Hello, my name is Chris and I can’t recall being alive without being fascinated by horses. As a child, never missed an opportunity to pat one if I could get close enough and my happiness levels escalated when I was allowed to sit one. When I was in my mid teens, I used my pocket money to take riding lessons at the local riding school in Gerolstein in Germany. To start off with, I was enrolled in a vaulting class, which even led me to partake in my first competition. However, “real” riding was much more fun, even if it was only on school horses in an indoor arena, being yelled at by a nice but very military sounding gentleman and his helpers.
A couple of years later, I had annoyed my parents enough that they gave in and went in search of a horse. But not until after my parents found a small paddock to lease and my dad has spent many weekends building a small walk in/out stable with a lockable saddle area and hay storage. He also built a picnic table and bench, which our family used often for little Sunday picnics over the years. Anyway, we decided on a robust breed of horse, which essentially meant Haflingers, Fjords or Icelandics. The latter being rather more expensive meant that we ended up with a just gelded Haflinger named Afghan. He was also not started under saddle. We bought him from the breeder who had confidence in us taking home a young horse and gave us only the one piece of advice, being not to let him be the boss. Afghan wasn’t home for more than a day when I decided I needed to ride him. So I tied a rope to his headstall to make reins and hopped on. And the world felt great and having more luck than I deserved, all was good.
Afghan turned out to be a great horse, putting up with all my ineptitudes and follies. We went all around the forests and roads and fields in the area, we got dressed up as Knight or as Hussar or as one of the apocalyptic horseman (great fun at Karneval time), and we sometimes went riding with friends. I didn’t have a saddle for the first few months, so there were a few involuntary dismounts, but that upset neither Afghan nor myself. When we finally did get a saddle, the adventures extended, although I continued to sometimes just go out with a blanket on his back, and I have happy memories of taking on a neighbor for a race in the forest like that.
Afte a year or so, by chance, we acquired another Haflinger, a mare. She had once been sold for a lot of money as a harness horse, but had ended up having foals and we rescued her from a shitty stall that she rarely ever got out of. So she came to live with us. While overall pretty sensible, Muitz had a different temperament to Afghan, and she posed me some new problems. She could get very bossy, and at times just didn’t want as I did, and I leaned a lot from her. But having two horses, and a friend to go riding with, meant a lot of alternative types of fun. Aside from racing each other (Afghan always won) while out riding, we would in winter hitch little bob-sleighs to the horses, and then have races sitting behind the horses, with clumps of snow whizzing by and the horse behind breathing down our necks. Plenty of tumbles, but snow is soft.
New Year’s Eve 1982, I was at the horse paddock, standing in the snow talking to my horses and watching the fireworks, knowing it would be the last time. My family had decided to emigrate to Australia and I had decided to also go. A friend bought the horses and all the gear, but it was very tough to say goodbye. By late March, we packed our bags and boarded the flight to Melbourne. I was devastated, but I was not prepared to forego the opportunity to come to Australia.
Starting all over in Australia wasn’t easy. I missed my horses sorely and the first few months made me doubt my decision to come. It wasn’t until I went to school and met a girl who had horse that things turned for the better. She introduced us to a friend near Wodonga who had several horses and once again I got the chance to ride. Soon, I was exploring the Australian bush on Haran’s Australian Stockhorse or one of the ponies or his son’s pure Arabian gelding. I was also introduced to foxhunting, and my first experience of that was on a borrowed pony, wearing a borrowed coat, and coming off right in front of a bunch of spectators. That, however, didn’t cool my desire to repeat the experience at all.
At the end of 1982, I finished High School and I managed to get into Dookie Ag College the following year. As there was a big drought on, we weren’t allowed to bring horses to the campus, and I had to wait until the middle of 1983 before I could bring Brandy, a Stockhorse mare I bought from Haran, to Dookie. I had a few adventures with her, mostly fun, as she was a hot little ticket. Sadly, at the end of that year, she injured herself in the paddock and had to be put down. With the help of a friend, I found a new partner and Horse came to live with me at Ag College. He stayed with me until I lost him due to old age in 2003.
After Ag college I worked on some farms for various stints, often using Horse for work around cattle and sheep. One property ran horses and I had the opportunity to participate in some endurance rides, mostly on their horses, but also one on Horse. The longest ride we completed was 100kms.
Horse and I had lots and lots of adventures together. As soon as I got my licence, and a car, I went looking for a float (all with help from my parents, espcially my dad, who helped me get the scruffy old second hand float I bought into a condition that was suitable to use). Once I had a float, we went everywhere, to all kinds of events. I competed in Stockhorse events and managed to get him classified as an Australian Stockhorse, opening up more events. We used to do pretty well in working stockhorse classes around the district. We also did Pony Club and all the PC events that we could manage to get to. I got Horse registered with the EFA, so we could go showjumping and eventing. We never got past restricted novice level, but we did have a lot of fun. I was foxhunting in the Albury area, at times with Hume Hunt Club and other times with Murray Valley Hunt Club. We did a couple of seasons of polocrosse and many seasons of tentpegging with the Albury Tentpegging Club.
I particularly enjoyed the training days and competitions together with the guys and found the cameraderie of the tentpegging scene particularly appealing. Inbetween, Horse and I attended some shows, clinics, dressage competitions, hunter trials, gymkhanas, time trail rides and bush races. Oh, and assorted horsemanship and riding clinics.
