AUSTRALIA LESSON
May 4 2007
Here's your Australia lesson.
Australia is roughly the size of the US, but with only 1.8 million people (compared with 300 million in the US). It had its fabulous gold rushes in the mid to late 1800's, and it's still a continent of vast wealth - gold, opals (which I've surprisingly observed are rather expensive), pearls, iron, silver, lead, zinc, copper, coal, diamonds - the Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia is one of the world's largest producers, supplying 1/3 of the world's diamonds, including almost all of the world's ultra rare pink diamonds. I always like to reflect on the brilliant marketing scheme that convinced people that the diamond was a precious treasure and was equated with love. It is just another pretty sparkly stone, after all...
While jokes are made about Australia being made up of convicts, that is indeed the case of the first white settlements. When America declared its independence from England in 1776, that meant an end to shipping convicts from England to the southern part of America, so they looked to Australia. That would take care of the backlog of English prisoners, and colonize Australia at the same time that the French were expanding their influence. So, in 1788, the first fleet of 778 convicts, and 250 soldiers and officials landed in New South Wales. The original colony was established around Sydney, with others starting up in other states (all except for South Australia). In total, over 80 years some 160,000 convicts were sent to Australia, where conditions were miserable.
Th Aborigines are descendents of the first human arrivals some 50,000 to 120,000 years ago. I haven't yet read much of their history, but expect there are some parallels, in history and today, with the native American Indians and the invading white settlers.
Australia is very flat. There are just a few mountain ranges, in Western Australia and South Australia, and the main Great Dividing Range in the far east from Queensland in the north, through New South Wales into Victoria in the south. The Snowy Mountains are down south near where I was, as is Australia's highest peak, Mt Kosciuszko at 7317 feet. Then there are the monoliths such as Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the Northern Territories - the famous red landmark of Australia - a sacred rock to the Aborigines.
The Great Barrier Reef, 1300 miles of coral reefs off Queensland's coast, is a World Heritage Site, and is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world.
Most of Australia's mammals are marsupials - the mother has a pouch on her belly or back - and the most familiar fauna of Australia would probably be the kangaroo and the koala. Ask any local, and they'll probably say the kangaroo is a pest, like I think of our deer where I live in the summer. there are too many and they're a great traffic hazard on the roads, especially the highways, especially at night. The koala are rare to see in the wild (hard to spot is more like it, as they blend in with the trees well).
Australia has some of the world's deadliest snakes (guess I won't be picking up snakes just to touch here) and several poisonous spiders (great!); there's fresh and saltwater crocodiles, and I've already mentioned some of the things you don't want to encounter in the water on the beaches - jellyfish, stone fish, octopus.
I've seen and HEARD a lot of the parrot species down south; here at Toft's there aren't as many parrots, but lots of noisy, naughty crows (they click and cluck, and growl like a big cat; they sound like they are saying "Yea," and "Oh," and "Wow," and then they have a low conversation, then say "Oh, ah, ah," very wisely), the ubiquitous deafening magpies, boisterous plovers, vociferous kookaburras (which have woken me several times early in the morning), and a very piercing bell bird (getting my drift?). On a ride in the forest, we passed through one spot of maybe 100 yards where this surround-sound (really, like a movie theatre of speakers all around us) of ear-splitting short DINGs were popping like raindrops all around, up in the trees. I kept my eyes up as we walked through this area - it had to be birds - but didn't see one little movement or anything. Someone later told me they were bell birds. I don't think there were any other animal in the area because it must drive them crazy!
Friday, May 4, 2007
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Raven Postscript
Tuesday May 1
OK people, the Raven was just a piece of black cloth sewn together to look like a silly black bird, with a crooked beak to boot, but really, I’m still gutted. I still can’t believe I lost the Raven. And I just don’t understand what happened.
I realized I’d lost it within 5 minutes at the most, and I retraced my steps - over and over and over. It was either in the hostel or on the street within 1 block that I lost it. I don’t know if it fell out of my little bag, or someone nicked it - it just disappeared. It doesn’t really make sense, because why would anyone in the hostel take it (backpackers are usually good about returning things), and why would anyone on the street snatch it, or even pick it up if it fell out of my bag (well, on second thought, it was so cute and happy, who wouldn’t). As soon as I realized it was gone, I had immediately run back along the street looking for it, then thought maybe I hadn’t had it with me after all; I ran to my room and in a panic threw everything out of my suitcase, looking for a black Raven, but as everything flew in the air out of my bag - no Raven.
I scoured the hostel over and over; I walked the street up and down the block till it got dark, and after dark. I probably looked like a hooker (though I was underdressed for that), or like one of the homeless hanging around there (overdressed for that) since I was looking in garbage cans. I walked in every café and asked; I looked under tables, in trees (in case someone with a sense of humor stuck it up there), in corners, everywhere. I walked down the street an extra block, in case a fast traveling bus ran over it and carried it a ways. I even asked a cop walking about, and he looked at me funny, a strange American traveling with a dead stuffed raven. No, no, I said, it’s a stuffed animal bird, a puppet. He looked at me just as strange and said No, haven’t seen it. There was a little police beat station there; I stopped in there twice that night, and once the next morning, and by now I think they were about to get the handcuffs out.
And you know how when you can’t find something and you keep looking, and then the 7th time you go through the same bag you swear you’ve thoroughly gone through 6 times and suddenly there it is - I kept going back to my room and going through my things again and again, hoping the Raven would be there.
Nothing. I was just stunned. Just couldn’t believe it. Still can’t.
I’d been texting Trevor, and he sent a 1 minute of silence tribute (i.e. blank text) for the Raven.
I’ve had that Raven since about 1999 (OK, whoever still has a teddy bear from their youth, fess up), and it had done over 2700 endurance miles with me, it had been to many National Parks, and it climbed peaks, including Mt Whitney (it signed the log book!) , and it was the first thing I saw when I woke up in the hospital after a bad accident, smiling at me with its crooked jaws like everything was going to be alright eventually. But really, it was just a piece of black cloth, right?
I’ve had loads of condolences J, offers to help me find a new Raven (one friend immediately looked on eBay and found a different little raven), a call from D’Arcy the Raven’s biggest fan to 1.6 million people in Brisbane to help find the Raven, and Floyd not only offered to look in Lee Vining where I got the original Raven, but he stopped by there, enlisted the employee’s help in the search, and left his credit card there in case the guy found one. It’s actually not made anymore and hasn’t been for years. I guess I can always travel with the new little Raven I got off eBay (yes, I got it immediately, it’s waiting for me in the States), and start some new Raven antics, but, it just won’t be the same.
OK people, the Raven was just a piece of black cloth sewn together to look like a silly black bird, with a crooked beak to boot, but really, I’m still gutted. I still can’t believe I lost the Raven. And I just don’t understand what happened.
I realized I’d lost it within 5 minutes at the most, and I retraced my steps - over and over and over. It was either in the hostel or on the street within 1 block that I lost it. I don’t know if it fell out of my little bag, or someone nicked it - it just disappeared. It doesn’t really make sense, because why would anyone in the hostel take it (backpackers are usually good about returning things), and why would anyone on the street snatch it, or even pick it up if it fell out of my bag (well, on second thought, it was so cute and happy, who wouldn’t). As soon as I realized it was gone, I had immediately run back along the street looking for it, then thought maybe I hadn’t had it with me after all; I ran to my room and in a panic threw everything out of my suitcase, looking for a black Raven, but as everything flew in the air out of my bag - no Raven.
I scoured the hostel over and over; I walked the street up and down the block till it got dark, and after dark. I probably looked like a hooker (though I was underdressed for that), or like one of the homeless hanging around there (overdressed for that) since I was looking in garbage cans. I walked in every café and asked; I looked under tables, in trees (in case someone with a sense of humor stuck it up there), in corners, everywhere. I walked down the street an extra block, in case a fast traveling bus ran over it and carried it a ways. I even asked a cop walking about, and he looked at me funny, a strange American traveling with a dead stuffed raven. No, no, I said, it’s a stuffed animal bird, a puppet. He looked at me just as strange and said No, haven’t seen it. There was a little police beat station there; I stopped in there twice that night, and once the next morning, and by now I think they were about to get the handcuffs out.
