Barry’s grandfather accepting the first Canberra Cup in 1926 from the then Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce (Note the man on the far left with a tomato sauce bottle in his jacket, which contained a pick-me-up for the race winning horse, ‘Spec’).
This week’s Local Legend has an incredible memory, which made him a veritable library when it came to stories from his past. His links to our capital city, from its earliest days, give us a very unique perspective indeed. Barry Edmund McCormack was born in 1939 to parent Hugh & Kathleen McCormack at Acton Hospital in Canberra. The weatherboard building which comprised the hospital still survives, and is currently occupied by the Australian National University’s Research School of Earth Sciences. Barry and his three brothers and one sister were born into a family with close links to what would become Australia’s Capital City, farming in the area that would become the suburb of Tuggeranong.
“My grandfather was a horse trainer and won the very first Canberra Cup, which ran in 1926,” said Barry. “The cup was presented to my grandfather by the then Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce.” After his Canberra Cup victory, Barry’s grandfather capitalised on the opportunity to take up a lease on the Tuggeranong Homestead, which still stands today, from the renowned author of the official history of the Great War, Charles E. W. Bean. It was in that homestead that Bean wrote the “Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918”, and it was also in the homestead where Barry and his siblings grew up.
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