HIDDEN NO MORE: Part Two - Born to Ride: The Duval Horsemen and an Aboriginal Triumph That Endured
From Milbona, Corumba and Lulu to Nanna Rita, Dad and the daughters who still carry the reins.
A family memory with a punchline
My nanna Rita used to tell me that we came from a long line of jockeys.
She did not say it as a footnote. She said it as family knowledge, as something that belonged in the room, even when the official records did not always make space for it. She spoke about her brother, my great-uncle Glenville “Glenny” Whitfield, and about the Duval horsemen who came before us.
I remember Nan as a small woman. Dad, on the other hand, was cursed with the six-foot genes—and I inherited them too. At six feet two inches and around ninety-eight kilograms, I was never exactly built for the light-weight saddle. I dreamed of being a jockey as a kid, worked with racehorses at Rosehill and have maintained a connection with the racing industry over the years. But, at my size, it would have needed to be a very big handicap race.
The joke is mine. The legacy is not.
I spent countless years on race courses with Nanna Rita and my Father. They are without a doubt my fondest memories as a young boy, climbing to the top open air, lead lined, grandstand at Randwick with Nanna Rita and my Dad to watch their investments go around.
All of my daughters have a connection with horses. Ironically, the one who is most perfectly built to carry a jockeying legacy forward is the one who has not taken up the saddle. That choice must always be hers. A family legacy is an invitation, not an obligation.
What matters to me is that the horse is still in the family story. So are the people who learned to handle it, ride it, train it and survive an industry that did not always acknowledge who they were.
This is Part Two of Hidden No More. It is a story about Aboriginal achievement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; about the movement of families through Country; about the Duval brothers Frank and Jack; about Claude, whose place in the family racing story still needs further proof; and about the memory carried by Nanna Rita, Dad and the generations after them.
It is also a story about evidence. Some parts are documented in newspapers, racing registers and published history. Some are held in family testimony and community knowledge. Some remain unanswered. Honouring our ancestors means being brave enough to name all three.
Before the racecourse: Milbona, Corumba and Lulu
Part One began with Milbona, Corumba and their daughter Lulu.
The family-tree material available to me identifies Milbona as a Wiradjuri woman and Corumba as an Aboriginal man associated with Ngarigo Country. It records their daughter as Lulu—also known in later records as Mary Ann Coram Mah-Rah-Kah or Mary Ann—and places her birth around 1820 in the Armidale region, near Rimbanda Station.
Those names are not simple labels. They are the traces left by people whose identities were repeatedly filtered through colonial record-making. Aboriginal people could be recorded by a birth name, a kin name, a place name, an employer’s description, an imposed English name or a spelling chosen by someone who did not speak their language. A later document may preserve only one part of a person’s identity.
The family record does not give us a complete account of Lulu’s early childhood, and it does not provide a reliable day-by-day map of Milbona and Corumba’s movements. It does, however, hold a significant connection across Aboriginal cultural worlds: Wiradjuri, Ngarigo-associated and Anaiwan Country.
That is enough to begin. It is not a licence to invent the missing details.
Country was not a blank map
It is easy to describe Aboriginal movement using colonial language “wandered”, “roamed” or “drifted”—as if people moved without law, purpose or belonging. That description is wrong.
People moved for food and water, ceremony, marriage, kinship, trade, caring for children and Elders, mourning, employment, refuge and safety. They moved in response to seasons, obligations, opportunity and danger. They could stay for a short period, return many times or establish a new home through family relationships.
Movement through another group’s Country was not simply crossing an empty boundary. It was governed by relationships and responsibilities. Permission could be carried through kinship, marriage, invitation, reciprocal obligations, ceremony and recognised knowledge of who belonged where. In this article I use lore for Aboriginal cultural systems and responsibilities; law refers to legislation, courts and other formal colonial institutions.
The broad Countries relevant to this family story include:
Anaiwan or Nganyaywana Country, including the New England Tablelands and Armidale region;
Wiradjuri Country, extending across the central-west, including the Forbes region;
Ngarigo-associated Country in the south-eastern highlands; and
Kamilaroi or Gamilaraay Country, including the Liverpool Plains and Quirindi region.