And you know how when you can’t find something and you keep looking, and then the 7th time you go through the same bag you swear you’ve thoroughly gone through 6 times and suddenly there it is - I kept going back to my room and going through my things again and again, hoping the Raven would be there.
Nothing. I was just stunned. Just couldn’t believe it. Still can’t.
I’d been texting Trevor, and he sent a 1 minute of silence tribute (i.e. blank text) for the Raven.
I’ve had that Raven since about 1999 (OK, whoever still has a teddy bear from their youth, fess up), and it had done over 2700 endurance miles with me, it had been to many National Parks, and it climbed peaks, including Mt Whitney (it signed the log book!) , and it was the first thing I saw when I woke up in the hospital after a bad accident, smiling at me with its crooked jaws like everything was going to be alright eventually. But really, it was just a piece of black cloth, right?
I’ve had loads of condolences J, offers to help me find a new Raven (one friend immediately looked on eBay and found a different little raven), a call from D’Arcy the Raven’s biggest fan to 1.6 million people in Brisbane to help find the Raven, and Floyd not only offered to look in Lee Vining where I got the original Raven, but he stopped by there, enlisted the employee’s help in the search, and left his credit card there in case the guy found one. It’s actually not made anymore and hasn’t been for years. I guess I can always travel with the new little Raven I got off eBay (yes, I got it immediately, it’s waiting for me in the States), and start some new Raven antics, but, it just won’t be the same.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Gotta Ride
GOTTA RIDE
Thursday April 26 - Monday April 30
Most of the training rides are done out of Bank’s Creek, a farm in the forest about 15 miles from Marburg, that backs up to state forest land. There’s miles and miles of eucalyptus forest to ride through on fire roads. “It’s great for training,” says Penny, “There’s no altitude, but there’s hard roads, it’s rocky, and there’s some tough hills.” You want to get horses fit for Tevis? (They did - 3 of them in 2005) Come on here to train.
My first ride was with Penny, Jaimee and Shaylee on Blue Bronco, a little gray Arabian gelding. He’s not all that little, probably about 15 hands; he just feels compact. He wasn’t as big a walker as the other long-legged horses, but he put all his effort into staying up with them. He was really nice to ride, and I understood why, when they told me Bronco’s done a Quilty or two and 4 Shahzadas. The 160 km Quilty is tough enough, but the Shahzada is not just a 5-day endurance ride: to finish the Shahzada, you have to finish all 5 days. If you finish 5 days and vet out (pull) on the last day’s finish, you don’t get any credit for the 4 days you have done. Bronco’s finished 4 Shahzadas - think about that one.
Penny was riding Don, who is now one of her favorites… and one look at him and I fell for him too. You know how I love riding Arabians in endurance, but just like the look of the Thoroughbred-y, bigger different horse - well, Don’s a different horse, alright. He’s “station-bred”, i.e. a mongrel - half Arab, half whatever. Looking at him he could be part Arab, part Cob, part draft horse, part standardbred. He’s got a big honking head (standard bred?) and really big eyes (draft horse eyes), and he’s heavily built - well, the front of him is, anyway; the back could be Arabian - and he’s what some might call coarse. (I wouldn’t call him that, I’d call him beautiful.) Of course I love the look of him.
But the attraction doesn’t end on his looks. They got him in New Zealand about 18 months ago, and he was crazy - as in crazy fast. Penny thinks Don was really mistreated at some point. He’s just coming round to where he trusts people a little, and he’s getting to know her voice when she’s riding him. He’d done several 160’s when they got him. They bought him to resell, as they do many horses; they took him to Europe, but nobody liked the look of him so nobody wanted him. He finished a 160 km in the top ten, but Penny didn’t show him for BC, because people would have thought he was too ugly. (He’s not!) Now he’s not for sale. He’s done several 160’s with the Tofts, including last year’s Quilty with Penny’s sister Helen.
Penny says you don’t touch him on his butt when you’re riding or he’ll take off. In rides he takes off anyway - he’s got no mouth and you can’t control him. In one ride he’d take off on every loop and blow by the other horses, but since he doesn’t have great recoveries, he’d lose all that time in the vet checks getting his heart rate back down. Next loop he’d do the same thing, go tearing past everybody getting back to the vet check first, then having the other horses come in while he was still recovering. She figured the people just thought “Crazy lady! You’d think she’d figure out to slow down!” but she couldn’t! Don can go by himself or with other horses, he doesn’t care one way or the other; when he catches up to horses on the trail he’ll just keep going on by them, not like Murdoch who likes to catch up to horses ahead of him then hang with them. “You can hear him coming down the road. He sets his head, and he goes, crazy fast; he’s got one pace, flat out. When you come to an intersection, he’ll throw on the brakes and buck and kick up. You get on him and he pisses off, no standing around and waiting. He whizzes around corners on 2 legs; he puts his head down like a vacuum cleaner to go under trees and he doesn’t slow down. You have to duck fast! You can’t make him drink if he doesn’t want to, but when he does want to, he drinks like a camel. And he’ll go in every driveway to visit people.” You think Penny’s fond of this horse? I went up to say hi to him later, and he didn’t acknowledge me. Not snooty, just not interested at all. He’s not a people horse.
Our ride took us over an hour, and we just walked down the road, all the way to the river, then walked back. These horses were all ride-fit; they just needed light exercise. As we were getting back to the barn, Penny stopped “You smell that?” I said it smelt like sheep, though there aren‘t any sheep around here. “Yes - it’s koalas.” Oh! We looked in the trees, but didn’t see any. They are quite rare to see, although one day a few workers had seen some after they heard them playing and making noises in the trees.
My next ride was on Salman; a big gray part Arabian. We’d eaten lunch sitting in Salman’s pen, and he came up to me and wanted to share my chicken cheese and avocado sandwich and coke and granola bar. I really didn’t think he’d like the sandwich, but I finally gave in and gave him a bite of my granola bar, which he promptly spit out and then asked for more.
We did an hour and a half ride, walking again the whole way, up and down hills through the forest. They can work up quite a sweat and heart rate plowing up some of these steep hills, and they all attack the hills, using their butts to propel them upward at a fast walk. We encountered a group of ‘brumbies’ - some of Toft’s young horses growing up out there, getting mountain legs on them as they mature. The girls kept apologizing for the forest being so brown everywhere, while I kept commenting on how lush and green it looked! Compared to Meg’s where even the trees were brown and dying, this is indeed a fertile green forest. I can’t imagine how it looks when they’ve had rain and it’s REALLY green. Clouds mostly covered the sky today, and we felt about 5 tiny raindrops but that was it.
Next day was a picnic ride; Penny made sandwiches and we stuffed them in saddlebags. Shaylee, Brooke and Alexandra went with us today. I got Bronco again, and we headed off into the forest. We strolled, chugging up and down hills, and after about 2 hours we came to a spot where we’d have our picnic. We hopped off, and pulled out the sandwiches… now I’m thinking we’ll sit, take our time, lounge around, but everyone had eaten their sandwiches before I had mine half done (I just can‘t eat fast), and so I started tearing off bites and stuffing them down my face, and then they were done, ready to mount, and I stuffed the last bite down, chasing it with water, and still had to put my martingale back on, had to hand Bronco off to Penny to go run behind a bush, then as everyone was waiting, I jumped on Bronco quickly, and we were off.
We came to a long uphill climb, and we trotted all the way up it. At the top we stopped to take pulses - they monitor pulses pretty closely - and then we turned around to go back down, and back home. It was a 3 ½ hr ride, altogether, another beautiful warm sunny day in the green forest of Queensland.
