On July 3, 1945, troops queued at nine betting windows at Palmalmal Plantation near Jacquinot Bay, New Britain. They were not waiting for live horses. This was the first meeting of the New Britain Turf Club, staged inside the recreation hut of the 18 Advanced Ordnance Depot. Wax horses carrying the names of well-known jockeys moved by vibration along a twelve-foot track.
The Australian War Memorial's photographic caption preserves an unusually exact combination of place, date, queue purpose, number of windows, and the mechanism of the race. A single image cannot explain military life in the Pacific war. It can, however, show that organised recreation existed between duties, and that even an improvised game required an orderly system for taking bets.
Nine windows may sound excessive for a miniature race. In a short period of leisure shared by many troops, however, entertainment needed capacity just as other services did. The line at the tote windows may have appeared longer than the twelve-foot course itself. It is a precise record of how seriously an invented race meeting could be administered close to wartime operations.