd, and miraculously escape, an immensely popular entertainment at the time.

Rueben met Keith’s grandmother, Violet Alma Hartnell, known as Alma, when working on the construction of the Whangarei to Dargaville railway line and tunnel. The unwed Alma fell pregnant and her father put up £400, a monumental amount of money at the time, for the father to come forward. Rueben stepped up to the plate—for the money, according to some unkind folk—but the similarity between Rueben Haub and his grandson is too remarkable for there to be any doubt about it. Keith’s father, Viv, was the result.

Alma and Rueben were quickly married, and the next day Rueben sailed for Sydney. Not one to be weighed down by his new responsibilities, he was determined to remain footloose and fine-tune his ability to live by his wits. In Australia he joined a circus, learning from experts the skills of wrestling, boxing, escapology, sleight of hand, martial arts and whistling.

He was an athlete of distinction, and while in Australia he made what was claimed to be a world-record high-dive from the Pyrmont Bridge, after which he was labelled the Dare Devil Diver. A vaudeville poster advertising the feat said: ‘Mr Hobbs it is proved, is the only man in the world that ever successfully accomplished the amazing feat of freeing himself from a strait jacket while being suspended from mid-air from a trapeze.’ He was often advertised as ‘Hobbs’—during and after the First and Second World Wars it wasn’t unusual for German immigrants to unofficially alter their names.

A Tauranga newspaper clipping of 22 December 1924 proclaimed: ‘Mr Rueben Hobbs the clever up-side-down performer, will give his sensational Trapeze Act in escaping from a regulation Police Strait Jacket while suspended from the masthead of the Flagship Matangi.’

Another poster declared: ‘The upside down phenomenon—the man with a dozen heads.’ The dozen heads is a reference to Rueben Haub’s extraordinary photographic memory. He was able to read any number of pages from a book and recite them back word for word—he specialised in Hansard, the parliamentary record. This photographic memory came in very handy when playing cards for money, another of his specialities.

Keith heard many of the stories of his grandfather from his father. ‘Rueben was a professional gambler. The cunning bugger had a double-headed penny. They set him up one night and searched him, turned him upside down apparently, but he just managed to pass the penny to a mate named Kelly, who handed it to Nana. She showed it to me when I was a young boy. She died in 1993 and every year before her death I tried to get the penny, but she wouldn’t give it to me.’

Keith reckons Rueben had a touch of Robin Hood in him and he was widely known in the north. He was a card-sharp and at one time he plied his trade on the Helensville-Dargaville barge-ferry, playing cards with the loggers and anyone else who saw fit to join the school.

It’s widely accepted that the barge captain was in on the act. It would be dark when they arrived at Dargaville and if Rueben was winning they would berth immediately. If he was losing, he’d signal the captain, who would sail slowly in large loops until Rueben was in front with the cash, and then dock.

One night Rueben was playing two-handed poker with a farmer in a pub. He deliberately dealt the farmer four kings, and the farmer responded by betting the farm. Rueben didn’t keep him in suspense for long—he dropped not four but five aces on the table with the advice: ‘Go home and don’t play with the professionals.’ The farmer lived to play another day, but it was certain he didn’t tell his wife he’d nearly lost the farm at the pub.

Rueben was immensely popular, particularly with the Yugoslav settlers, who worked with him on the Northern railway line, where he returned after his time in Sydney. He wrote many letters on their behalf, urging the New Zealand government to provide better conditions for the workers. He made many trips to Wellington for the cause and eventually became friends with Prime Minister Gordon Coates. He was keenly interested in politics and may have become seriously involved had he not died at a young age.

His footloose approach to life meant he didn’t stick in a groove for long. Little is known about his last few years, but he moved to Auckland and became isolated from his family. He died in Auckland in 1927, reportedly of exposure and possible pneumonia.

Keith Haub believes he has a chip on his shoulder, although very few of those who have dealt with him would agree. That’s probably because it’s something deeply personal that goes way back to, as silly as it sounds, before he was born.

His mother, Vera, married Viv Haub during the Depression. Somehow they survived the harsh economic conditions and the cold in the King Country, tragically losing their first child to pneumonia after returning to Waiotira in the north. Money was never plentiful. ‘Dad wasn’t allowed to go to Japan during the war. The ones who did came back with money. He didn’t have any and he ended up working for those who went to Japan.’

It was what happened when he was born that hurts him most. ‘Dad was still in the army at Papakura. When it was time for me to be born, Mum pushed a pram five miles down a dirt road, dropped my older brother Paddy off at the railway station where Nana was, got on the train for the 20 miles into Whangarei and walked the four miles to hospital. I was born on New Year’s Eve and the old man got a one-day leave from Papakura, got drunk with his mates in Whangarei, and jumped on the train and headed back to Papakura.’

When it was time to leave Whangarei Hospital, Vera Haub pushed Keith and the pram the four miles back to the train, got off the other end, loaded brother Paddy onto the front of the pram and walked five miles down the rocky road home. Remembering this leaves Keith with a deep feeling of affection for his mother, as well as a strange mix of guilt and anger. ‘Our cousins used to drive past my mother and laugh at her, the bastards. You can see where the chip came from.’