Another day I got to ride Jazzmin, with Penny and Peter and Shaylee. Jazzmin’s another fine horse to ride. They got her from Western Australia - she’d been doing mostly 80 km rides - and quickly discovered she was a really good horse because anybody could ride her. Not everybody can ride any endurance horse, but just about anybody can ride Jazzmin. When a foreign visitor came wanting to do a 160 km ride, he didn’t want to ride Jazzmin, because he thought she was too quiet and uninspiring on training rides. But she flew through the 160 with him, finishing 3rd, and they realized she had quite a bit of gas in the tank too. She went to one World Championship in Dubai, and she was going to go to the World Championship in Germany last year, but got thrush in England and couldn’t go. She’s amazingly comfortable at the trot and canter, and has this fantastic power walk that‘s almost like a Tennessee Walker running-walk. She’s push button to ride.
Peter rode with us an hour then turned for home; we 3 continued on and stepped up the pace. We trotted and cantered up hills and on the flats, and then we came to this one long, and I’m talking long, uphill road. It went on and on, and we trotted and cantered up it, stopping to walk only once or twice briefly, then attacked it again. The horses just seemed to love it, especially Don, who was just powering up it ahead of us. And the road kept going up. Finally, way up there (“Oh this still isn’t the top,” said Penny), we came to a camping shelter and water tank - the rainwater from the roof is collected in this tank - where we filled up the bucket Shaylee’d been carrying and watered the horses. They drank about 2 buckets each. We humans pulled out our sandwiches to eat; Jazzmin thought I’d brought the ham and cheese sandwich for HER, and in fact she ate half of it and got cranky with me when it was gone.
We continued on the road, downhill a little then did some more climbing. We were going to make a loop out of it, but Penny couldn’t find the road we wanted, so we turned around and retraced our steps. It was quite windy today, with branches falling from trees in the forest around us. They were spooking Jazzmin. I told her we wouldn’t be hit, but she wasn’t quite convinced of that, when we’d hear one crack or see one fall in front of us.
We got back after about 4 ½ hrs, maybe 20 miles or so. The 3 horses that are going to the 160 km FEI ride at Imbil this coming weekend will be ready to go. By now I’m ready for a 160 km too, but I’m not an FEI rider! Instead, I’ll be following Don around.
Thursday April 26 - Monday April 30
Most of the training rides are done out of Bank’s Creek, a farm in the forest about 15 miles from Marburg, that backs up to state forest land. There’s miles and miles of eucalyptus forest to ride through on fire roads. “It’s great for training,” says Penny, “There’s no altitude, but there’s hard roads, it’s rocky, and there’s some tough hills.” You want to get horses fit for Tevis? (They did - 3 of them in 2005) Come on here to train.
My first ride was with Penny, Jaimee and Shaylee on Blue Bronco, a little gray Arabian gelding. He’s not all that little, probably about 15 hands; he just feels compact. He wasn’t as big a walker as the other long-legged horses, but he put all his effort into staying up with them. He was really nice to ride, and I understood why, when they told me Bronco’s done a Quilty or two and 4 Shahzadas. The 160 km Quilty is tough enough, but the Shahzada is not just a 5-day endurance ride: to finish the Shahzada, you have to finish all 5 days. If you finish 5 days and vet out (pull) on the last day’s finish, you don’t get any credit for the 4 days you have done. Bronco’s finished 4 Shahzadas - think about that one.
Penny was riding Don, who is now one of her favorites… and one look at him and I fell for him too. You know how I love riding Arabians in endurance, but just like the look of the Thoroughbred-y, bigger different horse - well, Don’s a different horse, alright. He’s “station-bred”, i.e. a mongrel - half Arab, half whatever. Looking at him he could be part Arab, part Cob, part draft horse, part standardbred. He’s got a big honking head (standard bred?) and really big eyes (draft horse eyes), and he’s heavily built - well, the front of him is, anyway; the back could be Arabian - and he’s what some might call coarse. (I wouldn’t call him that, I’d call him beautiful.) Of course I love the look of him.
But the attraction doesn’t end on his looks. They got him in New Zealand about 18 months ago, and he was crazy - as in crazy fast. Penny thinks Don was really mistreated at some point. He’s just coming round to where he trusts people a little, and he’s getting to know her voice when she’s riding him. He’d done several 160’s when they got him. They bought him to resell, as they do many horses; they took him to Europe, but nobody liked the look of him so nobody wanted him. He finished a 160 km in the top ten, but Penny didn’t show him for BC, because people would have thought he was too ugly. (He’s not!) Now he’s not for sale. He’s done several 160’s with the Tofts, including last year’s Quilty with Penny’s sister Helen.
Penny says you don’t touch him on his butt when you’re riding or he’ll take off. In rides he takes off anyway - he’s got no mouth and you can’t control him. In one ride he’d take off on every loop and blow by the other horses, but since he doesn’t have great recoveries, he’d lose all that time in the vet checks getting his heart rate back down. Next loop he’d do the same thing, go tearing past everybody getting back to the vet check first, then having the other horses come in while he was still recovering. She figured the people just thought “Crazy lady! You’d think she’d figure out to slow down!” but she couldn’t! Don can go by himself or with other horses, he doesn’t care one way or the other; when he catches up to horses on the trail he’ll just keep going on by them, not like Murdoch who likes to catch up to horses ahead of him then hang with them. “You can hear him coming down the road. He sets his head, and he goes, crazy fast; he’s got one pace, flat out. When you come to an intersection, he’ll throw on the brakes and buck and kick up. You get on him and he pisses off, no standing around and waiting. He whizzes around corners on 2 legs; he puts his head down like a vacuum cleaner to go under trees and he doesn’t slow down. You have to duck fast! You can’t make him drink if he doesn’t want to, but when he does want to, he drinks like a camel. And he’ll go in every driveway to visit people.” You think Penny’s fond of this horse? I went up to say hi to him later, and he didn’t acknowledge me. Not snooty, just not interested at all. He’s not a people horse.
Our ride took us over an hour, and we just walked down the road, all the way to the river, then walked back. These horses were all ride-fit; they just needed light exercise. As we were getting back to the barn, Penny stopped “You smell that?” I said it smelt like sheep, though there aren‘t any sheep around here. “Yes - it’s koalas.” Oh! We looked in the trees, but didn’t see any. They are quite rare to see, although one day a few workers had seen some after they heard them playing and making noises in the trees.
My next ride was on Salman; a big gray part Arabian. We’d eaten lunch sitting in Salman’s pen, and he came up to me and wanted to share my chicken cheese and avocado sandwich and coke and granola bar. I really didn’t think he’d like the sandwich, but I finally gave in and gave him a bite of my granola bar, which he promptly spit out and then asked for more.
We did an hour and a half ride, walking again the whole way, up and down hills through the forest. They can work up quite a sweat and heart rate plowing up some of these steep hills, and they all attack the hills, using their butts to propel them upward at a fast walk. We encountered a group of ‘brumbies’ - some of Toft’s young horses growing up out there, getting mountain legs on them as they mature. The girls kept apologizing for the forest being so brown everywhere, while I kept commenting on how lush and green it looked! Compared to Meg’s where even the trees were brown and dying, this is indeed a fertile green forest. I can’t imagine how it looks when they’ve had rain and it’s REALLY green. Clouds mostly covered the sky today, and we felt about 5 tiny raindrops but that was it.
Next day was a picnic ride; Penny made sandwiches and we stuffed them in saddlebags. Shaylee, Brooke and Alexandra went with us today. I got Bronco again, and we headed off into the forest. We strolled, chugging up and down hills, and after about 2 hours we came to a spot where we’d have our picnic. We hopped off, and pulled out the sandwiches… now I’m thinking we’ll sit, take our time, lounge around, but everyone had eaten their sandwiches before I had mine half done (I just can‘t eat fast), and so I started tearing off bites and stuffing them down my face, and then they were done, ready to mount, and I stuffed the last bite down, chasing it with water, and still had to put my martingale back on, had to hand Bronco off to Penny to go run behind a bush, then as everyone was waiting, I jumped on Bronco quickly, and we were off.