These are not state-style borders. AIATSIS explains that its map shows broad group locations and should not be treated as a precise or fixed boundary map. Aboriginal relationships to Country are more complex than a line on a modern map.
So what might Milbona and Corumba’s journey with baby Lulu have looked like?
The honest answer is that we cannot yet know the exact route. They may have moved through kin networks in response to food, water, work, family care or ceremony. They may have followed obligations arising from marriage or birth. They may have sought the protection of relatives as pastoral occupation tightened around Aboriginal families. More than one of those reasons may have operated at once.
The broader historical context was dangerous. Frontier violence and dispossession affected Aboriginal communities across New South Wales. The Myall Creek massacre of 1838 occurred near Bingara in the broader Gamilaraay region, and the Colonial Frontier Massacres database records many other sites of violence.
That context must be acknowledged, but it does not allow me to claim that Milbona and Corumba fled one named massacre or followed one particular route. No surviving source presently proves that.
That distinction matters. Reclaiming family history should not replace colonial silence with a new certainty that the evidence cannot carry. We can say that the family moved through a changing and dangerous colonial world without pretending we know every mile of the journey.
From Lulu to the Duvals
The next part of the family story becomes more visible through Mary Quinn and James Duval.
The family-tree material records Mary Quinn’s marriage to James Duval at Walcha on 24 August 1862. Mary is my direct ancestor. In the family line she is remembered as Mary Duval or Granny Duval, and she is identified as Anaiwan.
Through Mary, the Duval name is not merely a historical surname that I have researched from a distance. It is part of my own line.
The family chronology places three Duval siblings at the centre of the later racing story:
Family member | Family chronology | Current research position |
John James “Jack” Duval | Born about 1877 | Jockey and horseman strongly supported by public records; death date and place not yet confirmed |
Claude Duval | 1880–1947 | Remembered as a jockey and horseman; further primary evidence is needed |
Francis Thomas “Frank” Duval | 1883–1956 | Included in published histories of Aboriginal racing as a jockey, overseas rider and trainer |
Their sister Mary is my direct ancestor. That fact changes the meaning of the racing story. I am not simply celebrating two Aboriginal sportsmen from a book. I am claiming my own people.
The triumph of Aboriginal horsemen
Long before the names of Frank and Jack appeared in the records I have found, Aboriginal people were developing extraordinary expertise with horses.
The horse was introduced into colonial Australia as an instrument of transport, agriculture, pastoral expansion and military power. Aboriginal men and women quickly became skilled stock workers, breakers, riders, grooms, stable hands, trainers and jockeys.
Their knowledge of animals, terrain, balance and movement became essential to the pastoral and racing economies.
That expertise was often exploited while Aboriginal identity was denied, minimised or omitted. A person could be valued for what they could do with a horse and still be described in a record only by an initial, an occupation or a racial category imposed by someone else.
This is why Aboriginal participation in racing must be understood as more than a collection of sporting anecdotes. It is a history of skill under pressure. It is a history of people entering one of colonial society’s most public institutions and excelling in it, even while the same society tried to control their movement, labour, names and identity.
Professor John Maynard’s research is an important authority here. His work on Aboriginal jockeys and racing history documents the depth of Aboriginal involvement in the sport, including the achievements of riders and trainers whose Aboriginal identity was sometimes hidden, denied or strategically withheld in public life.
The triumph was not that racism disappeared. The triumph was that Aboriginal sportsmen and sportswomen continued to ride, train, compete and win in spite of it.
Nanna Rita, Dad and the family that kept the reins
When Nanna Rita told me we came from a long line of jockeys, she was passing on more than a sporting fact. She was giving me a way to understand the family.
The names Frank and Jack belonged to the Duvals. The name Glenville Whitfield belonged to Uncle Glenny. The stories travelled through Rita and Dad and reached me as memory before they reached me as documentary research. I remember helping Uncle Glenny as a young Strapper lad at the Qurindi race course with his horses. Uncle Glenny was a handy Jockey and Trainer himself. He was the first person I had a close relationship with to die. I remember the grief to this day.
Uncle Glenny, Nanna Rita and my own father are laid to rest just beyond the finishing post at Quirindi racecourse. That place has become part of our family geography: a place where horses, memory, grief, Country and ancestry meet.
