In 1954, a year after her coronation, Queen Elizabeth II was part of a motorcade which drove around the Bulli greyhound track and now the famous course, where the mighty Zoom Top equalled a track record, is about to celebrate 75 years of racing.
Darren Hull, who marks 12 years as Bulli's operations manager in November, has organised a commemorative race meeting for Tuesday night, Melbourne Cup day.
It will feature heats of the Jimmy Jenkins Memorial, leading into a $6,000 to the winner final a week later.
Jimmy Jenkins, who was Australia's oldest living Socceroo until his passing, aged 98, in 2020, is now honoured annually at the course where he worked for over 50 years.
Jenkins was a true "jack of all trades" at Bulli, identifying the greyhounds as they were kennelled, letting them in an out of the kennel block before and after each race, and even cleaning the entire area after racing had concluded.
Jimmy Jenkins at Bulli
He began working at Bulli in 1963 but also served as chief steward for 17 years at the now defunct Moss Vale track as well as performing the same duty at Nowra, in its non-TAB era, for 12 years.
Bulli boss Darren Hull said: "When I first arrived at Bulli I had many long chats with Jimmy, he was a fountain of knowledge about the place.
"He explained that Bulli had secured a greyhound racing licence ivn 1950 when the former Bowral Greyhound Club closed down.
"When night harness racing commenced there in 1953, he told me they had to use bullocks to drag the greyhound starting boxes on and off the dog track.
"One of Jimmy's fondest memories was the day Queen Elizabeth came to Bulli and she was driven in an open car for a lap around the track.''
The Queen's Motorcade at Bulli in 1954
Australia's best greyhounds have raced at Bulli, and it was fitting that on November 20, 1968, Zoom Top, widely considered the best of all time, equalled the 617m track record when she clocked 36 seconds flat.
She won by 10 lengths from Emerald Jenn and Amerigo Lady, herself a former Bulli record holder and who, a year later, won the inaugural National Distance Championship.
Amerigo Lady was trained at Oak Flats, just 36km from Bulli, by Neville Ballinger, NSW's leading trainer of that period.
This year the recently retired Good Odds Cobber won the track's premier race, the Group 2 Bulli Gold Cup in 25.98 for the 472m, figures just .09sec outside the race record set by Castle Warrior in 2022.
Australia's "greyhound racing royalty" the Wheeler family, won the Cup with Bartrim Bale in 2008 and three years later with Greta Bale.
Allen Wheeler, the father of the late Paul Wheeler, after whom the December 20 Group One Wentworth Park race is named, had launced the family's journey in greyhound racing in 1968 through breeding a litter by Miller's Moss from Speedy Chariot.
But the only dog to win the coveted Bulli Gold Cup twice has been Pindari Express, who took out the 2019 and 2020 finals.
Bulli Showground, site of the greyhound track, covers 9ha in Grevillea Park Road.