We came to a long uphill climb, and we trotted all the way up it. At the top we stopped to take pulses - they monitor pulses pretty closely - and then we turned around to go back down, and back home. It was a 3 ½ hr ride, altogether, another beautiful warm sunny day in the green forest of Queensland.
Another day I got to ride Jazzmin, with Penny and Peter and Shaylee. Jazzmin’s another fine horse to ride. They got her from Western Australia - she’d been doing mostly 80 km rides - and quickly discovered she was a really good horse because anybody could ride her. Not everybody can ride any endurance horse, but just about anybody can ride Jazzmin. When a foreign visitor came wanting to do a 160 km ride, he didn’t want to ride Jazzmin, because he thought she was too quiet and uninspiring on training rides. But she flew through the 160 with him, finishing 3rd, and they realized she had quite a bit of gas in the tank too. She went to one World Championship in Dubai, and she was going to go to the World Championship in Germany last year, but got thrush in England and couldn’t go. She’s amazingly comfortable at the trot and canter, and has this fantastic power walk that‘s almost like a Tennessee Walker running-walk. She’s push button to ride.
Peter rode with us an hour then turned for home; we 3 continued on and stepped up the pace. We trotted and cantered up hills and on the flats, and then we came to this one long, and I’m talking long, uphill road. It went on and on, and we trotted and cantered up it, stopping to walk only once or twice briefly, then attacked it again. The horses just seemed to love it, especially Don, who was just powering up it ahead of us. And the road kept going up. Finally, way up there (“Oh this still isn’t the top,” said Penny), we came to a camping shelter and water tank - the rainwater from the roof is collected in this tank - where we filled up the bucket Shaylee’d been carrying and watered the horses. They drank about 2 buckets each. We humans pulled out our sandwiches to eat; Jazzmin thought I’d brought the ham and cheese sandwich for HER, and in fact she ate half of it and got cranky with me when it was gone.
We continued on the road, downhill a little then did some more climbing. We were going to make a loop out of it, but Penny couldn’t find the road we wanted, so we turned around and retraced our steps. It was quite windy today, with branches falling from trees in the forest around us. They were spooking Jazzmin. I told her we wouldn’t be hit, but she wasn’t quite convinced of that, when we’d hear one crack or see one fall in front of us.
We got back after about 4 ½ hrs, maybe 20 miles or so. The 3 horses that are going to the 160 km FEI ride at Imbil this coming weekend will be ready to go. By now I’m ready for a 160 km too, but I’m not an FEI rider! Instead, I’ll be following Don around.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Just Another Day on the Farm...
Wednesday April 25 2007
I was awakened early by a kookaburra! If I must wake up early, that’s a good alarm clock.
I was happy just to hang around the barn and take pictures, maybe get in a ride tomorrow or next day, but the riding started today! I was suddenly one of the farm crew busy getting horses for clients to look at.
Five of us saddled up, and rode horses down to the Fairgrounds about 2 miles away, for the clients to look over and try out on the bullring track. I got a young gray gelding Olymbus; we rode down the hill, past some dry paddocks of horses and cattle and onto the Fairgrounds. There I handed my horse off to Peter and Sharon, got in the car with the other 4 riders and rode back to the barn, dropped off the 4 riders so they could ride another set of horses down, and I drove the car back down. Not only was I reminding myself GAUCHE!! I was saying Oh S***, it was a stick shift, shifting with the left hand. Yikes! I managed not to grind gears or hit anything on the way back, and I was glad when Peter then handed me a big white mare to get on and ride back to the farm with Brooke. This mare had just arrived from New Zealand; she was a big (must have been) Anglo-Arab, with a HUGE walk, which left me wondering how huge her trot and canter were. I talked with Brooke while we rode back. She rode in the Junior Championships in Bahrain in 2004 when Australia got team Gold; she’s done the Quilty (the US equivalent of Tevis) twice, and she also did Tevis in 2004 at the age of 14 with Penny and Peter, and she loved it. She’d like to go back and do it again. On the way back, we met 3 more horses being ridden down, including Electra BP Murdoch, Peter Toft’s appaloosa endurance wonder horse. Murdoch wasn’t for sale; I think he was out to show his big spots off, because one of the buyers was a fan of his, and because it sounds like Murdoch likes showing off and being the center of (well-deserved) attention.
When Brooke and I got back to the farm, Sharon drove us back down to the Fairgrounds. Peter handed me my gray horse to get back on and take back. “Before you go,” he said, “take him around the track with these two guys.” Eek! As I was going onto the track, Peter said “Merri you keep your horse in front and don’t let these guys win.” EEK! My eyes got even bigger than they already were. I said “OK,” but then I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. I finally had to ask, “You serious or joking?” He said “Joking” even as he was talking to one of the Arabs.
Now, riding on a racetrack always brings to mind my first ride on a little bullring in Washington state, where a fit Thoroughbred racehorse named Fred ran off with me and completely scared the desire to be an exercise rider out of me. And here I was, 19 years later in Australia, vividly remembering Fred and the feelings he left me with (terror, desperately weak knees and arms, the distraught desire to fall off a horse galloping at 40 mph), moving from a trot to a canter with 2 guys used to running flat out in the deserts of the UAE… And did I mention I wasn’t completely comfortable in the saddle I was using, a dressage saddle that made me feel like I was perched up on a stool way above the horse, and I just couldn‘t quite get my stirrups the right length - they‘d been a wee bit short, so I let them out one, and now they were a wee bit long…
Well, none of the Arabian endurance horses I have been on have ever fun flat out on training rides except when I’ve asked them to (in the desert in Egypt, where I felt safe), and these guys had already cantered their mounts several times around, so those horses were in no mood to run off and take Olymbus with them and scare Merri. So Olymbus fell into a canter with them, staying with them, thankfully not feeling the need to get in front and race them. Once or twice he did put his head down as if he were going to buck - and with me perched high on this saddle with my stirrups not right I really didn’t want that to happen - but I snatched it back up. On the second lap, Brooke joined us on her horse, and as we went around again, and entered the homestretch, we picked up speed into a gallop. Whee! I was just at the point where my horse could have started running off, and that little prickly feeling of fear was beginning to tingle slightly through the center of my arms and legs (Brooke said on the way home, “Man, I thought we were going so fast!”), when the guys pulled up at the gap past the finish line. Olymbus’ brakes were slow to apply, I pulled and pulled. We came to a stop past the two guys, and Sharon said, “Yay! You won!” Well sure, Peter told me to! (It’s just a matter of not being able to stop your horse till after the others stop.)
Peter than sent me and Olymbus back with Brooke and her horse, and Jaimee on Murdoch. The appaloosa indeed thinks he’s special. He kept swinging his butt over in front of Brooke and I if our horses got too close and invaded his space.
He’s an amazing horse. Easily recognizable for being one of the few appaloosas in endurance, and certainly the only one competing at the World Championship levels consistently, he‘s got a saucy attitude to match his accomplishments. Peter had gone to Tasmania to look at another horse, saw Murdoch, and bought him. His sire is Arabian, his dam appaloosa. He turned out to be a phenomenal endurance horse - he has had only one vet out (pull) early in his career, and it was actually a vet secretary slip up. He’s had no vet outs since then; by 2005 he’d done over 3000 km in the middleweight/heavyweight division; he’s won top heavyweight and Best Conditioned many times; he’s done 16 straight 160 km rides, missing the top ten in only 2 of them. He travels very well - Murdoch has been to the US twice (finishing 4th and 6th in the Tevis; Peter would like to go back and do the whole trail on foot, studying it, because he’d like to win it with Murdoch), the UAE, Europe a few times, New Zealand, and Wales. And he’s only coming 11 years old. Needless to say, Peter adores this horse.
I was awakened early by a kookaburra! If I must wake up early, that’s a good alarm clock.
I was happy just to hang around the barn and take pictures, maybe get in a ride tomorrow or next day, but the riding started today! I was suddenly one of the farm crew busy getting horses for clients to look at.
