I know it’s a cliché, but how else do you describe training and living with the animal that you have loved and worshiped ever since you could talk. My husband Wade and I had a similar upbringing; both of us lived in suburbia with a burning passion to live our lives amongst horses. Wade spent most of his time from the age of twelve caring for and riding his horse in pony club events and trail rides
. Eventually after leaving James Rouse Agriculture College at the age of eighteen, he went Jackarooing in Northern Queensland. This was an amazing experience and of course included riding horses almost all day ----every day. We met later when Wade was twenty one and I was eighteen. He and I were Jillaroo and Jackaroo in the Riverina area of NSW. We immediately hit it off, mainly due to our love of horses. I had an almost identical childhood to Wade, only I was from Victoria. Wade worked for the Faulkner family on Boonoke Station and in between his jackaroo duties; he trained a race horse for them. The horse won eleven races for Wade and that set off his passion for training. Realizing after twelve months together, we should marry brought us to live in NSW. We leased a ten acre property in Dural where we broke in ponies, gave riding lessons and pre trained a few race horses. Wade of course held a full time job apart from our small horse enterprise. Wade having a great eye for a horse would go to the races and offer good money for show types that had lost form. We would re educate them and sell them for a substantial profit, this was the beginning of our bank needed to begin a horse training business. In 1974 we met Donald Daisley through an associate of Wade’s father. Donald owned Windermere Farm and had ponies to sell. After a pleasant day in his company and a trip to the farm, Donald offered us the position of manager. We jumped at the chance mainly because of the perfect set up for our future training program. The rest is history; we have lived and raised our family in closeness with the Daisley family on Windermere Farm for the past thirty eight years. Our first horses to train were the illustrious Cheval De Volee and Smorgasbord. Cheval however went on to become amongst the ten top two year olds in Australasia, 1978. Smorgasbord, of which we half owned, was sold to Western Australia soon after he won the Quick Silver Classic at Hawkesbury. Our training life has been a wonderful, heartbreaking and uplifting, never boring journey. And now after so many years surviving the ins and outs of this game, we can honestly say we would never ever change a thing. Our passion, love and care of the horse is still and has always been our first calling. To offer hospitality and communication to our clients will always travel alongside our caring for their horses. They are encouraged to come to visit their horses anytime they wish and to enjoy the peaceful surrounds of the sixty five acre farm on which we, our family and the race horses live. I can name hundreds of top horse we have trained, but we live in the present moment and so I can assure you we will always do our best to have your horse perform at its best. We have a small team and have a hand on ethic that produces a good strike rate. Never have we wished to enter into the conveyer belt type training, eg, numbers brings winners. We love the horse and give each individual every opportunity to excel to their best. It’s all about the horse.
