Kurrajong Paceway

Kurrajong Paceway is the demo track and the oldest venue on the circuit, running since August 2019. The eight pacers on a Kurrajong card are the eight runners in the free play-credit game at play/: same saddlecloth numbers, same liveries, same names. Play credits only — no money, no deposits, no prizes, nothing to win or lose. The game is the plainest demonstration the site has of what every other page describes, which is a weighted draw rendered as a race.

The lap is a true metric mile: 1609 m around, limestone, left-handed, with a 300 m home straight and a sprint lane inside the pegs for the final lap. Two distances are programmed. The 1609 m is a mobile start — the field scores up behind the arms of the mobile barrier, which accelerates away as the arms fold, and all eight sit on the front line. The 2138 m is a standing start off the tapes, six on the front line and two on the second. Rule 142 of the Australian Harness Racing Rules makes the mobile the default start unless the controlling body approves otherwise (Harness Racing Australia, rules current to 17 July 2026, read 18 October 2026), and the circuit follows it: the feature, the Kurrajong Mile, is a mobile. The 2138 m is one lap plus 529 m, so the tapes sit in the back turn, and the two second-line runners stand as close behind the front line as the start allows — rule 130(4) of the same rulebook puts outside draws as close as practicable behind the front line.

The vocabulary on a Kurrajong card is the real vocabulary. The leader sits on the pegs; the horse directly outside it is in the death seat, which Harness Racing New Zealand's glossary calls the toughest run in a race (read 18 October 2026); the one-one is the horse with cover behind the death seat. Every winner carries a mile rate, the gross time normalised to 1609 m, so over the mile it is simply the time. For scale, Harness Racing Australia's 2026 Grand Circuit page records Leap To Fame rating 1:49.0 winning the 2026 Miracle Mile over 1609 m (read 18 October 2026). What a Kurrajong card does not carry is a gait model: pacers break gait in the real sport and the rules deal with it, but a draw has no legs, so nothing here breaks, galloped or is checked.

An overview of Australian harness racing puts the country's paceways generally at 700 to 1,000 m around (Wikipedia, harness racing in Australia, read 18 October 2026), so a lap that is itself a metric mile is longer than the Australian norm; Kurrajong has the proportions of a mile paceway and copies no particular one.