Five of us saddled up, and rode horses down to the Fairgrounds about 2 miles away, for the clients to look over and try out on the bullring track. I got a young gray gelding Olymbus; we rode down the hill, past some dry paddocks of horses and cattle and onto the Fairgrounds. There I handed my horse off to Peter and Sharon, got in the car with the other 4 riders and rode back to the barn, dropped off the 4 riders so they could ride another set of horses down, and I drove the car back down. Not only was I reminding myself GAUCHE!! I was saying Oh S***, it was a stick shift, shifting with the left hand. Yikes! I managed not to grind gears or hit anything on the way back, and I was glad when Peter then handed me a big white mare to get on and ride back to the farm with Brooke. This mare had just arrived from New Zealand; she was a big (must have been) Anglo-Arab, with a HUGE walk, which left me wondering how huge her trot and canter were. I talked with Brooke while we rode back. She rode in the Junior Championships in Bahrain in 2004 when Australia got team Gold; she’s done the Quilty (the US equivalent of Tevis) twice, and she also did Tevis in 2004 at the age of 14 with Penny and Peter, and she loved it. She’d like to go back and do it again. On the way back, we met 3 more horses being ridden down, including Electra BP Murdoch, Peter Toft’s appaloosa endurance wonder horse. Murdoch wasn’t for sale; I think he was out to show his big spots off, because one of the buyers was a fan of his, and because it sounds like Murdoch likes showing off and being the center of (well-deserved) attention.
When Brooke and I got back to the farm, Sharon drove us back down to the Fairgrounds. Peter handed me my gray horse to get back on and take back. “Before you go,” he said, “take him around the track with these two guys.” Eek! As I was going onto the track, Peter said “Merri you keep your horse in front and don’t let these guys win.” EEK! My eyes got even bigger than they already were. I said “OK,” but then I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. I finally had to ask, “You serious or joking?” He said “Joking” even as he was talking to one of the Arabs.
Now, riding on a racetrack always brings to mind my first ride on a little bullring in Washington state, where a fit Thoroughbred racehorse named Fred ran off with me and completely scared the desire to be an exercise rider out of me. And here I was, 19 years later in Australia, vividly remembering Fred and the feelings he left me with (terror, desperately weak knees and arms, the distraught desire to fall off a horse galloping at 40 mph), moving from a trot to a canter with 2 guys used to running flat out in the deserts of the UAE… And did I mention I wasn’t completely comfortable in the saddle I was using, a dressage saddle that made me feel like I was perched up on a stool way above the horse, and I just couldn‘t quite get my stirrups the right length - they‘d been a wee bit short, so I let them out one, and now they were a wee bit long…
Well, none of the Arabian endurance horses I have been on have ever fun flat out on training rides except when I’ve asked them to (in the desert in Egypt, where I felt safe), and these guys had already cantered their mounts several times around, so those horses were in no mood to run off and take Olymbus with them and scare Merri. So Olymbus fell into a canter with them, staying with them, thankfully not feeling the need to get in front and race them. Once or twice he did put his head down as if he were going to buck - and with me perched high on this saddle with my stirrups not right I really didn’t want that to happen - but I snatched it back up. On the second lap, Brooke joined us on her horse, and as we went around again, and entered the homestretch, we picked up speed into a gallop. Whee! I was just at the point where my horse could have started running off, and that little prickly feeling of fear was beginning to tingle slightly through the center of my arms and legs (Brooke said on the way home, “Man, I thought we were going so fast!”), when the guys pulled up at the gap past the finish line. Olymbus’ brakes were slow to apply, I pulled and pulled. We came to a stop past the two guys, and Sharon said, “Yay! You won!” Well sure, Peter told me to! (It’s just a matter of not being able to stop your horse till after the others stop.)
Peter than sent me and Olymbus back with Brooke and her horse, and Jaimee on Murdoch. The appaloosa indeed thinks he’s special. He kept swinging his butt over in front of Brooke and I if our horses got too close and invaded his space.
He’s an amazing horse. Easily recognizable for being one of the few appaloosas in endurance, and certainly the only one competing at the World Championship levels consistently, he‘s got a saucy attitude to match his accomplishments. Peter had gone to Tasmania to look at another horse, saw Murdoch, and bought him. His sire is Arabian, his dam appaloosa. He turned out to be a phenomenal endurance horse - he has had only one vet out (pull) early in his career, and it was actually a vet secretary slip up. He’s had no vet outs since then; by 2005 he’d done over 3000 km in the middleweight/heavyweight division; he’s won top heavyweight and Best Conditioned many times; he’s done 16 straight 160 km rides, missing the top ten in only 2 of them. He travels very well - Murdoch has been to the US twice (finishing 4th and 6th in the Tevis; Peter would like to go back and do the whole trail on foot, studying it, because he’d like to win it with Murdoch), the UAE, Europe a few times, New Zealand, and Wales. And he’s only coming 11 years old. Needless to say, Peter adores this horse.
Toft Endurance
Tuesday April 24 2007
After leaving Brisbane, a city I will never love because I lost the Raven there, I headed for Peter and Penny Toft’s place. The Tofts live In the northeastern state of Queensland near Marburg, an hour or so from Brisbane. I took a train out that direction, and Peter sent Bob to pick me up. I arrived on a busy day, during a busy week, part of a busy month… but then I expect with such a huge operation, every day is a busy day. However, today, in the middle of things - clients looking at horses, vets vetting horses, employees moving horses in and out of the barn for inspection, phones ringing, Peter still took the time to step aside and talk to me for a bit. I was most worried about coming at a bad time, or being in the way, but I was told I wouldn’t be.
How big is huge? Peter and Penny Toft would be the other 2 leading endurance riders in Australia, (besides Meg Wade) and also 2 of the leaders in the world of endurance. How many horses do they have? Peter said he didn’t know - maybe 500 - not just here but all over the world in training. While they breed 35 - 40 of their own horses a year, Toft Endurance is in the business of buying and selling endurance horses. While Peter didn’t know the exact number, I’d come to realize later that he probably knows every horse, where it is and what it’s doing, what its race record and breeding is.
A main topic of conversation (with Bob also, who picked me up) is the obvious drought. It’s bad here also; the paddocks are brown, but at least visually it’s not as bad as Meg’s place. Here the trees are still green, and there’s still grass on the road shoulders - the stock hasn’t gotten desperate enough yet to graze that down. The windmill in the middle of one of their pens, that used to furnish water for the whole valley below (they have a nice perch up on a hill), has gone dry. Normally they have around 10 employees, but now they have a lot more just constantly putting feed out for horses. Hay is already $18 for a 50 lb bale of grass hay, and it may soon get up to $25 a bale. There’s some 100 or so horses at the farm here, horses in quarantine, horses waiting to go into quarantine, horses coming in from overseas, mares and foals, weanlings. Oh, and a camel.
Peter and Dr Kamal - here from the UAE vetting horses for clients - had some afternoon business at the Gold Coast, and Peter asked if I wanted to go along. Figuring it might be my only tourista item I do around here, I hopped in the car. On the 1 ½ hour drive, I asked Peter a few questions, and he asked me a few… but it was always between phone calls - on 2 cell phones. (Dr Kamal’s rang a bit too, and so I turned mine on because I have a cell phone too, but mine didn‘t ring.) Peter’s mind is always thinking: he has a hundred things going on in a hundred different directions in his mind; he’s always focused and he’s very sharp. Of course you’d have to be with such a business. He’d be about to answer a question I had for him, when his phone would ring; he’d shift gears to the topic of conversation, talk 15 minutes, then get off the phone and answer my question with a straight answer, right before the phone rang again.
