The 12-time Melbourne Cup winner passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning at age 87 and tributes flowed from all around Australia and from all corners of the globe.

Everyone can tell a story about Cummings but for Mudgee's Cameron Crockett and his father Max there's a very special connection.

The duo spent time breaking in horses for Gooree Park, an establishment with a partnership with the Cummings family, and even broke in Sultry Feeling, the Bart and James Cummings-trained mare who won on Saturday at Rosehill and will go down as Bart Cummings final ever winner.

"I guess growing up in 50 years time I can say I broke in Bart's last winner," Crockett said, before saying how he has heard the Cummings name all his life.

"Dad's known him for years, long before Gooree, he knew him back when he was a kid.

"Out of all the people I heard Dad talk about, there's no one he speaks as highly of as Bart."

Crockett, who never got the chance to meet Cummings, said it was hard to know what makes his father respect and love the trainer so much but he believes it was just because they shared a true passion for racing and the horses he worked with.

"Dad thought he was a brilliant man with a horse and he saw him as someone like himself, a horseman," he said.

"There's a lot of trainers and owners around who are just that but they had real respect for each other as horseman.

"He (Cummings) cared and respected for them and treated them like another being, not just a number."

Cummings won 12 Melbourne Cups - a feat that is unlikely to be ever matched, let alone bettered - four Golden Slippers, five Doncaster Miles and won in excess of 7,000 races and 268 Group 1 races. In a long list of achievements, he also won 32 Derbies, 24 Oaks, seven Caulfield Cups, five Cox Plates and 13 Australian Cups.

He was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1982 for his services to the racing industry and nine years later was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.

Cummings was also an inaugural inductee into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame and in 2007 Australia Post displayed his image on a postage stamp as part of its Australian Legends series.

While proud to say he at least had same kind of connection with Cummings, Crockett admitted he was now disappointed he never took up his father's offer to go and see him in more recent times.

"I never got to meet him, I spoke to him on the phone a lot when Dad spoke to him but we were actually meant to go and see him at Prince's Farm sometime," he said. "But getting caught in work and everything like you do we never got the chance and that will be one of my big regrets. "I never got to meet Bart and now I wish I had."