The burial place does not prove that Jack rode at Quirindi. It does prove how deeply Quirindi is woven into the family’s memory.
And then there is my own relationship with horses. As a child I imagined myself as a jockey. Later I worked with racehorses at Rosehill and remained connected to the racing industry.
The family story was not something I discovered only in an archive. It was already moving through my life before I knew how to name it.
I may have inherited the height rather than the jockey’s build, but I also inherited the pull toward the horse. The body did not continue the old pattern. The spirit of the connection did.
My daughters now carry that relationship in their own ways. They are drawn to horses, and one of them has the build that could carry a jockeying legacy forward more naturally than I ever could. Whether she chooses to do so is entirely her decision. What I want her to know is that the opportunity exists because people before us made a way through.
Frank and Jack in the historical record
The most important external authority for the Duval horsemen is John Maynard’s work on Aboriginal racing history.
The revised third edition supplied for this research is identified as Aborigines and the “Sport of Kings”: Aboriginal jockeys in Australian racing history. AIATSIS also catalogues the work under the title Aboriginal stars of the turf. It examines Aboriginal involvement in racing, the arrival and spread of the horse, Aboriginal jockeys and trainers, Aboriginal women in racing, identity and racism, and the lives of individual riders.
The published index specifically includes:
Frank Duval, at pages 117 and 119, including references to an overseas career and his work as a trainer; and
Jack Duval, at pages 117–119, including an overseas career.
That matters because it places Frank and Jack in a recognised national history of Aboriginal racing. They are not merely names repeated within one family. They appear in a scholarly and historical account of Aboriginal participation in the sport.
AustLit’s biographical entry for Jack Duval describes him as an exceptional horseman who made a mark on international racing. It records that he rode in cross-country and ring events and that, after retiring from professional riding, he trained horses in the Walcha area. AustLit identifies the source as Maynard’s work on Aboriginal jockeys. AustLit: Jack Duval
Frank and Jack were therefore not only jockeys. They were horsemen in the fuller sense: riders, competitors, workers around horses and, later, people who trained and passed knowledge on.
Jack Duval: the records behind the family story
The public record usually refers to Jack as “Jack Duval”, “John Duval” or “J. Duval”. The variation is typical of historical racing records and is one reason the documents must be read together.
Date | Source | What the record contributes |
6 April 1897 | The Sportsman | Names “Jack Duval, late of Sydney”, praises his horsemanship and records him riding winners including Lill and Gilargombono. Trove |
13 January 1899 | Evening News | Reports that “J. Duval” was seriously injured in a fall at Randwick while riding Whakawatea and had been badly bruised before leaving St Vincent’s Hospital. Trove |
18 August 1900 | Australian Town and Country Journal | Lists “John Duval” among the A.J.C.-licensed jockeys for the current season. Trove |
1907 | Supplied newspaper clipping | Identifies John James Duval as a professional jockey in a divorce-court report, helping connect the full name to the racing occupation. |
January 1918 | Daily Telegraph | Describes “J. Duval” as training and racing The Tuck and refers to his earlier successful career as a jockey. Trove |
9 December 1922 | Supplied racing and licensing material | Includes John Duval in racing material, supporting the continued appearance of the name in the industry, though the item does not itself use “Jack”. Trove |
The Randwick fall
The Randwick report gives the family story a moment of danger.
The newspaper did not print the rider’s full name. It called him “J. Duval” and reported that he had been seriously injured while riding Whakawatea at Randwick. He was badly bruised, and the newspaper said that for a time his recovery was considered doubtful.
The family chronology places John James “Jack” Duval’s birth around 1877. If the newspaper’s “J. Duval” was Jack—as the surrounding evidence strongly suggests—he would have been approximately twenty-one or twenty-two at the time of the fall. The report itself does not state his age, so that figure is a reasoned estimate based on the family chronology, not an age printed in the newspaper.
The report also reminds us what jockeying demanded. A successful rider could be celebrated for balance and courage one day and be carried to hospital after a fall the next. The later description of Jack as a successful jockey sits alongside this evidence of physical risk.