The Gold Coast is a big tourist destination for Europeans, Japanese and Australians. About 30 years ago, the then-Prime Minister noticed the Japanese liked to vacation there, so, wanting to promote the region, he started direct flights from Tokyo to Brisbane. It went over so well, that the Japanese proceeded to buy the hotels, and the tourist shops, and then came in droves, staying at their hotels and shopping at their shops. The Gold Coast is now mostly owned by Japanese, some Europeans, a lot of Middle Easterners, and some Americans - Australians own little of it. But that’s probably how it is all over the world. How much American investment is in Miami Beach?
And though I haven’t been there, I expect the Gold Coast (and the Sunshine Coast just north) are about like Miami Beach - chock full of high rise condominiums along the beach, lots of shopping, high end and low end and souvenirs, lots of restaurants, lots of night life. I wandered around for an hour, sad the Raven wasn’t with me, stopped at an internet place to check emails, and whoa! The Raven condolences are coming in, and the Raven Search has taken a whole new life of its own! While it’s sad, it cracks me up! I walked onto the beach, and touched the Pacific Ocean, which seemed quite warm. The lifeguards were packing up for the day and people coming out of the water. I don’t know if it’s bad here, but up north there’s killer jellyfish (which sting), killer stonefish (don‘t step on them), killer octopus (which bite) and sharks (which eat, thought the last Australian shark fatality was 1937). Not to mention the crocodiles in rivers and swamps, and poisonous snakes and spiders…
Anyway, of course there was a Starbucks, and of course I had to sample it. I met back up with Peter and Dr Kamal, and we left as it was getting dark, about 5:30 - Gold Coast rush hour. Peter was back on the phone - picking up all those phone calls that he missed in his meeting.
Back home - I was put up at their house - I met Penny (actually met her in Malaysia) and their 2 horse-crazy girls Brooke and Alexandra. Really cool girls. Brooke started endurance riding when she was 8, and is well-traveled, having ridden in Bahrain and New Zealand, and strapped in the World Championships in Germany last year. Alexandra also started endurance riding when she was 8. I suspect both are way better horsemen than me!
After leaving Brisbane, a city I will never love because I lost the Raven there, I headed for Peter and Penny Toft’s place. The Tofts live In the northeastern state of Queensland near Marburg, an hour or so from Brisbane. I took a train out that direction, and Peter sent Bob to pick me up. I arrived on a busy day, during a busy week, part of a busy month… but then I expect with such a huge operation, every day is a busy day. However, today, in the middle of things - clients looking at horses, vets vetting horses, employees moving horses in and out of the barn for inspection, phones ringing, Peter still took the time to step aside and talk to me for a bit. I was most worried about coming at a bad time, or being in the way, but I was told I wouldn’t be.
How big is huge? Peter and Penny Toft would be the other 2 leading endurance riders in Australia, (besides Meg Wade) and also 2 of the leaders in the world of endurance. How many horses do they have? Peter said he didn’t know - maybe 500 - not just here but all over the world in training. While they breed 35 - 40 of their own horses a year, Toft Endurance is in the business of buying and selling endurance horses. While Peter didn’t know the exact number, I’d come to realize later that he probably knows every horse, where it is and what it’s doing, what its race record and breeding is.
A main topic of conversation (with Bob also, who picked me up) is the obvious drought. It’s bad here also; the paddocks are brown, but at least visually it’s not as bad as Meg’s place. Here the trees are still green, and there’s still grass on the road shoulders - the stock hasn’t gotten desperate enough yet to graze that down. The windmill in the middle of one of their pens, that used to furnish water for the whole valley below (they have a nice perch up on a hill), has gone dry. Normally they have around 10 employees, but now they have a lot more just constantly putting feed out for horses. Hay is already $18 for a 50 lb bale of grass hay, and it may soon get up to $25 a bale. There’s some 100 or so horses at the farm here, horses in quarantine, horses waiting to go into quarantine, horses coming in from overseas, mares and foals, weanlings. Oh, and a camel.
Peter and Dr Kamal - here from the UAE vetting horses for clients - had some afternoon business at the Gold Coast, and Peter asked if I wanted to go along. Figuring it might be my only tourista item I do around here, I hopped in the car. On the 1 ½ hour drive, I asked Peter a few questions, and he asked me a few… but it was always between phone calls - on 2 cell phones. (Dr Kamal’s rang a bit too, and so I turned mine on because I have a cell phone too, but mine didn‘t ring.) Peter’s mind is always thinking: he has a hundred things going on in a hundred different directions in his mind; he’s always focused and he’s very sharp. Of course you’d have to be with such a business. He’d be about to answer a question I had for him, when his phone would ring; he’d shift gears to the topic of conversation, talk 15 minutes, then get off the phone and answer my question with a straight answer, right before the phone rang again.
The Gold Coast is a big tourist destination for Europeans, Japanese and Australians. About 30 years ago, the then-Prime Minister noticed the Japanese liked to vacation there, so, wanting to promote the region, he started direct flights from Tokyo to Brisbane. It went over so well, that the Japanese proceeded to buy the hotels, and the tourist shops, and then came in droves, staying at their hotels and shopping at their shops. The Gold Coast is now mostly owned by Japanese, some Europeans, a lot of Middle Easterners, and some Americans - Australians own little of it. But that’s probably how it is all over the world. How much American investment is in Miami Beach?
And though I haven’t been there, I expect the Gold Coast (and the Sunshine Coast just north) are about like Miami Beach - chock full of high rise condominiums along the beach, lots of shopping, high end and low end and souvenirs, lots of restaurants, lots of night life. I wandered around for an hour, sad the Raven wasn’t with me, stopped at an internet place to check emails, and whoa! The Raven condolences are coming in, and the Raven Search has taken a whole new life of its own! While it’s sad, it cracks me up! I walked onto the beach, and touched the Pacific Ocean, which seemed quite warm. The lifeguards were packing up for the day and people coming out of the water. I don’t know if it’s bad here, but up north there’s killer jellyfish (which sting), killer stonefish (don‘t step on them), killer octopus (which bite) and sharks (which eat, thought the last Australian shark fatality was 1937). Not to mention the crocodiles in rivers and swamps, and poisonous snakes and spiders…
Anyway, of course there was a Starbucks, and of course I had to sample it. I met back up with Peter and Dr Kamal, and we left as it was getting dark, about 5:30 - Gold Coast rush hour. Peter was back on the phone - picking up all those phone calls that he missed in his meeting.
Back home - I was put up at their house - I met Penny (actually met her in Malaysia) and their 2 horse-crazy girls Brooke and Alexandra. Really cool girls. Brooke started endurance riding when she was 8, and is well-traveled, having ridden in Bahrain and New Zealand, and strapped in the World Championships in Germany last year. Alexandra also started endurance riding when she was 8. I suspect both are way better horsemen than me!
Monday, April 23, 2007
Nevermore
Monday April 23 2007
The Raven is gone. Jumped out of my shoulder bag in Brisbane. I'd only walked about 5 minutes, so I searched and searched and searched and asked everybody, every store and cafe around (all thought I was a nutter), even a policeman in the area. I am going to spend the night throwing up. maybe the week.
The Raven is gone. Jumped out of my shoulder bag in Brisbane. I'd only walked about 5 minutes, so I searched and searched and searched and asked everybody, every store and cafe around (all thought I was a nutter), even a policeman in the area. I am going to spend the night throwing up. maybe the week.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Road to Nowhere
Friday-Sunday April 20-22 2007
At 12:30 PM I climbed into the truck with Christy, and with 3 horses in the float, we left Castlebar Farm and headed off to the weekend Nowhere Creek endurance ride, an 80 km ride and a 40 km ‘training ride’ in Elmhurst, Victoria, put on by members of the Victorian Endurance Riders Association.
I was prepared for a 7-8 hour drive across a small part of Australia, and with 2 stops for gas and 1 stop to pick up Subway, it took us about 7 hours. At Subway, I was CRAVING a salad, after a week of no greens, so I got a Big Salad, and asked the girl, “You have a shovel with that?” She gave me a fork, anyway.
