The Cockring TM.

The Sir Harold Holt Cockring: Avian Combat Arena

One of the HHDRS’s most popular attractions, especially with children, is the Sir Harold Holt Cockring (TM), a 2,000-seat state-of-the-art avian combat arena where members and guests can enjoy the ancient art of cockfighting.

Sir Harold Holt became addicted to the ancient sport of after watching his first fight in Phnom Pehn in 1964.   And who could not love a sport involving razor blades being tethered to two caged animals before forcing them to engage in mortal combat in front of a crowd of a (mainly) male crowd hyped-up on betelnut and arak.  In fact, the sport inspired the founder of the Christian Brothers, St. Edmund Rice, and it became the pedagogic model for several Catholic boys’ schools throughout the 1950s to the 1970s.  For Sir Harold, however, next to bull fighting and caged dog fights cock fighting was a poetic metaphor for the relentless struggle between good and evil.  In fact, he was so taken by the experience that he purchased his first fighting cock, Decimal Doug, along with two dozen betel nut saplings and a still for distilling rice wine from Cambodian leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk before returning to Australia determined to turn the nation into a cockfighting superpower. 

Sadly, Sir Harold might have been a victim of his own success with some scholars suggesting it was the realisation of his cockfighting dream that drew the attention of Mao Zedong and thereby led to his kidnapping and incarceration in Communist China.  Because of this tragic turn of events, Sir Harold never managed to see the fruits of his labour.  Without his pioneering efforts, Dr Erstwhile Truthwright would not have had the foundation needed to build the sport into the athletic and gambling juggernaut it is today.

Truthwright’s determination to realise Sir Harold’s vision was not without obstacles, some of the fiercest being the birth of political correctness and the animal rights and anti-gambling lobbies.  Truthwright was forced to work hard to overcome the growing influence of these groups, enlisting the support of combat sport visionaries such as the late Denis Commetti, Senator Bridget McKenzie (who as Minister for Sport helped facilitate a grant to update the Sir Harold Holt Cockring with heated seating, Teflon matting and the construction of the Avenue of Champions) and more recently Andrew and Tristan Tate.  With the support of these sporting and intellectual titans, and the wider HHDRS community, Dr Truthwright is confident that he can realise Sir Harold’s dream of including cockfighting in the Olympic Games, hopefully at Brisbane 2032.