Conlon, who grew up in the Central West town of Parkes, became a bookmaker way back in 1951 at the age of 21 after clerking for a local bookie for three years.

He has been fielding at the races since before the bookies had their price boards and would shout the odds to the listening crowd, and he was one of the last to succumb to the computer age.

“Parkes was a very good gambling town, so there was a lot of interest in it,” he said.

“You didn’t need much [to start] in those days, the guarantee was 250 pounds and all you had to do was get another bookie to guarantee it.

“It was very haphazard but the regulations have become much more stringent nowadays, in 1951 anybody could become a bookmaker.”

Conlon said he argued against the introduction of computers for years and stands by that.

“I was the last to go electronic, they made a special grandfather clause for me that said old bookies could keep writing tickets, but new ones coming in had to go to the computer,” he said.

“I was the only bookie for two or three years in Sydney that still wrote my own tickets but finally I had to change because the punters couldn’t see me alongside boards that were lit up like Christmas trees.

“That was the biggest change in my time, and another was when the boards first came in.

“When I first started off, you used to call out the odds orally, you’d call the horse’s name and price and punters would reply.

“The computer is actually slower for me, I could write a lot more tickets by hand than the computer can process, and it has cut profits.”

Meetings like the Doncaster Hcp and Sydney Cup of the past two weeks and this week’s Standalone Saturday give Conlon a lift, as it gives him more of a chance to make some money with more bets being placed by bigger crowds.

And despite having seen it all in his 57 years at the track, the man who now only fields at metro and Hawkesbury meetings, can still remember some of the characters of the 1950s.

“I’ve met a lot of colourful characters, when I was young they were a dime a dozen,” Conlon said.

“I went to a meeting at Gundagai one time and this bookie turned up – he was unspectacular all day and hardly laid a bet, but it came to the fourth race and there was a favourite who looked a moral, and he wasn’t getting many bets, but then he called out 2/1 the field.

“They assaulted him from all quarters of the ring – 500, 100, 200, 50 – he was taking these bets and he couldn’t get the money in the bag fast enough.

“He had some idea it couldn’t win and he was taking all bets.

“A fella came along late with this great big bundle of money and the bookie snatched it off him, threw it in his bag, said ‘two bundles to a bundle’ and wrote the ticket for three bundles!

“That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen at the races, and I wasn’t even a bookmaker then, I was still a clerk.

“I suppose if it had won he would have had to count it and pay it out, but he knew what was going on and he took it all.”