The drive to the ride was pretty much brown - brown trees, brown grass, brown fields with no grass; the rare green spots were from irrigation. Which may stop completely in the Murray River-Darling Basin - which includes most of Victoria and most of New South Wales, and a part of Queensland - unless there’s heavy rain in the next 6 weeks. The Murray-Darling Basin has 50,000 farmers and provides nearly 40% of Australia’s agriculture, 96% of Australia’s cotton, 80% of the grapes, 30% of the national cow herd, 45% of the sheep flock. Think of everything that will affect - fruits, vegetables, grain, hay, meat, dairy, wine, towns, etc - if there’s no rain. Everybody’s praying for rain.
We arrived at basecamp in the dark, 7:30. Chelsea, having come to ride one of the horses, was already there, having driven from the far side of Melbourne; Linda, who’d be riding another, and her husband Chris hadn’t arrived yet. We picked a spot under the trees, along the path outside a fenced-off round grassy field. We quickly set up the aluminum pens and unloaded the horses, set them up with hay and water. They were rug-less so we had rugs to put on them… let’s watch Merri try to put one of those rugs-with-the-neck-warmers-attached on in the dark with no torch, with new puzzle-piece snaps to boot! I think by the time I got the rug on my one horse, Christy had parked the truck and trailer and unhitched and had dinner and a shower and gone to bed.
And set up my Mondo Tent, into which I hauled my Swag, which is a thick cushiony sleeping pad encased in a canvas bag, into which you also put all your bedding and pillow. I crawled into my swag and curled up in it.
My first night in a swag was very warm and comfortable… but I didn’t get much good sleep. Mainly because somebody kept banging buckets around, flinging them here and there, bang bang, throwing them down, bang bang, on and on - enough already! In my sleep-haze, I finally figured out it was probably a horse making the racket, and later on, as the banging finally stopped, then picked up again, I figured it was probably one of OUR horses, but I couldn’t be bothered to get up and do something about it. Instead I reached over and pulled out a pair of earplugs that somewhat tuned it out.
When I finally started getting to the real sleep, it started to rain - rain!? For that I jumped up out of bed, because both my doors were wide open and my head and feet were getting sprinkled on. For good measure I moved my suitcase from the open to under a tree, and zipped up my tent doors, and crawled back in bed. The rain only lasted about 10 minutes, just a tease to the dry earth.
Just about to hit the snooze hard, I heard a bird go off, and within two minutes, tens of thousands of birds were going off not far away, and they were LOUD birds, piercing my earplugs. Once I was up later, I hiked over to the golf course, where the main cacophony was transpiring, and discovered billions of white parrots, in trees, hanging from trees, between trees, in the sky, on the ground - everywhere. Not quite big enough to be cockatoos, but corellas, I think they were. DESTRUCTIVE PESTS! Many Aussies say, but I disagree, they are impressive, vocally and visually! (Of course, they aren’t eating my grain or hay, or crapping all over my property or truck). Me and birds, what can I say.
The 80 km ride started at 11 AM and the 40 km at 11:30. Vetting started around 9 AM. Trot outs, instead of being out and back, were in a circle, and this continued throughout the ride. Good idea! They take horses’ temperatures here too, something I had heard of but hadn’t seen before. Christy also uses the thermometer at vet checks to help determine if the horse needs cooling down with water or covering with a rug. Entry fees were $75 for the 80 km and $45 for the 40 km. Other rides I noted in the Victorian Endurance Riding Association mini-magazine were: $80 for a 120 km, and $120 for a 160 km ride; these seemed to be about average.
There were 22 entries in the 40 km, and I don’t know the number, but probably about double that for the 80 km.
Here in Australia, a horse must do 3 80’s for horse to qualify with qualified rider; a novice rider must do 2 40’s then 3 80’s. If a qualified horse has been off 13 months, or has vetted out in his only ride in 13 months, he must do an 80 novice ride again. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong on all this?)
The sky stayed cloudy and cool and threatened rain throughout the morning, though nothing came of it. The atmosphere at the ride, as well as the start of both of the rides, was quite casual. No controlled start, and no herd ripping out of camp to set a torrid pace. Several riders lagged well behind the official start time to get their horses to relax and move out calmly. The 80 km had two loops of 40 km (loop 2 was loop 1 repeated), with a hold of 1 hour, vetting at the half hour of your hold. The vets will actually call your number at the appointed half-hour time, so you’d better be there waiting; you‘ll get a minute or two grace, but after that you may be disqualified. The horses riding as novices had to complete the ride no faster than 6 hours, and no slower than 8 hours (so, no faster than 3 hours on each loop, no slower than 4 hours). The qualified horses can go as fast as they want.
I talked with Linda’s husband Chris about FEI rides - I guessed that at least 80-85% of American riders don’t care about FEI. He guessed the same goes for Australia. Chris came along to crew for his wife and Castlebar; he said with only 3 horses, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself! He’s used to strapping for 10+ horses at one ride.
After the first loop, Linda’s horse vetted out lame; Christy and Chelsea finished the 2nd loop at 6:20 PM just at dark, and passed their final vet check in the dark. We ate a 4-course meal cooked by a club, and forgive me, I forget their name, but it was the best dinner I’ve had in a long time! (Not counting that shoveled salad the night before). They also had coffee and hot water available in the mornings, and they made lunch, and breakfast Sunday morning. And there were showers available!
Later in the evening during final vet checks, a stallion broke out of his pen and got loose, running around the field among the horses getting their vet checks creating havoc, knocking his human over in his determination to have his way with a good-looking mare. Fortunately he was caught before anybody was seriously hurt. Everybody I saw in New Zealand at Horse of the Year (if they didn’t put their horses in these tiny, scary, assigned pens) and Nationals, and at this ride in Australia, uses the aluminum pens or the electric fencing tape, whereas in the States (in the West and Pacific South, anyway) we mostly tie to trailers or to high ties or Sky Hooks. Of course, a horse will get loose no matter what, and a horse will hurt himself no matter what, but I prefer the Sky Hooks. The horse can move around a lot and still lay down. I can just visualize too many scary accidents with horse legs through the aluminum fence pieces and the electric fencing containing only the horse that wants to be contained. A friend from Nevada double-ties her stallion, the halter attached to the Sky Hook, then the lead rope from his halter tied to the trailer.
I had a good sleep in my swag, popping earplugs in immediately. Which was why I missed The Great Stallion Escape again. I think it was the same stallion, this time loose without a halter, and apparently half the camp woke up (I was in the half that didn’t) and was chasing him around. I finally woke up to lots of yelling voices, one calling for a vet, but they were on the other side of the field. Our horses were still in their pens and Christy was gone; I figured I’d be of no use, stumbling around with earplugs in the dark looking for a dark horse, so I went back to sleep.
BC judging was around 8:30 in the morning; here they judge BC for juniors, lightweights, middleweights, and heavyweights. And here they rode their horses only, didn’t show them in hand. Chelsea rode Oslo for the lightweight division, and he looked like he could easily do another 80 km.
We went back and cleaned up our camp, packed everything away, loaded the horses and quickly took down the pens before going back for the awards. A fair number of people were still there as the head vet called out the names of the finishers and returned their horse log books with a completion sash and wine glasses (and bottles of wine for the BC winners). Then we were off - Christy back to Castlebar with the 3 horses, Linda and Chris to their home, and I got a ride to Melbourne with Chelsea. She was kind enough to drop me off at the door of my hotel in downtown Melbourne, which I greatly appreciated, because somebody keeps putting ROCKS IN MY SUITCASE!! It’s ridiculously heavy.
I’m headed for another leader of Australian endurance, Peter and Penny Toft in Queensland up north, and the Imbil ride May 5th. Stay tuned.
At 12:30 PM I climbed into the truck with Christy, and with 3 horses in the float, we left Castlebar Farm and headed off to the weekend Nowhere Creek endurance ride, an 80 km ride and a 40 km ‘training ride’ in Elmhurst, Victoria, put on by members of the Victorian Endurance Riders Association.