Indeed, Keith has great affection for both his parents. ‘Mum was a great lady, she was like my mate. You could talk to her about anything—sex, anything you liked—and she encouraged you to bring girlfriends home. Dad was a good bugger, a hard case—he loved to drink, fight and sing.’ When the farm they were working on was sold, Vera and Viv Haub moved into Whangarei, close to Kensington Park racecourse. Keith remembers them being ‘as happy as buggery’, then one day they had an argument and almost simultaneously said, ‘I’m sick of living with you’, and divorced.

‘They parted after 30 years, after all they’d been through,’ Keith says. ‘Both found new partners, both good people, then they died aged 59 and 61—it was so sad they couldn’t have stayed together and been happy.’

There is a settling day for such a rugged upbringing. Father Viv had done it tough, being born just after the First World War, embracing marriage and early fatherhood during the Depression, and found it difficult to soften externally, even though he didn’t lack compassion. Keith vividly remembers his 21st birthday, when he and his father had a fist fight. ‘You have to understand, these things didn’t stem from an all-out argument, it was almost like that’s what you did in those days. It completely stuffed the party, but Dad and I sat on the stump until 2.30 a.m. discussing each blow.’ They never fought again.

The first race day

There’s little point in being born smart if you’re not prepared to use it. When Keith joined Whangarei Boys’ High School he took various permission forms home for his parents to sign. Knowing it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have the clandestine benefit of one of those signatures from time to time, he put his own signature down for his father.

Before the Ruakaka track was developed, the Whangarei Racing Club conducted what in those days were hugely popular Friday-Saturday meetings at Kensington Park, literally in suburban Whangarei. The temptation proved too strong for the 13-year-old Keith. One Friday morning he told his mother he simply had to go to the races. He hadn’t seen racing live, and because there was no television in those days he really had no comprehension of what it was all about—but instinctively knew he’d love it.

Keith was in Form One at the time and signed himself out of school by forging Dad’s signature. Mum came along and the pair snuck off to the races for the afternoon. It was late October 1954, and the first sign of a long, eventful and often brilliant career was about to happen.

The Haub family lived in the bush, and with Dad unable to drive a motor car, those early years were a bit dull from the point of view of living life to the full. Entertainment had to be taken where it could, and a major highlight back then was huddling around a small radio listening to Syd Tonks calling major races. Keith had no idea he would ever meet Syd Tonks, much less that New Zealand’s most famous race caller would become one of the major players in his life.

The champion, Mainbrace, had raced spectacularly over the previous year or two, stringing together a remarkable record of 25 starts for 23 wins, one second and one third, despite being a barrier rogue. Joe Williamson rode Mainbrace in his first start when he finished third in the Nursery Handicap at Te Aroha on 1 October 1949, then Grenville Hughes rode him in all of his remaining 24 career starts. A very young Keith had heard them all on the family radio, with the result that Mainbrace was his hero, followed closely by Grenville Hughes.

It was probably fate that the first jockey Keith saw when he and his mother walked onto Kensington Park that memorable afternoon was Grenville Hughes. He couldn’t believe his eyes. There right in front of him was the man he’d idolised via the airwaves. He knew this was going to be the only game in town worth playing. ‘Excuse me, Mr Hughes, could I please have your autograph?’

Grenville Hughes signed the race book thrust towards him and just as quickly said: ‘Son, I’m not the man you really want, I’m not that important. That man standing over there is the one whose autograph you really need.’

The man ‘over there’ was Ray Verner, from Takanini, who would later establish himself as one of New Zealand’s finest horse trainers. As Keith turned to walk away after getting Ray Verner’s signature, Grenville called him back and said: ‘You’re not old enough to have a bet, but tell your mum to have a little bet on Ngapuhi later in the day.’

Vera Haub tossed up whether to back this tip and relented in the spirit of the day. She put what she could afford on Ngapuhi, which was not a lot, and the three-year-old and Grenville Hughes played their part by winning handsomely. She collected £10, which doesn’t sound a lot of money today, but it was a hell of a lot half a century ago, and particularly to the Haub family at the time.

If there had been any doubt up to that point in Keith’s mind that he would follow a path into horse racing, it was settled right then. Exactly how it was going to happen was at that moment open to conjecture. Ngapuhi’s attendant led the horse back to the tie-up stalls and a very excited Keith pressed against the Kensington Park birdcage fence, staring in admiration as Ray Verner walked away.

It’s remarkable how much can go through your mind in a few seconds, particularly when adrenaline is coursing. How can I possibly become part of this exciting game I’ve just discovered? Keith thought. Being a jockey isn’t a possibility, so I suppose it’ll never happen. If only…’ Just getting to the races again any time soon seemed a faint hope.

As the crowd walked off Kensington Park, Keith remained glued to his spot on the birdcage fence. Ray Verner had stopped to talk to a group of owners. Keith continued to stare at him. In his wildest dreams—and he could dream better than most—he could not have imagined the man he was looking at would one day train a Derby winner for him.

