Spicy tale behind the bush hero Rogan Josh BART Cummings tagged her "Wendy In Wonderland" and that was before Tennant Creek. Wendy Green had embarked on a dream with a family gelding from the West Australian bush ending with the Rogan Josh triumph in the 1999 Melbourne Cup. Tennant Creek, however, in the Northern Territory has taken the story of the battler worldwide. Teaching school at Darwin at the time, Green drove to Melbourne in a battered car, named "Rent A Dent," making a 7500-kilometre round trip but with more ballast on the return, a boot-load of French bubbly. Rogan Josh gave Bart Cummings his 11th success in the Big One. Green stopped off at outback settlements to share the joy with the locals, to show them the Cup and to wet the odd whistle. "We reached Tennant Creek where I had taught some years ago," Green related this week from Brisbane. There was a party involving indigenous people. We stopped and joined in. Green was approached to perform a christening along the lines of what Banjo Paterson wrote: "On the outer Barcoo where churches are few and men of religion are scanty ..." Lacking the necessary qualifications and holy water she declined. It was suggested the leader of a tourist bus, being close in status to a ship's captain, could officiate. Beer was offered as a substitute for the holy juice but Green's champagne was considered more appropriate. Alas a name for the lad was missing. Asked her preference the mother, in the spirit of the occasion, replied: "Rogan Josh." And the family has a history of horse names, because Rogan Josh is the grandson of the late Phar Lap Dixon. Anyway Green, sent on a promotional tour of nine countries subsequently for the Victorian Tourist Board and Victoria Racing Club, has received standing ovations at dinners in England and Ireland for the tale. Green has pledged to find Rogan Josh. "I've sent out the word," she said. I want to bring him to the Melbourne Cup. Perhaps it will be a new world for Rogan Josh but Green admits being overawed by the experience in 1999. "I went into a Melbourne department store and they asked me if I wanted a fascinator ... I said, 'No, I've got my husband [Bob]'," she recalled, figuring they were referring to a toy boy. Green hails from Western Australia but has taken her wisdom to outback schools and still does. She's based near Gympie in Queensland but is doing a stint with indigenous youngsters in Brisbane. The journey started in Bunbury where she worked as a copy girl on the local newspaper when Ernie Manning, the astute Perth racing scribe, was a cadet. Even then she had a knack for a good party, according to Manning. But the battle with Rogan Josh, the horse, is a tribute to her never-say-never attitude. "Dad bred his mother and grandmother," Green explained. My father [Tom Forrest] was real visionary with the bloodlines in an era when old bushies knew their pedigrees. They were also poor but with a passion for racing. It was a dream to breed a Melbourne Cup winner. I was brought up on it: one year I'll be at the Melbourne Cup. Dad couldn't afford to go to a good sire with his mares but believed he had a gene pool of them. Being by Old Spice out of Eastern Mystique, Rogan Josh was more brumby than Darley blue-blood. "Being a teacher I had an expendable income and got the call from dad," Green pointed out. Do you want to buy a horse? We'll put three in your name. You buy this one and if he's no good we'll give you another. Green kicked in $7500 for the package deal. Rogan Josh did not start racing until he was five because of a dispute with Green's brother. After showing promise he was put on the Asian market and cost Green more than $100,000 before it was resolved. "I had no idea about racing, the jealousy, the competitiveness of the game," she commented. Still if Rogan Josh had started [racing] earlier he wouldn't have won the Melbourne Cup. Fate wins Melbourne Cups. After a second in a Perth Cup, Rogan Josh made the switch to Cummings and gave him his 11th success in the Big One. Never before had any of his winners come from such a humble beginning. "Bart gave me the title of 'Wendy in Wonderland', he thought I was a bit dipsy," Green maintained. I had no way of communicating with him. On a visit to Darwin, Cummings suggested dinner. "We live on separate planets," Green went on. We took him to the Boat Club. "What sort of boat have you got?" he said. "We are between boats," the master was told. Green is as comfortable with the international intelligentsia, ranging from Boston, Dubai to Britain, judging by her acceptance on the speaking circuit, as joining a Tennant Creek shivoo. "I've got the pleasure of telling my story," she stressed. I'm still teaching, and my first responsibility has always been to my family. The kids at school say, 'Tell us about Tennant Creek'. In Banjo Paterson's A Bush Christening, the lad was finally named Maginnes after the whisky used in the ceremony. Rogan Josh is a better title than French champagne: he could hardly charge around a footy field being called Bollinger.