Des Hoysted was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 broadcaster

Presenter

A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...

 and horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

 racing

Racing

A sport race is a competition of speed, against an objective criterion, usually a clock or to a specific point. The competitors in a race try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time...

 identity. He was a racecaller for 51 years in what is widely regarded as the golden era of the Australian turf.

Hoysted called his first race on Boxing Day in 1948 at Wodonga, Victoria

Wodonga, Victoria

Wodonga is a small city on the Victorian side of the border with New South Wales, north-east of Melbourne, Australia. Adjacent to Wodonga across the border is the New South Wales city of Albury. Wodonga is located wholly within the boundaries of the City of Wodonga LGA...

, and then joined the ABC

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

 in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 as an understudy to Joe Brown. He moved to 2GB

2GB

2GB is a commercial radio station in Sydney, Australia broadcasting on 873 kHz, AM. It is one of Australia's most popular talk-back radio stations, and is the number one station in Sydney.-History:The station commenced broadcasting in August 1926...

 in 1952, but made his mark in 1959 when he joined 2UE

2UE

2UE is a commercial radio station in Sydney, Australia owned by Fairfax Media. It is Sydney's and Australia's oldest commercial radio station, first broadcasting on 26 January 1925 on 1025 kHz AM before moving to 950 kHz in 1935 when virtually all Australian radio stations were assigned new...

. He called 20 Melbourne Cup

Melbourne Cup

The Melbourne Cup is Australia's major Thoroughbred horse race. Marketed as "the race that stops a nation", it is a 3,200 metre race for three-year-olds and over. It is the richest "two-mile" handicap in the world, and one of the richest turf races...

s for 2UE and only finished there when the radio station ceased broadcasting the races in 1983.

For many years, Hoysted continued to work around Sydney racetracks, mainly as a broadcast advisor, bon vivant, and tent tipper. He unofficially retired from the track in 2001.

He died at the age of 86, on 25 March 2010 in a Sydney nursing home, survived by his wife, Pat, and children Raymond and Joanne.