The licence and the trainer
The 1900 A.J.C. registration is especially valuable because it is a formal licensing record. It lists John Duval among the licensed jockeys, even though it does not use the nickname Jack or identify his Aboriginality.
By 1918, J. Duval was associated with The Tuck as a trainer and rider. The report’s reference to his successful career as a jockey fits the earlier records. It is highly plausible that this was Jack, although the 1918 item itself uses only the initial J.
This is a recurring problem in Aboriginal family research. The record may preserve the achievement while omitting the identity; preserve the initial while omitting the full name; or preserve the occupation while omitting the cultural identity that gave the achievement meaning.
Frank, Claude and the wider Duval horsemen
Frank’s place in the story is supported most clearly by Maynard’s published history and its index. The references to his overseas career and his later work as a trainer align with the family account of a Duval racing tradition that extended beyond one local meeting.
Frank’s inclusion is also important because it prevents the whole story from depending on one newspaper abbreviation. There were multiple Duval horsemen. Their names could be confused when newspapers used initials, nicknames or only a surname.
Claude belongs in the story, but with an honest research qualification. Family history remembers Claude as a jockey and horseman, and the family chronology records him as living from 1880 to 1947. I have not yet located a sufficiently clear primary record such as a race report, licence, stable record, obituary or trainer’s notice—that independently confirms Claude’s riding career.
One supplied 1929 clipping demonstrates why caution is necessary. It includes “Claude Duval” as the name of a racehorse, with T. Spain listed as the rider. That is evidence about a horse, not evidence that Claude Duval the man was riding in 1929. Trove: Claude Duval horse
Claude’s story should remain visible as a family research lead. It should not be turned into proof until the human record is found.
Quirindi: memory, Country and the unanswered ride
Whose Country is Quirindi?
Quirindi is on Kamilaroi Country, also written Gamilaraay. Liverpool Plains Shire Council acknowledges Kamilaroi traditional custodians in its material concerning the Quirindi Racecourse and Showground. Liverpool Plains Shire Council
That does not diminish my Anaiwan identity. Aboriginal people live, work, marry, travel, mourn and are buried beyond the Country most closely associated with their family identity.
My family can be Anaiwan and still have a profound relationship with a place on Kamilaroi Country.
The racecourse itself changed
The Quirindi Jockey Club records that before 1926 the racecourse was on William Pollock’s property, “The Ranch”. The land for the present course was acquired in 1926, and the first meeting at the new course was held on 8–9 February 1927. Quirindi Jockey Club history
That chronology matters. Jack’s clearest documented racing period runs from 1897 to 1922. If family memory says that a Duval rode at Quirindi, it may refer to the earlier course, a district meeting or the wider racing area rather than the present venue.
What the search found
I searched for direct public evidence linking Jack, John, Frank, Claude or another Duval to Quirindi as a rider, owner or trainer. I located Quirindi racing reports and searched accessible material, including the 11 March 1910 Quirindi report, but did not find a verified direct Duval match in the material examined. Trove: Quirindi report
The conclusion must therefore be precise:
The Duval connection with Aboriginal racing is strongly documented. A direct public record of Jack, Frank or Claude riding at Quirindi has not yet been verified.
That is not a declaration that the family memory is false. Local meetings may not have survived in digitised newspapers. A report may have used only an initial or surname. The event may have occurred at the earlier course. Or the memory may bring together several Duval racing events across northern New South Wales.
What is certain in family memory is that Nanna Rita, Uncle Glenny and my father are laid to rest just beyond the finishing post at the current Quirindi racecourse. That makes Quirindi a place of family belonging and remembrance, even while the particular ride remains an open research question.
Jack’s death: keeping the record honest
The date of Jack’s death has previously been confused with the dates of his brothers.
The family-tree material lists John James “Jack” Duval as born about 1877 but leaves his death field blank. It records Claude Duval as 1880–1947 and Francis Thomas “Frank” Duval as 1883–1956.
I have not located a reliable death notice, certificate, cemetery entry, probate record or funeral notice that confirms Jack’s date or place of death. The 1947 date should not be assigned to Jack because it belongs to Claude in the family chronology. The 1956 date should not be assigned to Jack because it belongs to Frank.
