When the legendary Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup in 1930, the big chestnut horse didn’t just live up to his Thai name, which means “lightning”. He also brought together strands of colonial history and mythology that are only now properly visible.
Much worshipped in life and in death, Phar Lap has occupied a unique place in the story of Australia’s and New Zealand’s evolving national identities. The posthumous division and distribution of his corpse into “relics” – mounted hide, skeleton and heart – represented a form of what I call “new world worship”.
Old world religions were an important part of colonisation. But the early settler experience also saw the appearance of quasi-religious icons and symbols, one of which was the horse. Vital for settling, farming and policing the new land, they became more than mere beasts of burden.