I was prepared for a 7-8 hour drive across a small part of Australia, and with 2 stops for gas and 1 stop to pick up Subway, it took us about 7 hours. At Subway, I was CRAVING a salad, after a week of no greens, so I got a Big Salad, and asked the girl, “You have a shovel with that?” She gave me a fork, anyway.
The drive to the ride was pretty much brown - brown trees, brown grass, brown fields with no grass; the rare green spots were from irrigation. Which may stop completely in the Murray River-Darling Basin - which includes most of Victoria and most of New South Wales, and a part of Queensland - unless there’s heavy rain in the next 6 weeks. The Murray-Darling Basin has 50,000 farmers and provides nearly 40% of Australia’s agriculture, 96% of Australia’s cotton, 80% of the grapes, 30% of the national cow herd, 45% of the sheep flock. Think of everything that will affect - fruits, vegetables, grain, hay, meat, dairy, wine, towns, etc - if there’s no rain. Everybody’s praying for rain.
We arrived at basecamp in the dark, 7:30. Chelsea, having come to ride one of the horses, was already there, having driven from the far side of Melbourne; Linda, who’d be riding another, and her husband Chris hadn’t arrived yet. We picked a spot under the trees, along the path outside a fenced-off round grassy field. We quickly set up the aluminum pens and unloaded the horses, set them up with hay and water. They were rug-less so we had rugs to put on them… let’s watch Merri try to put one of those rugs-with-the-neck-warmers-attached on in the dark with no torch, with new puzzle-piece snaps to boot! I think by the time I got the rug on my one horse, Christy had parked the truck and trailer and unhitched and had dinner and a shower and gone to bed.
And set up my Mondo Tent, into which I hauled my Swag, which is a thick cushiony sleeping pad encased in a canvas bag, into which you also put all your bedding and pillow. I crawled into my swag and curled up in it.
My first night in a swag was very warm and comfortable… but I didn’t get much good sleep. Mainly because somebody kept banging buckets around, flinging them here and there, bang bang, throwing them down, bang bang, on and on - enough already! In my sleep-haze, I finally figured out it was probably a horse making the racket, and later on, as the banging finally stopped, then picked up again, I figured it was probably one of OUR horses, but I couldn’t be bothered to get up and do something about it. Instead I reached over and pulled out a pair of earplugs that somewhat tuned it out.
When I finally started getting to the real sleep, it started to rain - rain!? For that I jumped up out of bed, because both my doors were wide open and my head and feet were getting sprinkled on. For good measure I moved my suitcase from the open to under a tree, and zipped up my tent doors, and crawled back in bed. The rain only lasted about 10 minutes, just a tease to the dry earth.
Just about to hit the snooze hard, I heard a bird go off, and within two minutes, tens of thousands of birds were going off not far away, and they were LOUD birds, piercing my earplugs. Once I was up later, I hiked over to the golf course, where the main cacophony was transpiring, and discovered billions of white parrots, in trees, hanging from trees, between trees, in the sky, on the ground - everywhere. Not quite big enough to be cockatoos, but corellas, I think they were. DESTRUCTIVE PESTS! Many Aussies say, but I disagree, they are impressive, vocally and visually! (Of course, they aren’t eating my grain or hay, or crapping all over my property or truck). Me and birds, what can I say.
The 80 km ride started at 11 AM and the 40 km at 11:30. Vetting started around 9 AM. Trot outs, instead of being out and back, were in a circle, and this continued throughout the ride. Good idea! They take horses’ temperatures here too, something I had heard of but hadn’t seen before. Christy also uses the thermometer at vet checks to help determine if the horse needs cooling down with water or covering with a rug. Entry fees were $75 for the 80 km and $45 for the 40 km. Other rides I noted in the Victorian Endurance Riding Association mini-magazine were: $80 for a 120 km, and $120 for a 160 km ride; these seemed to be about average.
There were 22 entries in the 40 km, and I don’t know the number, but probably about double that for the 80 km.
Here in Australia, a horse must do 3 80’s for horse to qualify with qualified rider; a novice rider must do 2 40’s then 3 80’s. If a qualified horse has been off 13 months, or has vetted out in his only ride in 13 months, he must do an 80 novice ride again. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong on all this?)
The sky stayed cloudy and cool and threatened rain throughout the morning, though nothing came of it. The atmosphere at the ride, as well as the start of both of the rides, was quite casual. No controlled start, and no herd ripping out of camp to set a torrid pace. Several riders lagged well behind the official start time to get their horses to relax and move out calmly. The 80 km had two loops of 40 km (loop 2 was loop 1 repeated), with a hold of 1 hour, vetting at the half hour of your hold. The vets will actually call your number at the appointed half-hour time, so you’d better be there waiting; you‘ll get a minute or two grace, but after that you may be disqualified. The horses riding as novices had to complete the ride no faster than 6 hours, and no slower than 8 hours (so, no faster than 3 hours on each loop, no slower than 4 hours). The qualified horses can go as fast as they want.
I talked with Linda’s husband Chris about FEI rides - I guessed that at least 80-85% of American riders don’t care about FEI. He guessed the same goes for Australia. Chris came along to crew for his wife and Castlebar; he said with only 3 horses, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself! He’s used to strapping for 10+ horses at one ride.
After the first loop, Linda’s horse vetted out lame; Christy and Chelsea finished the 2nd loop at 6:20 PM just at dark, and passed their final vet check in the dark. We ate a 4-course meal cooked by a club, and forgive me, I forget their name, but it was the best dinner I’ve had in a long time! (Not counting that shoveled salad the night before). They also had coffee and hot water available in the mornings, and they made lunch, and breakfast Sunday morning. And there were showers available!
Later in the evening during final vet checks, a stallion broke out of his pen and got loose, running around the field among the horses getting their vet checks creating havoc, knocking his human over in his determination to have his way with a good-looking mare. Fortunately he was caught before anybody was seriously hurt. Everybody I saw in New Zealand at Horse of the Year (if they didn’t put their horses in these tiny, scary, assigned pens) and Nationals, and at this ride in Australia, uses the aluminum pens or the electric fencing tape, whereas in the States (in the West and Pacific South, anyway) we mostly tie to trailers or to high ties or Sky Hooks. Of course, a horse will get loose no matter what, and a horse will hurt himself no matter what, but I prefer the Sky Hooks. The horse can move around a lot and still lay down. I can just visualize too many scary accidents with horse legs through the aluminum fence pieces and the electric fencing containing only the horse that wants to be contained. A friend from Nevada double-ties her stallion, the halter attached to the Sky Hook, then the lead rope from his halter tied to the trailer.
I had a good sleep in my swag, popping earplugs in immediately. Which was why I missed The Great Stallion Escape again. I think it was the same stallion, this time loose without a halter, and apparently half the camp woke up (I was in the half that didn’t) and was chasing him around. I finally woke up to lots of yelling voices, one calling for a vet, but they were on the other side of the field. Our horses were still in their pens and Christy was gone; I figured I’d be of no use, stumbling around with earplugs in the dark looking for a dark horse, so I went back to sleep.
BC judging was around 8:30 in the morning; here they judge BC for juniors, lightweights, middleweights, and heavyweights. And here they rode their horses only, didn’t show them in hand. Chelsea rode Oslo for the lightweight division, and he looked like he could easily do another 80 km.
We went back and cleaned up our camp, packed everything away, loaded the horses and quickly took down the pens before going back for the awards. A fair number of people were still there as the head vet called out the names of the finishers and returned their horse log books with a completion sash and wine glasses (and bottles of wine for the BC winners). Then we were off - Christy back to Castlebar with the 3 horses, Linda and Chris to their home, and I got a ride to Melbourne with Chelsea. She was kind enough to drop me off at the door of my hotel in downtown Melbourne, which I greatly appreciated, because somebody keeps putting ROCKS IN MY SUITCASE!! It’s ridiculously heavy.
I’m headed for another leader of Australian endurance, Peter and Penny Toft in Queensland up north, and the Imbil ride May 5th. Stay tuned.
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