Magic Millions

The unlikely story of an Australian auction house

In 1980, the Gold Coast was the most unlikely of places to sell racehorses. Or was it? When Queensland cattleman Carl Waugh built a thoroughbred auction house just a stone's throw from the meter maids, spivs and schoolies of Surfers Paradise, only he had an inkling of what it might become. By 1986, his sales complex had reinvented the business of selling horses with the introduction of the Magic Millions, a rich, world-first incentive sale that is today worth hundreds of millions of dollars and copied the world over. How did an inspired, middle-aged bushie pull off one of the greatest revolutions in the history of modern horse trading? How, through the 1990s, did he watch it all fall apart? With a gallery of colourful characters and never-before-documented events, award-winning author Jessica Owers has pieced together the survival story of the Gold Coast company that is today Magic Millions, from its explosive genesis to its years in troubled receivership, from its modern might in the ownership of Gerry Harvey, Katie Page and John Singleton to the day it sold Winx as a clean-skinned, $230,000 baby. Magic Millions is a gripping industry story, a riveting racing history and an untold Queensland fairytale. It's the story of a company that almost didn't make it but which today is a powerhouse in the spectacular, high-stakes world of international bloodstock.