On 3 July 1945, troops queued at nine tote windows at Palmalmal Plantation, New Britain. The Australian War Memorial identifies the occasion as the first race meeting of the New Britain Turf Club at the 18th Advanced Ordnance Depot. The men were waiting to place bets.
The horses were not real. Wax models carrying figures of famous jockeys moved by vibration along a twelve-foot track inside a recreation hut.
At the end of this wartime queue was neither a ration nor an order but a homemade horse race. Nine windows organised soldiers seeking the same scarce interval of recreation into the order of betting slips.