Robin Levett - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Robin Levett was an Australian travel writer, novelist, philanthropist, pilot, and breeder of racehorses anointed the "First Lady of Australian Racing" in the mid-1990s. Her eclectic interests ranged from fly fishing

Fly fishing

Fly fishing is an angling method in which an artificial 'fly' is used to catch fish. The fly is cast using a fly rod, reel, and specialized weighted line. Casting a nearly weightless fly or 'lure' requires casting techniques significantly different from other forms of casting...

in Kashmir

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

, about which she wrote a book, to running her own wildlife refuge in Victoria.

Robin Levett

Levett

Levett is an Anglo-Norman territorial surname deriving from the village of Livet-en-Ouche, now Jonquerets-de-Livet, in Eure, Normandy. Ancestors of the earliest Levett family in England, the de Livets were lords of the village of Livet, and undertenants of the de Ferrers, among the most powerful of...

was born Robin Walker, the daughter of Major

Major

Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

Geoffrey and his wife Aileen (Whiting) Walker in Sorrento, Victoria

Sorrento, Victoria

Sorrento is a township in Victoria, Australia, located on the shores of Port Phillip on the Mornington Peninsula, about one and a half hours south of Melbourne...

. As a girl, she attended the prestigious Hermitage School, from which she was expelled after she tried to burn it down. She later attended Toorak College in Mount Eliza, Victoria

Mount Eliza, Victoria

Mount Eliza is an outer suburb south-east of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is in the Local Government Area of the Shire of Mornington Peninsula...

, which seemed to suit her better. She excelled, was named head girl and won the top prize in 1943. She subsequently studied at the National Gallery School, where she was awarded a coveted travelling scholarship.

Following her graduation, the gifted and hyperactive Australian was unable to use her travelling scholarship because of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

raging; instead she enlisted with the Navy. Posted to a quiet billeting in Albert Park, Victoria

Albert Park, Victoria

Albert Park is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip. At the 2006 Census, Albert Park had a population of 5827....

, young Walker resigned. She next signed on with the Women's Auxiliary Service

Women's Auxiliary Service (Burma)

The Women’s Auxiliary Service was formed on January 16, 1942 and disbanded in 1946. The WASs were a group of British and Australian women who manned Mobile Canteens for the troops of Burma Command in World War II...

, Burma (Wasbees, the Australian equivalent of the WAVES

WAVES

The WAVES were a World War II-era division of the U.S. Navy that consisted entirely of women. The name of this group is an acronym for "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" ; the word "emergency" implied that the acceptance of women was due to the unusual circumstances of the war and...

), which sent her to Rangoon.

Following the war, Walker moved to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

for a brief time before returning to Australia to work for British Signals Intelligence. Back in Australia, she married Geoffrey Levett, a successful businessman who produced his own line of frozen vegetables. His new wife went to work in the business, gaining her pilot's licence so she could fly her husband to meetings across the continent. Not content with half-measures, the new Mrs Levett gained a commercial pilot's licence, and then learned how to parachute – presumably in case her pilot's skills failed. Subsequently she flew an air race around Victoria.

In the early 1960s the couple found a new avocation. They leased a filly

Filly

A filly is a young female horse too young to be called a mare. There are several specific definitions in use.*In most cases filly is a female horse under the age of four years old....

named Never on Sunday. The horse turned out to be a winner, and soon they were breeding racehorses as well as racing them. They took up the Lyndhurst Lodge stud farm

Stud farm

A stud farm or stud in animal husbandry, is an establishment for selective breeding of livestock. The word "stud" comes from the Old English stod meaning "herd of horses, place where horses are kept for breeding" Historically, documentation of the breedings that occur on a stud farm leads to the...

in Cranbourne, Victoria

Cranbourne, Victoria

Cranbourne is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 43 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Casey. At the 2006 Census, Cranbourne had a population of 14,750....

, and later also had the Willowmavin stud farm in Kilmore

Kilmore, Victoria

Kilmore is a town in the Australian state of Victoria. Located north of Melbourne, it is contentiously claimed as Victoria's oldest inland settled town...

, before finally settling on Willowmavin. The venture was a success. In 1966 the Levetts won the Victoria Derby

Victoria Derby

The Victoria Derby is an Australian Thoroughbred horse race held annually on the first day of Melbourne's annual Spring Racing Carnival, Victorian Derby Day, held at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. A Group One race for three-year-old horses, it is raced on a left-handed turf course at a...

with their horse Khalifa; in the following year Khalifa won the VRC St Leger

VRC St Leger

The Victoria Racing Club's St Leger Stakes is one of Australia's oldest Thoroughbred horse races held on ANZAC Day at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. First run in 1857, the Listed race is open to three-year-olds and is run on turf over a distance of 2800m .Once one of the most prestigious...

.