The responsible wording is:
John James “Jack” Duval, born about 1877; date and place of death presently unconfirmed.
The next searches should include John, James, Jack, Duval and Duvall variations in New South Wales birth, death and marriage records; cemetery registers; funeral notices; probate records; and newspapers after 1922. The National Library of Australia also holds a record for biographical cuttings on John Duval, although the catalogue entry does not provide an online portrait. NLA catalogue: biographical cuttings on John Duval
An unresolved death date is not a weakness in the family story. It is simply an unresolved question.
What is established, what is inherited and what remains open
Category | Current position |
Publicly documented | Jack/John/J. Duval appears in racing reports, a serious Randwick-fall report, an A.J.C. licence list and a later training report. |
Published historical authority | Maynard’s work includes Frank and Jack Duval within the history of Aboriginal jockeys and trainers, including overseas careers. |
Family and community testimony | Nanna Rita’s account of a long line of jockeys; Uncle Glenny Whitfield; Claude’s place as a horseman; and the family burial place at Quirindi. |
Strong family connection | Mary Duval, sister of Claude, Frank and Jack, is my direct ancestor; the line continues through Rita, Dad and me. |
Still open | Jack’s death; a direct Duval ride at Quirindi; Claude’s primary racing records; and the precise route taken by Milbona and Corumba with Lulu. |
This is what responsible reclamation looks like. It does not flatten every source into the same kind of truth. It lets documentary records, oral history, Country and family memory speak to one another while keeping their differences visible.
Hidden no more
The Duval horsemen were not created by a modern family looking backward for a heroic story. Their names appear in newspapers, licensing material, published history and the memories preserved by their descendants.
Jack Duval is documented as a jockey praised for his horsemanship, seriously injured in a Randwick fall, licensed by the A.J.C. and later associated with training and racing. Frank is recognised in Maynard’s history as a jockey, trainer and horseman whose career extended overseas. Claude’s place in the family racing story remains a living family claim awaiting stronger documentary confirmation.
Their achievement belongs to the long history of Aboriginal sportsmen and sportswomen who made their mark from the nineteenth century onward. They worked with horses, competed in public, carried skill across Country and entered an industry that often wanted their labour without acknowledging their identity.
That is why I am proud to claim them as my ancestors.
I am proud of the names that survived. I am proud of the records that can now be read together. I am proud of the family stories that kept moving when the archives went quiet. I am proud that the line did not end with the men who rode; it continued through Mary, through Rita, through Dad, through me and into my daughters.
Nan was little. Dad carried the six-foot genes. I carried them further. The saddle may have passed me by, but the horse did not.
The Duval legacy is not only about winning a race. It is about refusing to disappear.
They were here.They rode.They trained.They endured.They achieved.
And I am proud to be their descendant.
Hidden no more.
Selected authorities and sources
John Maynard, Aborigines and the “Sport of Kings”: Aboriginal jockeys in Australian racing history, revised third edition, and the related AIATSIS publication record: AIATSIS publication · AIATSIS index PDF.
Jack Duval’s biographical entry: AustLit.
The Sportsman, 6 April 1897, Jack Duval and his horsemanship: Trove.
Evening News, 13 January 1899, J. Duval’s Randwick fall: Trove.
Australian Town and Country Journal, 18 August 1900, A.J.C. jockey registrations: Trove.
Daily Telegraph, January 1918, J. Duval and The Tuck: Trove.
9 December 1922 racing and licensing material mentioning John Duval: Trove.
“Claude Duval” as a racehorse, ridden by T. Spain, 1929: Trove.
Quirindi racing report searched for a Duval reference, 11 March 1910: Trove.
Quirindi Country and racecourse material: Liverpool Plains Shire Council · Quirindi Jockey Club history.
AIATSIS, Map of Indigenous Australia, including its cautions about broad group locations: AIATSIS map.
Colonial frontier violence and massacre research: University of Newcastle Colonial Frontier Massacres map · Heritage NSW: Myall Creek site.
National Library of Australia, biographical cuttings on John Duval: NLA catalogue.
Family tree extracts, oral history, community publications and newspaper clippings supplied for this research. These remain family and community sources requiring continued corroboration.
Research status: 10 September 2026.
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