Noel Fraser Hickey (1921–2010) was born in Kensington, in Sydney, New South Wales, a stone's throw from the Royal Randwick Racecourse. His father, James Hickey, was a violinist, as was his elder brother, Lionel. The family later lived at The Rocks and Noel was educated at Fort Street Boys' School in Petersham. As a schoolboy, he got into the habit of making his way back to Randwick racecourse where he would watch Phar Lap train, sometimes convincing a sympathetic tram conductor to let him catch a ride from Circular Quay for free. He got to know some of the trainers, who let him ride their horses so that he could get a better look at the champion. Hickey got to know Phar Lap's strapper, Tommy Woodcock, too. On race days, he would scramble under a fence in a far corner of the course to watch Phar Lap race. After leaving school, Hickey found work as a photographer with Kodak. He served with the AIF in North Africa and New Guinea in the Second World War.
By the time he was repatriated to Sydney on medical grounds, Hickey's devotion to Phar Lap was commonly known. He laid a wreath at the entrance to Randwick Racecourse each year on the anniversary of the famed gelding's death, and in 1944 he raised £1 from other troops and sent the money back to the Daily Telegraph so that a wreath could be laid on his behalf. Hickey later told a journalist that 'I got into some tight spots in the war. It was the memory of Phar Lap that got me through.' He married for the first time in 1946; he had met his wife, Edna, when she was working as a photographic processor, and they had three children. By the 1950s Hickey appears to have had his own studio, specialising in headshots and portfolio photography for aspiring models from schools such as that run by the former Miss Australia, Pat Woodley (who is also represented in Nancy Menetrey's portrait of Noel Fraser Hickey). Hickey remarried after his divorce from Edna in 1970 and had another son with his second wife, Maree. When that marriage ended, he moved to Western Australia, where he trained racehorses.
Hickey nevertheless maintained his habit of honouring the anniversary of Phar Lap's death every year; and in 1982 having returned to Sydney, he went so far as to make a new headstone for the horse when the original one went missing. (The original headstone had been donated to the Australian Jockey Club in the 1970s). Hickey lived in Coffs Harbour towards the end of his life, and always arranged for a wreath to be laid when he was unable to lay one himself.
