Wayne Peake

Author bio

Wayne Peake was born in Panania, Sydney, in 1960. He attended East Hills Infants, East Hills Primary and East Hills Boys’ High schools (his first ‘trifecta’) and studied English language and history at the University of Sydney. In 2005 the University of Western Sydney awarded him the degree Doctor of Philosophy for the dissertation Unregistered Proprietary Horseracing in Sydney 1888 to 1942. He is the author of four books, Sydney Racing in the 1970s, Sydney’s Pony Racecourses, The Gambler’s Ghost and Other Racing Oddities, and Wandrin’ Star: Wild Jack Peake of Peakhurst, and has written on racing in academic journals published by the Cambridge University Press and the Australian Society for Sports History, as well as popular magazines including Turf Monthly and Harness Racing International. He attended his first race meeting at Kembla Grange racecourse in 1968 and from June 1975 rarely missed a Saturday meeting at one of Sydney’s four racecourses. He remained a committed weekend racegoer until the end of the great post-war racing boom in the mid-1980s, but still relishes a day at Warwick Farm racecourse and bush picnic-race meetings, ‘with the cicadas singing and the sunshine dripping down like honey.’