by Patrick Bartley

This article is kindly reproduced by permission from The Age. It originally appeared in that newspaper on February 12, 2003.

Michael Eskander clearly remembers the waves crashing against the side of the cruise liner Achille Lauro as he tried to celebrate his 21st birthday on the voyage to Australia from Egypt in mid-1969.

His arrival at the docks was a far from memorable one. He was herded from the wharf and spent his first night on Australian soil in a spartan room kindly supplied by the Church of All Nations in Carlton.

Eskander, like all migrants of the day, was then sent to Bonegilla in north-east Victoria. It was the temporary home of more than 300,000 migrants until its closure in 1971.

"We slept our first night frozen like never before. It was July, the

At the same time, Eskander is aware, from his father, not to take the often ruthless business for granted. "It's not a matter of
rocking up and filling your bag. It's tough, very tough and getting tougher," he said.

Charlie Cox is a second-generation bookmaker. He's Riverina-born and bred and the
son of George Gordon Cox, a bookie with an irresistible sense of humour who fielded predominantly during the 1920s and '30s and would often take three days to get home from the often inaccessible parts he would operate from.

But his son watched his father and bookmakers of that time closely. He saw how many ran in and out of huge amounts of cash, often the equivalent of a year's pay for a top public servant in Canberra, after a day at the Wagga races.

Charlie Cox, after leaving school, was rejected by the army and then supplemented his wage with drink waiting and pencilling until the air force accepted him in the late 1930s.

are just old black and white movies now. Get them out and have a look at how things used to be. If I give any advice to my son, it's don't be cavalier. Be firm and astute. The days of being extravagant and flamboyant are over, he said.

Mark Sampieri attended Xavier College and on leaving one of the state's biggest
Catholic schools, studied and then trained as a physiotherapist and today has a thriving business in North Melbourne. Despite
being in constant demand from clients, Sampieri has also been smitten by bookmaking.

"Dad told me the first year will be hard but it will get better and it's not easy but I feel it will get easier. I've been lucky, I've had no better role model than Dad to show me the way," Sampieri said.

Allen Cleary first ventured into bookmaking 44 years ago at the then primitive Balnarring racecourse. He worked as a hobby bookmaker,

real heart of the winter," Eskander said. "In fact, I think every July that it could never be colder than that first night in Bonegilla."

Eskander convinced immigration officials that he was a proven and proficient forklift driver back in his home country. "If the truth be known, I'd never been near one, but it got me out of Bonegilla and into a job in North Melbourne driving a forklift," he said.

He then became a bank teller. "What amazed me was a man came into the bank every Monday morning without fail and banked $100 and sometimes $200," Eskander said. "I couldn't help myself, I had to ask him how he was doing it.

"He said, 'I'm a bagman'.

"I said, 'a what man?'

"He said, 'A bagman and a penciller, you know for a bookie'.

"I said, 'please, you must get me a job with a bookie'."

Within six months, he had made it into the ground team of powerful rails bookmaker Norm Cain. "I couldn't believe it. He'd win between $5000 and $25,000 every week! I could count on two hands, in all the years I was with him, that he had ever lost," he said.

Today, Eskander is recognised as one of the most powerful bookmakers in Australia. He has frequently duelled with the Packers and the Williamses. And his business is thriving, a far cry from learning how to drive a forklift.

Alan Eskander, son of Michael, was educated at Trinity Grammar, Kew, and later achieved a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in economics. At 27, Eskander jnr is one of four sons of leading rails bookmakers to embark on the same careers as their fathers.

They have tertiary backgrounds, far in advance of their fathers, but are working in a far harsher landscape than their fathers ever did when they started laying odds.

"It's fantastic. I come in touch with all walks of life. No job ever lends itself to meeting such a cross-section of the community," Alan said.

Within six weeks, Cox was in New Guinea and at war.

After the war, Cox fielded at greyhound, trots and gallop meetings until the early 1960s, when he made it to Melbourne.

Cox gained his first real financial break when offered an interstate license to operate on the rails at all city tracks. "I held $80,000 the first week and then $200,000 and then it seemed the sky was the limit. I think in the end, we were holding about $2 million," Cox said.

His son David, 41, is a third-generation bookmaker. He studied at Xavier College in Kew and then became an accountant, working for two years with a city firm.

He worked in real estate and branched out and built two Hungry Jacks stores and worked them, then sold the businesses but retained the properties. Cox is also a noted
property investor.

"In Dad's day, and in fact in his dad's day, massive crowds were the norm. Today, we don't (have them). I held $80 million in one year, in the year 2000, but that's done on a razor-sharp margin and 70 per cent of that money was held on the phone.

"The game has changed and is changing. Bookmakers and their business are unique to the commercial environment. There's no equity in your business. You can't sell it, you can just retire and your clients are taken by other firms," Cox said.

Robbie Waterhouse is a third-generation bookmaker. When I asked him what influence his father and grandfather had on his
career, he said: "Everything, I suppose. Always remember there are no schools or universities that offer courses for bookies. You learn on the run, but what's harder these days is there's no audience like there was in the old days".

In 1958, Graeme Sampieri played in Hawthorn's winning reserves grand final side. A forward-wingman, Sampieri's dreams lay not at Glenferrie Oval on a Saturday afternoon but across town at Flemington.

After working as an apprentice pharmacist,
Sampieri followed his instincts and abandoned that profession for bookmaking in
the mid-1960s.

"The good days are well and truly gone. Big crowds at race meetings

supplementing his weekend's interest with a nine-to-five job in the Melbourne car industry.

After 10 years, Cleary took the plunge and became a full-time bookmaker. Some 30
years later, he is still fielding and is regarded as one of the strongest bookmakers on the rails.

His son Rod left Monash University with a degree in mathematics. He taught for six years, then took a redundancy payout during
Jeff Kennett's rationalisation of schools in the early 1990s.

"Thanks to the then Premier, I got paid out $15,000 and I packed up my belongings and with my wife and a few friends, took off to chance my arm at bookmaking at the
Broken Hill Cup," Cleary said.

"I fielded and lost on the first six races, scrambled out a bit by winning on the last. I think I knocked off $1200. On reflection, it's like a punter. It's better to lose at your
first attempt because if you win, you think it's easy," he said.

Weeks before Christmas last year, the bookmakers of Victoria and invited guests went to the Windsor Hotel to celebrate the induction
of Geoff Donald, the son of former leading bookmaker Harry Donald, as a life
member. Donald could have been speaking for many bookmakers that night when he said: "I'm so greatly proud of two things in this world, my family and being a bookmaker."