Alexander McCallum was born on 28 October 1877 in South Australia at his parents' home in Thebarton, then a rural area and now an inner city suburb of Adelaide. He attended public schools until he was twelve years old and family lore has him minding cows until he was old enough to take up a pre-apprenticeship job with a printing office.
At thirteen, he was indentured in the harness making trade and this is probably where he gained his lifelong love of horses. Perhaps he foresaw the demise of horse driven transport however for he entered the bookbinding industry as an apprentice just a year later.
As a young man, McCallum excelled as a runner, being scratch man [1] in South Australia (and later in Western Australia) for all distances up to a quarter mile.
Alex McCallum was a speedy runner. In fact there was only one man who disputed his right to the scratch mark when the handicapper fixed the adjustments. That was Woodgate... Both men could run their hundreds in evens and, in the late nineties, had many a great tussle when Joe Monaghan put on events at the back of his Queen's Hotel, in Beaufort Street, on Saturday afternoons.
Athletic Ministers, Daily News, 7 August 1934 [2]
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