When my bloodstock agent friend Satomi Oka asked if I would come with her on a Snowy Mountains riding and camping trek for her birthday this year it gave me an opportunity to do something I had always wanted to do and with my trusty Cousin Jane on board for the adventure three city girls set out last week for a taste of Snowy Wilderness.
Yes I did grow up in the country and do live in the country, but I also spent a lot of time in Paddington and as anyone that knows me would realise, camping anywhere without power is a very long way out of my comfort zone… let alone up a mountain in an open sided tin shed.
That said, you only live once and the Gods smiled on us with some spectacular weather and as it turned out the company, food and wine on this trip made it one to remember.
Two other ladies joined us for our ride, Sally from the Sunshine Coast and Sophie from Canberra, and the five of us set out on a three-day horse adventure taking in the scenery made famous in The Man From Snowy River.
On the first night at our camp site high in the mountains we had the opportunity to spend time with Justin and Delia Macintosh, who own and run Snowy Wilderness, which is about half an hour out of Jindabyne.
Justin and Delia do all the cooking at camp over the fire and while the food is out of this world (recipes on the website), the stories are even better.
An entrepreneur that made his fortune firstly in real estate and later in software companies, Justin told the story of how he and Delia came to purchase Snowy Wilderness nearly 20 years ago.
They were living in Sydney, but had been spending time at Jindabyne and were looking to buy a property, but none were quite right and then an agent rang and said this one was for sale, but it was a bit bigger than the ones they had been looking at.
“I asked him how much bigger and he said about 6,500 acres bigger!” Justin recalled.
Snowy Wilderness is about the size of Widden Stud as a comparison for people in the bloodstock industry and having secured this small kingdom, he and Delia pondered their next move.
“It was about the time there was a brumby slaughter at Guy Fawkes National Park which got a lot of publicity and affected me deeply, so I decided to declare Snowy Wilderness a brumby sanctuary, although at the time we had no actual brumbies,” Justin revealed.
“So I thought well we better get some and we came to an arrangement with the National Park, who paid us to trap and relocate them here, which we did for a while and those horses are the basis of the brumby mobs we have here today.”
Having created a haven for brumbies, Justin and Delia had the idea that people might want to come and ride in the mountains and see the brumbies, so their current business was born.
The mob of riding horses used for guests to trek into the mountains numbers around 45 and eight or nine are thoroughbreds.
“I love thoroughbreds and have had some luck racing them over the years although I haven’t raced one for a long time,” said Justin, who regaled us with the story of Rising Fear.
Back in 1984, Justin was at the Inglis sales in Sydney where he took a liking to a colt by Unaware from Rising Sun.
Born and raised in South Australia, he was a fan of Lindsay Park’s champion sire Without Fear (Fr), so a colt by his Victoria Derby winning son Unaware proved hard to resist.
Justin wasn’t the only person keen on the colt with Larry Pickering also bidding up, so the pair decided to combine forces and bought him for $7,500.
“Larry rang me when it was time to name him and said ‘let’s combine our names and call him Macinpick or PickerMac’ …and I thought with a name like that it will never win a race so suggested Rising Fear.”
Long story short, Rising Fear became a top class stayer and finished second in the 1986 Melbourne Cup.
“We were living in Indonesia at the time so weren’t there on Cup Day, with the time difference it was 10am in the morning where we were, but we certainly had a big celebration,” Justin recalled.
“We also had a share in a very good filly called Super Swift that was trained by TJ Smith. She won the Gimcrack and was very fast up to 1100m, but couldn’t get any further although she led them up and was seventh in the Golden Slipper.”
To maintain the mob of horses used for the business, Justin purchases a couple of horses every year or two and when they come to Snowy Wilderness it’s a home for life.
“I’ll go to the Camden sales and pick a few out. They can’t be older than 12 and they can’t be too smart,” he explained.
“I’ll watch them being ridden and you can get a good idea of their character. We’ve come home with thoroughbreds, standardbreds, warm bloods, whatever we think might work.
“I don’t make too many mistakes and even if I do, the horse stays with us and we look after them for life.”
It’s a life many horses would dream of, living in a mob as nature intended and doing a job to pay their way that is for the large part enjoyable for the horse.
Riding treks are well managed with horses and riders matched to their abilities and the pace of the ride set at a level the horses can enjoy with climbing sections interspersed with breaks to allow a good recovery.
The departure point for our ride is at an elevation of around 900m and the camp site on the High Acres part of the farm is at about 1400m above sea level with Mt Kosciuszko at 2200m as a comparison.
“When they come here they have to acclimatize to the elevation and the terrain which takes a while and then they become mountain fit,” Justin concluded.
“We have horses here still working into their early 20’s and then we retire them, but they are still in the mob living as they always have, although the older horses need more feed going through winter, they are the senior citizens and we take care of all of them.”
Many thanks to Justin and Delia, our wonderful guides Phoebe and Olivia, plus our super horses Remy, Tommo (the thoroughbred in the group), Benji, Eddy and Chilli.
