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I grew up in central Victoria and while my parents had some property I couldn’t convince my parents to get me a horse until I was 16. Because of that my spare time was spent around at the neighbor’s helping to take care of their show horses in the hopes that I would be allowed to ride one of the retired horses.
So my first few years of competition were spent around hack shows and the occasional dressage day or pony club event, but eventing was what I had always dreamed of doing and to follow my uncle who had ridden and won Gawler at advanced level.
I bugged my parents until they agreed to send me off to Marcus Oldham College In Geelong to study Horse Business Management where I had my first real glimpse into the world of eventing.
Under the watchful eye of former eventer, now racehorse trainer Nick Roe, I studied hard and learnt a lot about both eventing and the racing side of life. As part of the course we were required to go and spend a couple of weeks doing work experience. Shane Rose had been down doing a clinic and seemed like a hard worker but lots of fun so I approached him about coming up to spend two weeks with him and in the middle of the year I found myself at Shane’s place learning about life as an eventer. True to form, Shane broke his leg riding at Camden the middle weekend I was there! Maybe an insight for what I was in for in the future!
At the end of the course I decided I would like to spend a year at an eventing yard to further my riding and knowledge … and spent 10 years at Bimbadeen Park with Shane
Bimbadeen Park is located just behind Camden in NSW and we broke in and pre-trained racehorses for a lot of the major traIners in Sydney. Shane and his now wife Niki were just starting out with the business when I began workIng for them so it was a very large learnIng curve for all of us. I started out riding the racehorses and working with the breakers on the ground as well as the day-to-day running of the property and of course the eventers. It wasn’t long before I realised that my passion lay with the eventers, both riding and preparing them for competition.
During that time I was fortunate enough to travel across many parts of Australia with Shane and his team of horses as well as the WEG held in Aachen, Germany and the 2008 Olympic Games In Hong Kong. In 2009 Niki and Shane nominated me for the FEI Groom of the Year award and I was thrilled to find out I had been chosen as the winner by the likes of Mark Todd and Princess Haya.
As far as my own riding goes, I have competed to 2 star level on a lovely thoroughbred I bought from Niki the first year I was working for her. More recently I bought a lovely young Warmblood that I am having fun with and Niki was kind enough to give me her dressage horse to ride while she was pregnant.
After a sad farewell to Bimbadeen Park in 2014 I moved to Wallaby Hill Farm in Robertson, NSW to work with Alex Townsend and her team where I still live by the motto ‘Life is not that scary’!
