By Tania Phillips
Born in the Mallee, the youngest of nine boys, it probably wasn’t surprising that Kevin Kiley became a shearer but that fact that he went on to run Pig Races from North Queensland to Hobart probably was.
Kev, who owns the Sandy Creek Hotel, swapped the life of a shearer down near Mildura to come north with his wife and nothing more than a car and two kids. But while he scoffs at his story being called “rags to riches” he has created a pretty unique niche for himself in the world.
It’s not many people that can say they’ve helped raise millions of dollars for charity by racing pigs across four States and they own one of the most characterful hotels in Queensland (which he likes to joke makes the best pizza’s in Allen – not hard given there’s not much more than the hotel there).
“I’ve got pig races all the time – I’ve been everywhere man!” Kev chuckled.
“We are flat out, March and February, we went to Canberra, Maitland, we’ve done a job in Gunnedah, Logan Village, Cobar. I’ve just come back from Camden. This week we had Toowoomba Show and then Saturday a fundraiser at Bonalbo.”
That’s a lot of travelling for Kev and his pigs – usually six or seven of his porcine pals depending on the number of sponsors they get at the event.
“A lot of the fundraisers get sponsors for each pig, they get their business logo on the jacket you see,” he said.
“Some places they get five or six hundred bucks a pig and they can also get the race sponsored. Usually if they do the fundraiser properly they’ll be in front before I get there.”
Going on those figures, Kev and his pigs must have raised a lot of money for charity over the years.
“I’ve never actually added it up because the money doesn’t go to me, but I do a bit of a rough calculation in my head,” he said.
“I’ve done Nindigully, which fundraises for the Royal Flying Doctors, for nearly 20 years. Last year they cleared $60,000, they don’t do it every year, but every year we’ve done it, it’s increased. On average they’d clear $30,000 a year and that’s one event. We did our pub here at Sandy Creek on 18 March and the Cancer Council in Warwick cleared $15,000. There’s other jobs where they get upwards of $30-$40,000, some that get $10k, it all varies a bit.
“But at a guess, a fairly calculated guess, it will be well over $10 million dollars we’ve raised for charities.”
Kev’s pig racing has now been operating for 24 years and don’t look like slowing down anytime soon.
“It’s 24 years on Melbourne Cup day,” he laughed.
“It’s interesting how it started because you may have noticed I’m a little bit rough around the edges but the first job I ever did was at some lardy-dah joint in Brisbane, I can’t even remember the name of it. But I only ever did it the once. I just had some fence panels and I made a bit of a race about six metres long. I had five white little pigs and I had a spray can. I put one, two, three, four, five on their backs and I shooed them from one end to the other, that was it. That’s how it started.”
The pig race grew out of his previous business an animal farm called Noah’s farm.
“It was an established business and that was my first job on Melbourne Cup day 2000. I did the animal farm for years and combined the pig races with it. It was a good lurk because when we first started they’d ring us up about the animal farm but once the pig races took off then it was the opposite. Now I don’t even do the animal farm.
“But after that first job, I thought this could be a goer. I was a shearer so I’d do a few shearing demonstrations as well. Then we had cow milking, it was all that farmy type of stuff and then the pigs started to kick off and we started doing pub jobs with the pigs. I will be quite honest, I didn’t think the pub jobs would work. But they are our bread and butter now and because people are fundraising, whether it’s the Westpac Helicopter, Lifeflight, Cancer Council whoever we’ve raised money for lots of different charities, everybody’s happy.”
It must have worked because he bought his own hotel.
“You’re deadright it does work I’ve been doing it too long for it not to,” he laughed.
“Now we’ve got four crews on the road. Australia Day is usually our busiest day and we have all four crews out.
“My son does the job for me, we’ve usually got a bit of work, especially this year when we’ve had two jobs a weekend most weeks.
“I’ve also got a mate his name is actually Geoff Bacon, true story. Geoff’s been working with me seven or eight years, maybe even longer. He’s taught himself how to do the spruiking which is a credit to him. He got married a few years ago and we really wanted him to hyphenate his name. We didn’t give a rats which way it went, we either wanted it Bacon-Free or Free-Bacon! We use that when he’s working with the pigs.”
It’s all a long way from where and how he grew up and Kev admits that his younger self would never have dreamt he’d be doing what he’s doing now.
“I was brought up in the middle of the Mallee Country – a little place called Sea Lake which is an hour west of Swan Hill and an hour and a half south of Mildura and had a great childhood, freedom,” he said.
“I got sick of shearing sheep, I came up here with nothing. I had an old Falcon car, I had a wife and two kids and that was it. I’m not going to tell you it’s a rags to riches story, it’s just evolved.”
As well as running the Pig Races the family has had the pub for the past five years.
“It’s a beautiful old pub, I’m not here all the time but we’ve got a good bunch of women who work for us, good staff they look after the place when I’m away. I just promote the pub wherever I go. We’ve got a hot pink car and black one with the pub logo. They get a lot of exposure when we’re out and about.
“Its got character and it’s a free camping spot so we get quite a few free campers coming through. They always come over talk a bit of crap and I’m pretty good at that.”
The pub will be a hive of activity over Easter with lots of live music.
“We’ve got a band and a pig on the spit on the Saturday night and we’re doing a Sunday Sesh on the Sunday night,” he said.
“We still have the best pizza’s in Allen and we’ve got a really good cook at the moment. We’re still doing the Parmy night’s on Thursday night and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday we’re open and Sunday night is pizza night.
“I tell city kids in particular that as a child there were nine of us, my mum was very regimented and she was a saint,” he said.
“We’d milk four cows before we went to school and I can still remember one old cow, my brother Pete and I (we were only six or seven) if it was raining we could get underneath her and still milk her. Anyway we ended up like arms like popeye but I remember carrying the buckets of milk past the pigs and they could smell the milk. And lo and behold a blokes making a living out of that very concept, pigs smelling milk because that’s what’s on the finish line milk. I make no secret of it. Milk to a pig is like chocolate to a human or beer to me.”
So if you wanted to have Kev races you’d have to have a beer at the end.
“Yeah as long as it’s cold,” he quipped.