The couple also won the Perth

Perth Cup

The Perth Cup is Western Australia's premier Thoroughbred horse race and is held at Ascot Racecourse on New Year's Day each year. It has been run since 1887....

and Brisbane Cup

Brisbane Cup

The Brisbane Cup is a Group 2 Australian Thoroughbred horse race for three year olds and upwards, run under handicap conditions over a distance of 2400 metres at Eagle Farm Racecourse, Brisbane in June...

s and countless lesser races. Their best finish in the Melbourne Cup

Melbourne Cup

The Melbourne Cup is Australia's major Thoroughbred horse race. Marketed as "the race that stops a nation", it is a 3,200 metre race for three-year-olds and over. It is the richest "two-mile" handicap in the world, and one of the richest turf races...

was third. The Levetts co-owned the horse Buoyant Bird with former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke

Bob Hawke

Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke AC GCL was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia from March 1983 to December 1991 and therefore longest serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister....

.

Robin Levett served for years on the committee of the famous Kilmore Turf Club, and as President from 1989 to 1994, the only woman ever elected president of a grade one Australian turf club. Despite her consuming involvement in horseracing and breeding she found time to open a wildlife reserve at Willowmavin, where she included rescued animals into everyday life. "Guests in the committee room at Flemington would be bemused", said the Australian newspaper The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...

in its obituary of the racing legend, "when she would pull a young wombat

Wombat

Wombats are Australian marsupials; they are short-legged, muscular quadrupeds, approximately in length with a short, stubby tail. They are adaptable in their habitat tolerances, and are found in forested, mountainous, and heathland areas of south-eastern Australia, including Tasmania, as well as...

from a large shoulder bag and feed it from a bottle."

Following the death of her husband Geoffrey Levett in 1990, Robin Levett was forced to close Willowmavin stud farm and its wildlife refuge. She took up writing to fill the void. Her first and most successful book, a novel entitled The Girls, was based on her experience growing up the third of three daughters of a military man. The book twice hit the bestseller lists in Australia, and led to her meeting her publisher – and second husband – Nick Hudson, whom she eventually married at age 77 (he was 70).

Levett showed the same sure touch in her writing as she did in horsebreeding. Her novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

entitled The Rangoon Incident, based loosely on her experiences in Burma, began with this beguiling and macabre sentence: "I was at a murder once." The book went on to recount an incident in Rangoon in which a military officer sitting next to Levett in the officers' club was shot in the head and died in Levett's lap, a case of mistaken identity by a jealous husband.

"I really enjoyed working with her immensely", recalled her publisher husband Hudson. "This was strange, because we really had very little in common. She had made a career in the racing industry, running two stud farms, owning a string of successful racehorses, becoming president of the Kilmore Turf Club and being named First Lady of Australian Racing, while I had never been near an Australian racetrack and regarded the industry and its adherents with contempt. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that we started living together, first at weekends and then full time."

Continuing to write under the Levett name, the racing enthusiast turned out a second book about horseracing called Bloodstock. The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...

called it the best book ever written about horseracing in Australia. For many years Levett had travelled to Kashmir

Kashmir

, initially to fly fish

Fly fishing

, a hobby she had taken up from her father. Kashmir became one of the loves of her life, not simply the fishing but the people, the customs and the landscape. Recalled her publisher husband: "Visiting Kashmir with her made me understand what it's like to be the Duke of Edinburgh

Duke of Edinburgh

The Duke of Edinburgh is a British royal title, named after the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, which has been conferred upon members of the British royal family only four times times since its creation in 1726...

, constantly bathing in his wife's glory. Robin has friends at all social levels."

"One day during our last trip," Hudson recalled of the couple's last journey to Kashmir, "we attended a European-style lunch party with the cream of the Kashmiri political elite, including an ex-Chief Minister (the equivalent of a State Premier

Premiers of the Australian states

The Premiers of the Australian states are the de facto heads of the executive governments in the six states of the Commonwealth of Australia. They perform the same function at the state level as the Prime Minister of Australia performs at the national level. The territory equivalents to the...

), and then went on to sit on the floor in the home of a boatman who paddles a shikara on the Dal Lake, being offered traditional Kashmiri hospitality. What did our hosts have in common? They were both personal friends of Robin's."

Levett devoted a book to her experiences in Kashmir, which she visited every year since 1972 (including the years of intense civil war), calling it The Shikari. Its twin subjects were an unlikely pairing: the wonders of fly fishing and the horrors of civil war. Critics were enraptured with the work, some calling it Levett's finest. As for Levett, she continued to travel to Kashmir each year, and supported several Kashmiri families.

Levett continued to travel abroad and across Australia in her last years, and visited her beloved Kilmore Turf Club at every opportunity. After being named "The First Lady of Australian Racing" in the 1990s, she was a popular hostess and guest at race-related events. Following Levett's death on 14 August 2008, from pneumonia

Pneumonia

Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...

, there was a send-off at the Kilmore Turf Club in her honour. The Kilmore track now runs a Robin Levett Memorial race in honour of the pilot, parachutist, traveller, writer and naturelover.

Further reading