Regional Victorians are ready to fight a proposal to "rationalise" country racing fearing it will destroy several thriving picnic race clubs that generate jobs and much-needed tourism dollars in a shrinking rural economy.
Other states will be watching the coming battle closely.
They've all had similar arm wrestles with government, because country racing is seen as playing such a key role in many rural communities.
A paper circulated by Racing Victoria the week before Christmas, outlines tough new "sustainability test conditions" for all Victorian racecourses.
But it is clear East Gippsland stands to be hardest hit if the plan is imposed.
The paper says that if test conditions (about liquidity levels, minimum gate takings and health and safety) are not met, 11 Victorian racecourses are "at risk" of losing all race meetings.
Four are in East Gippsland, prompting independent state MP Craig Ingram to call on communities to fight for the survival of a tradition that goes back to the 1870s.
Mr Ingram said racing's long-term future could be jeopardised by the illusion of short-term savings.
He condemned the plan as the product of a "metropolitan-run organisation that's losing touch with the grass roots" and likely to erode the traditional democratic nature of Australian racing.
"It's an ideological thing the hierarchy is pursuing by continuing to cut down racing at the outposts," he said.
"To them, it seems much easier to manage half a dozen big trainers clustered at a few tracks around Melbourne — but that way only millionaires will be able to race horses.
"We need to have a fight to take them on."
At stake in East Gippsland is the future of three popular annual picnic meetings and the modern Bairnsdale racecourse's status as a training centre.
If the East Gippsland clubs cannot meet the test conditions, it would kill the picnic meetings and cut Bairnsdale's eight meetings to five a year.
Racing Victoria chief executive Rob Hines said no clubs were under threat of closure and the sustainability test was aimed more at professional country clubs rather than amateur picnic clubs.
"We are supportive of picnic racing as an entry point to racing but would like them to be at least viable," he said.
But the communities around Omeo, Swifts Creek and Buchan are confused and angry about the implications of the plan, which the race clubs were told of on December 18.
Members of three race club committees, linked by geography and a common history — and the need to support each other — say country communities already struggling to field sporting teams would be gutted by the loss of annual race meetings that are the area's biggest visitor drawcards.
The Omeo district club has raced at its picturesque Hinnomunjie course — probably the highest altitude track in Australia — for 133 years.
Its Labour Day weekend meeting in March swells the population of the tiny township of Benambra from 150 to almost 1000.
The Saturday meeting is followed by a ball, a Sunday market and the Tambo Valley races at Swifts Creek on the Monday.
Omeo District Race Club president and former Benambra publican Doug Tompkins estimates "race week" brings in up to $30,000 to the hotel alone, and more than $100,000 into the district.
Without that cash injection the drought-stricken district's economy would wither, said East Gippsland Shire councillor Trudy Anderson, who is secretary of the Omeo race club.
Ms Anderson agreed with her counterparts from the other two local picnic race clubs — Tambo Valley and Buchan & Gelantipy — that because the meetings are run mostly by volunteers, they cost the industry only a few thousand dollars a year to subsidise.
She is mystified as to why racing authorities would apparently want to close clubs that were attracting the biggest crowds they have had in living memory.
"This club was self-funding for decades," Ms Anderson said. "Recently (Country Racing Victoria) have provided money for clerks of the course, judges and starters, but if we had to, we could be self-sustaining again."
She said it was difficult for local volunteer delegates to attend racing industry meetings, usually held close to Melbourne.
"It's an eight-hour round trip from here, but if we ask for meetings closer to us, it seems to fall on deaf ears."
The secretary of the Buchan & Gelantipy Racing Club, Ian Dunkley, made the long trip to Moe on December 18 to be briefed on the plan.
He was shocked to be told the clubs were at risk.
The bush picnic meetings are so popular that Buchan's February races could attract more than 1000 people at a time when professional meetings struggled to get that many, he said.
"Two years ago we had to switch the Buchan picnic races to the Bairnsdale course because of the bushfires — and we lost money because only 300 turned up instead of the 1100 we'd had (at Buchan) the year before."
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