Her son is the jockey club president,  but missed Adaminaby racecourse's big event in 1983, when a movie about Phar Lap was shot there.

The dreary racecourse was dressed up to resemble the Mexican town of Agua Caliente, scene of the world's richest race, but young Lynley's cattle and sheep farming family was in strife.

Producers used  the big chestnut gelding Towering Inferno as Phar Lap and Tom Burlinson, who years earlier played the Man from Snowy River, was Tommy Woodcock and can be seen in the film walking the champion around a rocky outcrop near the track before the race.

A long drought had turned the racecourse into a forlorn landscape, catching the movie-makers' attention, as it had in 1959 for the filming of The Sundowners, starring Robert Mitchum, Peter Ustinov and Deborah Kerr.

Mr Miners had no  time to see Phar Lap recreated.  "At the time, we were in full-blown drought here, paddocks were dirt, I remember it well. I was ripped out of school to go droving.

"Dad said 'We're going drovin'. I spend six months on the road with Dad and my younger  brother was out of school over Christmas too. I was a kid. I was only 14. I missed so much school by the time it was over I never went back," he said.

Mr Miners won't miss Saturday's celebrations. Fresh red paint covers the roofs of the 100-year-old grandstand and members stand, which were relocated when Adaminaby was flooded by Lake Eucumbene in 1957.

Marquees line the track. A thick carpet of grass on the course is clipped in readiness for Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove and Lady Cosgrove, who will open the six-event meeting. Television breakfast show personality Samantha Armitage grew up in Adaminaby and will be among many people returning.

Mr Miners expects people from Wagga, Grenfell and throughout the mountains to arrive and swell the town's population of 200 to 3000.

They'll see a grand parade and argue once again about who exactly was Banjo Paterson's Man from Snowy River.

"People on this side of the [Great Dividing] range say he was from here and people on the other side say he was from Corryong."

The "Man" from Adaminaby is Charlie McKeahnie who as a 17-year-old chased a runaway stallion across the northern section of Kosciuszko National Park. Bill Fogarty, who manages the memorial hall, says McKeahnie's chase cut across the boundary creek of his property "Warrigal" and ended badly.

"The stallion was killed, he came around a corner and smashed into a rocky outcrop."

The other Man is Jack Riley, from Corryong, but Mr Miners reckons he was too young.

"It would be wrong of me not to put Banjo Paterson in [the parade], Clancy of the Overflow and a few old cars, and one of the extras who played a Mexican for the Phar Lap movie."

Looking through the jockey club's history Mr Miners has found records of two-day meetings.

"That's what they did in the old days. People had horses, it was their major mode of transport, the motor car never came until the 1900s, so everyone had a horse. There were racetracks everywhere.

"You only had to suggest you had the best horse in the district and everyone wanted to take you on."