Where Phar Lap lives on

When Phar Lap died suddenly in Menlo Park, California, on 5 April 1932, the grief on both sides of the Tasman was immediate. He wasn’t just a successful racehorse – he’d become a genuine national symbol during the hardest years of the Great Depression, and neither Australia nor New Zealand was willing to let him simply disappear.

What followed was an almost unheard-of decision for the era: rather than burying him, or preserving him in one piece for one institution, his remains were divided between three national collections, each taking a different part of the story.

He has also been immortalised in bronze, honouring both the place of his birth and the place where he became a champion. Other tangible links to his story survive too, among them the float that famously carried him to his legendary Melbourne Cup win.

THE HIDE

Melbourne Museum

Phar Lap’s hide was sent to the Jonas Brothers taxidermy studio in New York, mounted onto a custom-built frame, and shipped back to Australia. It went on permanent display at what is now the Melbourne Museum in January 1933 and has barely left since – it remains one of the museum’s most visited exhibits more than 90 years later.

This is the version of Phar Lap most Australians have actually stood in front of: full-sized, glossy chestnut coat, standing proud in a deliberate, showpiece pose. The museum has built on it over the decades with an extensive collection of race-day memorabilia – winning sashes, his training saddle, his racing shoes, even Harry Telford’s handwritten tonic notebook – that together tell the story around the horse, not just the horse itself.

THE SKELETON

Te Papa, Wellington, NZ

Phar Lap may have made his name in Australia, but he was a New Zealander by birth, foaled near Timaru in 1926. His skeleton was returned across the Tasman and now sits in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand’s national museum in Wellington. It is an acknowledgement that, however Australian his legend became, his story starts and, in a sense, ends at home. In 2010, for the 150th running of the Melbourne Cup, Te Papa loaned the skeleton back to Melbourne so it could be displayed alongside the hide for the first time.

THE HEART

National Museum of Australia, Canberra

The most talked-about piece of the collection is the heart, held in Canberra at the National Museum of Australia. At 6.2 kilograms, it’s roughly double the size of a normal horse’s heart – a genuinely oversized organ that’s often pointed to as a literal, physiological explanation for his freakish stamina and finishing power.

It’s consistently one of the most requested items in the museum’s collection, perhaps because of that mix of the macabre and the almost mythical: an actual organ, from an actual animal, that somehow seems to explain the legend rather than just illustrate it.

THE STATUES

Flemington Racecourse and Timaru

Phar Lap’s physical legacy extends beyond the three national collections. A larger-than-life bronze statue by sculptor Peter Corlett, commissioned for Australia’s 1988 Bicentenary, stands at Flemington near the Heritage Centre, welcoming members and racegoers to the course. It has become one of Flemington’s most recognisable landmarks and the backdrop for countless photographs. Across the Tasman, another life-sized bronze memorial was unveiled in 2009 near Phar Lap’s birthplace at Timaru, ensuring the champion is remembered at both the place where his career flourished and where his story began.

THE FLOAT

Flemington Racecourse and Australian Racing Museum

Some objects earn their place in history simply by being present when something extraordinary happened. That is the story of the restored horse float on display as part of Phar Lap: A Century of a Champion at Flemington – a float believed to have carried the champion during his racing career.

Built on a REO Speedwagon chassis with a Dodge motor, the float was used by Chapman & Sons, one of Victoria’s leading horse transport companies of the 1920s and 30s. Designed for practicality rather than comfort, it could carry three horses in individual stalls, with feed bins and compartments for strappers and equipment.

Its greatest journey came during Cup Week 1930, when Phar Lap’s Melbourne Cup campaign was thrown into chaos. Three days before the race, a shot was fired at the champion as he returned from trackwork at Caulfield. After winning the Melbourne Stakes that afternoon, Phar Lap was secretly moved to St Albans Stud near Geelong for his safety.

On Cup day, his return journey to Flemington almost ended before it began when the float refused to start. With time running out, his connections fought to get the engine going and Phar Lap arrived less than an hour before the race. Carrying 62.6 kilograms, he went on to win one of the greatest Melbourne Cups in history.

Today, the float is part of the Australian Racing Museum collection. Restored in 1983 for the Australian film Phar Lap, it carries a story beyond the racetrack – preserving both a piece of racing history and a moment of Australian film heritage.