At some point in the nineties, I acquired a partbred Haflinger mare by the name of Pebbles. She had the look of a Haflinger but with the go of a Thoroughbred. She also came foxhunting with me, did bush racing, hunter trials, eventing and showjumping. She was 13.3 hands of forward energy and a huge amount of fun. There was also an Arabian gelding named Buzz. And at some point I acquired two purebred Haflingers that were rescue cases and sadly didn’t work out very well in the long run. But I did give them a good chance.
In 1994 I relented (I was married at the time) and moved to the Bega Valley, which meant no more tentpegging, and way less opportunities to compete in any way shape or form. Sadly, although the valley is beautiful, most of the area was National Park and riding wasn’t allowed, limiting riding to dirt roads.
In 1995, there was a new beginning with the purchase of two young American Saddlebreds, a colt and a filly, and shortly after a stallion and two more fillies in the following year. Around the same time, first one and soon after, anotehr Peruvian stallion joined the farm as well. 1995 is the year that Narrawin Stud started, and the story of the stud can be told in another story.
For me, this meant learning about stallion handling, the horse breeding game, handling foals and other youngsters. Also long distance travel with horses, because everything is far away in the Bega Valley. One thing I did discover was a local Lighthorse troop, which I joined and after acquiring some gear, I went in some parades include the Anzac Day parade in Bega one year.
I spent a lot of time handling and starting horses, for the stud and outside. I also did riding lessons and week long riding courses for total beginners, which were a lot of fun.
In the end, the Bega Valley experience didn’t pan out and after an aborted attempt to sell the property and having to move and move back again, we finally left in mid 2001. I had been offered a job as stud manager in far western Victoria, where Jorge de Moya had settled to build a large olive grove, processing plant and run his Paso Fino horse stud. I had met him the year before in Adelaide, before his horses arrived from USA, and I was curious about Paso Finos, which hadn’t been in Australia until then.
For the next 5 years I ran the stud, that is Jorge’s increasing herd as well as mine, and with only one offsider, bred between one and two dozen mares per year. I did an AI course at Glenormiston and attended the GVEH breeder’s course at Shepparton. Due to the remoteness of the property, we had to be fairly self sufficient. Things weren’t always easy, but it was an interesting time. I learned a lot from Jorge about Paso Finos and their gaits. I was impressed with his horses, and he liked what I had, so we often used one another’s stallions. He decided he liked the look of Australian Stockhorses, so we went to NSW and Qld to do a bit of horse shopping and came back with some very nice horses. Between his stud and mine, we had Paso Finos, Andalusians, Peruvian Horses, American Saddlebreds, Australian Stockhorses and a couple of odds and ends. And yes, both he and I bred pure and crossbred horses.
For various reasons I quit in 2006 and moved to the Ballarat area. I kept in touch with Jorge and started some more horses for him. For health and family reasons he decided to move back to Florida and dispersed the stud. I had first pick and brought home several float loads of horses, some of which I still have. After Jorge passed away a couple of years later, I also acquired his collection of bits, some interesting saddles and his entire equine library.
Together with Yvonne, there were lots of adventures. We started a few young horses together, organised some clinics, did many trail rides and ventured out to promote Gaited Horses at the Ballarat Rural Lifestyle Expo. I also took up martial arts, first Karate, and then settled on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (with excursions into Philippino sticks, Kendo, MMA and other odds and ends). I really enjoyed BJJ and immersed myself in it, competing several times and regularly taught classes at the Ballarat Dojo.
In 2015 I built my current setup at Dereel (south of Ballarat) and for the first time in my life had an undercover riding arena. It is modestly sized at 12 x 18 meters, a size based on Portugues picaderos, but a bit longer. This “riding house” (well, that’s what the Duke of Newcastle called his!) is the single most significant thing that has helped me advance my riding. Notwithstanding the fact that by the time I set it up, I had been riding for over 30 years, there were things I knew I wasn’t good at and and that seemed forever out of reach. I had always been winging things, and while I certainly had loads of successes over the years, I felt I wasn’t progressing. Seeing and appreciating how some people seemed to be able to ride their horses with subtelty, made me realise just how crude my riding was in comparison. Added to that was a huge amount of disillusionment with the horses scene in general, and with certain breed societies and clubs and political groupings in particular. I was actually about ready to throw everything in and just keep one horse for fun a couple of years earlier. What saved me was starting martial arts and having the opportunity to be a complete beginner with no care in the world other than learn new stuff. And with that, slowly, the desire to learn to ride better and to carry on my breeding program despite the disappointments came back. And then the riding house happened, easing the way.
Suddenly I could have as many little sessions at whatever hours I wanted. After work, in bad weather, on dark winter’s nights. Also, I quit my job and embarked on a PhD, which was onerous but gave me a lot of freedom of how to plan my day. And with all that, my “stuck” riding began to change and I was able to explore new things. With a little occasional help from good instructors, I was finally able to improve my riding. This meant going further with my more educated horses and being able to achieve more with less with the green horses I was starting.
In parallel, I discovered a new world of skill at arms and jousting, and with that, re-enactment and historical European martial arts, and it all became part of the riding. This gave new insights, new skills, new things to explore, and I’m glad to have a small group of friends who are sharing this fun journey with me.
From here on, I’m hoping for more learning, for more discoveries. For days out riding in the sun, for bringing into the world more beautiful foals, and for sharing my passion with others.
