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Queanbeyan is a town of 25,000. It has a proud history beginning its life in the early 1800s as pastoral settlement.
"Quinbean" was the aboriginal word for clear waters.
Match races between horses in the district were held from the 1850's. The first documentation of an official race meeting at Queanbeyan was recorded in The Golden Age in 1860.
The local countryside is very undulating and it proved difficult to find a site for a racecourse. However, in 1885, land was reserved to the north of the town by the New South Wales (NSW) State government and set aside for the sport of thoroughbred racing.
Racing in the early 1900s was very much a bush affair and was not always regular.
However, following World War II, the Club developed rapidly, assisted by the wealth of regional agriculture and population growth in Canberra - Australia's newly established Capital City.
Canberra is only a few minutes from the racecourse, across the (NSW), Australian Capital Territory (ACT) borders. Queanbeyan truly is "Country Racing In The City".
Today, the Queanbeyan Racing Club is one of the strongest and most progressive country racing clubs in NSW, holding 25 meetings a year and distributing more than $1,000,000 to thoroughbred owners in prize money.
In 1999-2000, 12 of these meetings are "TAB meetings" covered by all of Australia's State and Territory TABs.
On 12 February 2000, The Queanbeyan Racing Club launched its new identity, QRacing, and became the first country racing club in Australia to have its own dedicated Internet site.
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