This is the cover of my most recently published book and it will cost website visitors absolutely nothing to read the story today. Be my guest at sharing the most remarkable story of survival I've ever heard about. It took me three years of research to piece together all the facts.

There was no race meeting at Eagle Farm last Saturday due to the rain that inundated Brisbane and surrounds on Friday night and during Saturday - and it’s a no brainer that stewards made the correct decision early on Saturday morning, in conjunction with Eagle Farm track staff, to call the meeting off.

In the short term that decision saved owners, trainers and jockeys a lot of angst, as it was called off so early that hardly anyone would have been affected to any major degree. The Gold Coast meeting set down for last Saturday was also called off due to rain and again that was a blessing in itself, as it saved the track from being carved up for what is assured of being a good meeting there next Saturday, with the highlight being the running of the Group 2 Hollindale Cup, a race worth $300,000 run at weight-for-age.

Apart from the Hollindale Cup, there are five other black type races on the Gold Coast program next Saturday and they are the Group 3 Gold Coast Guineas, a 1200-metre race for 3YO’s, the Listed Prime Minister’s Cup over 1300 metres for Open company gallopers, the Listed Silk Stocking for fillies and mares and the Listed Gold Coast Bracelet for 3Y0 fillies. Naturally the only place in the world that you will be able to get the sectional times for that Gold Coast meeting is with the leader of sectional times in the country – right here on Justracing. In fact I’ve liked sectional times for so long that Justracing is unquestionably the first racing website to commercially do sectional times reports for clients, so much so that today I own the domain name www.sectionaltimes.com.au and have clients in six countries who utilize those reports to bet into Australian thoroughbred racing via the Internet.

During the course of this week there will be the usual plethora of racing stories across the four websites, but with no meeting in Brisbane last Saturday there obviously can’t be any betting ring report placed here, as normally happens on a Monday - and there can’t be any photos from any South East Queensland race meeting run last Saturday, so I’ll go back through the thousands of photos I have on file and come up with the list of the best ones I’ve taken over the many years and place them up publicly, so that will happen probably next Wednesday and Thursday on the Brisbaneracing website if time permits. There will also be a comprehensive review of last Saturday’s Sydney racing which wound down their Autumn Carnival.

Justracing has some terrific confidential sources within the racing industry which was able to bring you the exclusive months ago that as soon as the LNP won office Toowoomba's Clifford Park would be reverting back to a turf track. Last week I advised that the concept of the Racing Development Fund was needed again, so that race clubs could borrow money, or be granted money, for upgrades of facilities and watch for the LNP to announce that one sooner rather than later. In another exclusive, watch for leading harness racing trainer/driver John McCarthy to announce he'll be moving his operation permanently interstate within the next 12 months. John's son Luke has enjoyed wonderful success since moving to New South Wales in 2011.

In recent years I have written several books and the best known one in my 606-page 2006 published bestseller “www.justractracing.com.au Volume 1” which was solely devoted to the three codes of racing. I have recently got around to both researching and publishing a book which I promised my mother, before she sadly passed away in 2006 at the good age of 86, that I would one day write - to ensure the memory of the most remarkable story that she and I had ever heard was published. The story has no racing theme whatsoever, but it is a truly remarkable human survival story. Entitled “The Robert Dale Story” it’s a book comprising 18 small pages of text and photography, which won’t take long to read, and it can be read by clicking on www.robertdale.info. Just allow the book time to load, then click on the triangle in the middle of the right hand page, which keeps the pages turning for the reader, if you are unfamiliar with the technology. The story is so remarkable that when I sent emails to the Queensland Railways historical section to ask if they had any information in their archives on the event, I didn’t even get the courtesy of a reply, as they probably thought it couldn’t possibly be true, but people who lived around Maryborough, who are of my late mother’s age, along with newspapers like the Maryborough Chronicle and Brisbane’s Telegraph newspaper thankfully had also covered the story as well in some detail - and references and photography to their respective stories are contained in my research.