In 1948, just three years after the Second World War, two young boys were born to a 16-year-old girl in the north of New Zealand.

 

The twin boys were taken from the teenager and raised by relatives and friends in the area while their mother was sent across New Zealand to restart her life.

 

For Bill and Jim Pomare, life as orphans in the early fifties was unimaginatively hard.  “We were shuffled around from relatives and friends of the family but it was not easy.

 

“It was actually a very cruel existence from one of my mother’s sisters’ husbands who was relentless in his treatment towards us.  This led to many nightmares,” Bill recalled, his mother being youngest of 14 girls.

 

Pomare realised in his early teens that hard work was the only way he was going to fight his way to enhance his lowly life.

 

“I worked from daybreak to sunset seven days a week.  This at least kept me with a roof over my head,” he recalled.

 

“However, when I went to the city it was a real eye-opener.  You were rubbing shoulders with some street wise youths who were trying to make the best of it.  I was fortunate families took pity on me and they would give me a room to sleep in with a hot meal.”  

 

Bill Pomare fought the good battle.  After establishing a strong electrical business in Rotorua, at the age of 32, he was diagnosed with cancer. A call out to family members realised the arrival of his mother after so many years apart.

 

Bill’s fortunes began to turn for the better.  His illness went into remission, he met his mother for the first time and was now experienced his own family life, something he never had.

 

His affinity with horses started when he was a youngster living in relatives’ homes over the road from dairy farms and spending afternoons watching sheep musters.

 

“In the 1940s you learnt to ride before you could walk.  That may sound silly, but horses were the only mode of transport you could have.  No horse no school, no social life,” he said.

 

Years later, the racing bug bit Pomare and eventually Bill found himself foal sharing arrangement with a partner. They hoped an Ocean Park colt would get them $20,000 at auction.

 

“No one came near it and eventually it was passed in for $6,000 with my foal sharing partner saying, ‘give me $3,000 and you can have him’.

 

“We called him Ocean Billy and he’s had 24 starts for a number of wins including the Auckland Cup,” Pomare said.

 

“Our lifetime dreams were being realised.  We are now on the cusp of having a Melbourne Cup runner.  My wife and I were going to stay at Pakenham and train Ocean Billy, but the COVID lockdown messed us around to such a degree that we can’t now be in Australia to train the horse. 

 

“I remembered a phone call from Chris Waller, another Kiwi, who rang me on the night of the horse winning the Auckland Cup.  Chris asked me ‘are you coming to Melbourne for the spring’ and I said ‘yes, the Caulfield and Melbourne Cup.  He said, ‘well if you need anything, and I mean anything, in Australia, just give us a yell’,” he said.

 

After the reality of the COVID lockdown Bill Pomare, for the first time in many years, conceded defeat and contacted Waller and the horse is now with the master trainer.

 

“Forget about his run in the Caulfield Cup, he just didn’t like the track.  He’d been off his feed for a while because it was a pretty big transition going from my place over to a big organisation in Australia.  

 

“And he runs two miles on his ear.  That’s why he is being sent there.”

 

Bill’s twin, Jim, became a successful farrier and the man that plated Cox Plate winner Bonecrusher. The brothers remain very close.

 

Bill Pomare said that on the first Tuesday in November he will have friends, relatives, neighbours over to watch the race that stops a nation to his home in Rotorua.

 

And, as a guess, this 73-year-old who has worked so hard from a rough beginning is sure to say “how good is this, my beautiful family, my wonderful friends and we’re all watching my first Melbourne Cup winner carrying my colours.  No, it doesn’t get any better than this.”