Leaving school

In terms of ability and IQ, Keith was third in a class of 36 when he joined Whangarei Boys’ High School. Bill Benton had tutored him well in the small class out at Waiotira. His intelligence was well above average, and he had a mind many times more analytical than most. It was that ability to analyse that would later prove enormously useful in both his auctioneering and race-calling careers, but equally importantly in understanding people. Much later, Keith could pick people better than most, and he could do it in one stride.

When Keith left high school after three years, however, he was third-last in his class. Colditz Castle, as he described it, had done him few favours, and he had no idea what he would do for a living.

Emotional matters hadn’t helped. The exterior may have been brash, but it was a defence. The façade hid a deeply sensitive young man. In what runs counter to the Haub public persona that most of New Zealand has come to know from his confident performance with a microphone in his hand, the young Keith was incredibly shy. To entice him to get on stage and sing, his father regularly gave him a shot of whisky.

By the time he left school, Keith might not have decided what he wanted to do in life, but he had a wonderful handle on what he wasn’t going to be. There were three things he swore he’d never do—shoe a horse, shear a sheep or own a raincoat. ‘Ever see those blokes bent over shearing sheep and shoeing horses in the rain and hail? Bugger that,’ he told his mates.

The possibility of life as an entertainer poked its nose briefly into the frame. Keith was an accomplished guitarist and a natural singer, which proved enormously useful when he eventually integrated himself into horse racing. When he later moved to Auckland, the Haub guitar along with Glen Campbell and Neil Diamond songs were never far away at parties.

At 15, he and three mates finished second in a regional talent quest in Whangarei, gaining them a spot in the national final at the Auckland Town Hall. The talent quest was hugely popular, and was organised by Dunedin promoter Joe Brown, who also ran the Miss New Zealand pageant. It was Keith’s first trip to Auckland, and he sang ‘The Auctioneer’, which was later to become his signature tune.

The quartet didn’t win, but it could have been a case of being a generation too soon. The drummer, Bob Urban, was one of Keith’s best mates. Bob’s son, and Keith’s godson, Keith Urban, has more recently become a celebrated country singer in the United States.

Keith Urban was born in Whangarei, but spent his formative years in Caboolture, a suburb of Brisbane. In 2005, Keith Urban was declared the CMA’s (Country Music Association’s) Male Vocalist of the Year in the United States. He also made People’s list of 14 Sexiest Men Alive. Country and pop legend Dolly Parton is a big fan, recently recording with Urban ‘The Twelfth of Never’ for a new CD. Said Parton: ‘I spent several hours with him—the longer I was with him, the sexier he got. I couldn’t keep my mind on my business.’ His single, ‘You’ll Think of Me’, was a 2005 Grammy nomination for Single of the Year, and the album it came from was also nominated for Album of the Year.

After yet another award at the Grand Ole Opry in 2004, Keith Urban was asked by an interviewer if he was from Australia. He replied: ‘My godfather is New Zealand’s best race caller and he’d kill you if he heard you say that.’

Hairdressing appealed. Keith went down to sign up for a hairdressing apprenticeship and discovered that the cost of bed and board in Whangarei was £3 a week while apprenticeship wages were £2 7s. 6d. The maths didn’t work, so it was back to the drawing board.

Keith had an elderly uncle who lived in Hawera, a car dealer named Les Kirkcaldy, who was married to his Nana’s sister. During his life Keith has claimed a lot of ‘mothers’ along the way, and Aunty Nita was one of them.

Les was holidaying in Whangarei at the time, and said to Keith: ‘Come back to Hawera with me, even if it’s only for a holiday.’ The pair left Whangarei on St Paddy’s Day. Old Les knew Mark Nicholls, the legendary backline star with the 1924 All Black Invincibles: a long session at Nicholls’ Te Awamutu pub was a certainty. A two-day trip from Whangarei to Hawera was nothing out of the ordinary back then—only a few years later, Keith and his mates might take two days to get back to Whangarei from an Ellerslie, Thames or Paeroa race meeting.

It was the local Hawera race day when the pair arrived at home base, and, instead of finding a winner on the racetrack, Keith found the first true love of his life, standing near the birdcage railing. ‘She was a real good-looking sort,’ he told his uncle when he returned home, ‘but I was too shy to say anything.’

A couple of days later, the young bloke who was working at the car yard said: ‘Come to the pictures and I’ll find you a girl.’ He arranged it with his girlfriend, and to Keith’s astonishment, when his mate’s girlfriend walked out, there with her was the pretty girl he’d seen at the races. A romance followed with Lorraine Schrafft, who was eventually to marry prominent jockey Kaye Tinsley.

The £7 a week job as a spare parts man at the car yard was interesting. He’d never driven a car, something he felt he didn’t need to mention to the owner of the business, but in typical Haub fashion he found his way through, despite, as he says, ‘not knowing what tied a car’s wheels together’.

The shit tricks for the new rookie came thick and fast. Because he couldn’t drive, Keith had to walk around the other garages in Hawera for spare parts. One day they sent him around every joint in town asking for a spark plug for a diesel motor. He reckons he walked 40 miles.

Like all good country towns in