The home-bred six-year-old finished best ahead of Keith Dryden pair Balonne and Scarleo, taking his career prizemoney tally to almost $200,000.

"We usually syndicate our horses out but he wasn't very fashionably bred and I couldn't get anyone to take a share in him so my wife and I kept him and gave my mother in law 10 per cent of him as a Christmas present one year," Gardner said.

"Now he's won 200,000 I'm regretting it. I'm in good with the mother in law, she's well into her 90s, she gets a great thrill out of it.

"When she rings up after she wins she's so excited so it's probably put a couple of extra years on her life I think."

The son of Zariz is out of Bureaucratese, a Bureaucracy mare Gardner trained for two wins in her 18-start career.

Upper House has now won eight races including a Highway Handicap at Rosehill midway through last year, but he had never saluted first-up from a spell until Friday.

"I was pretty confident today he'd be going well, he's been a good old horse to us," Gardner said.

"When I saw him drifting in the market, it always worries you a little bit. He's the sort of horse a lot of times he's started favourite and got beat, I think the punters have dropped off him a little bit.

"That's the first time I've set him first-up. We targeted this race a long while ago and thought we'll try and win the Federal first-up with him and it came to plan.

"He's an open company horse now because of his benchmark rating and it's very hard to find races for them. Most Federals are benchmark 70s and he's a 78 so he gets too much weight.

"When I saw a month ago about six weeks ago this was an open company Federal, I targeted that race. There's not that many races in the country for him.

Gardner will now set the galloper for another trip to Sydney.

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"He'll be in the 80s now in the benchmark, really, he's just got to be a midweek [metropolitan] horse," Gardner said.

"He's won a Highway and I've got no problems going midweek with him we've just got to find the right race, where he draws well and gets the right conditions. That's all we can do with him now."

The spoils were shared at Thoroughbred Park on Friday, with Gardner one of eight different winning trainers.

Jess Day, who rode Upper House, also rode Cubman to victory in the Class 1 Handicap (1000m) earlier in the day.

She was one of three jockeys to claim a winning double. Alysha Collett won aboard Fusca, and Queanbeyan stayer Alpine King while Blaike McDougall claimed wins on Emma's Gift and Post Free. Volcanic Rock won the two-year-old race.