New Zealand: Bit by Bit

By Jacqui Knight

This is the story of a journey the author took on horseback the length of New Zealand, from Bluff at the bottom of the South Island to Cape Reinga at the top of the North. It took her 105 days’ riding over a period of eleven months — a total of 2538.2 kilometres. She was was 46 but had been dreaming about the adventure for over thirty years.
Jacqui just loves to share her beautiful country with visitors from overseas. She has entertained many people and advised them on what to see and where to go. Always, she warns that their visit will not be long enough.
When she was ten years old Jacqui opened an English textbook and found an excerpt from ‘Tschiffely’s Ride’, one of several books written by Aimé Felix Tschiffely covering his epic journey with two Patagonian ponies, from Buenos Aires to Washington DC. Tschiffely’s destination had been New York but he found the traffic was too bad. And this was in 1925!
The tale inspired her. For the next thirty years she pored over maps and clippings files in newspaper offices, read books about geography and travel and horses, studied mountains and rivers that might obstruct her path. And in 1996 her dream became a reality.
If you've ever dreamed about visiting New Zealand and getting 'off the beaten track'; if you love animals and wild places, if you love meeting people and learning about different cultures, then this book is for you. Jacqui has a natural, conversational way of writing which is easy to read. You will feel that you are travelling with her, her horses and Brae.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacqui Knight
• Release date: Dec 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301155675

Jacqui Knight

I live in Auckland, New Zealand, and I'm a writer (wouldn't call myself an author), a butterfly lover, gardener, grandmother. I love hosting overseas people or telling people (would be visitors) how fantastic New Zealand is. Very active in two charities: the Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust and Duffy Books in Homes.

Book preview

‘NZ : Bit by Bit’

One woman, four horses and a dog

The inspirational story of a woman’s eleven-month horseback

journey from one end of New Zealand to the other

Copyright Jacqui Knight (2012) All rights reserved.

All photographs by the author unless otherwise noted.

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-0-473-39682-4 (Epub)

ISBN 978-0-473-39683-1 (Mobi)

ISBN 978-0-473-39684-8 (iBook)

Licence Notes: This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It is not to be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person please buy another copy for them. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only then please go to Smashwords.com and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

Chapter One: – My Journey Begins

Chapter Two: – Over the Rainbow

Chapter Three: – Adventure in the Alps

Chapter Four: – Waikari Sheep Dog Trials

Chapter Five: – Across North Canterbury

Chapter Six: – Whirlwinds Around the South Island

Chapter Seven: – Bluff and Northwards

Chapter Eight: – Into the Deep Catlins… and Otago

Chapter Nine: – North Otago and South Canterbury

Chapter Ten: – Timaru to Canterbury

Chapter Eleven: – And back to Christchurch

Chapter Twelve: – Capital Times

Chapter Thirteen: – Kapiti Coast and the Manawatu

Chapter Fourteen: – Through the Manawatu

Chapter Fifteen: – Around the Volcanoes

Chapter Sixteen: – King Country Meanders

Chapter Seventeen: – And Into the Waikato

Chapter Eighteen: – Through Auckland

Chapter Nineteen: – Lee graduates

Chapter Twenty: – And Into the Far North

Appendix A: – A Brief History of NZ

Appendix B: – The Maori Language

Appendix C: Glossary

Appendix D: Some Maori translations

Appendix E: References

DEDICATION

I set out on my journey with the blessing of my two sons, Chris and James. Throughout my trip they remained as excited as I was, their spirit rode with me and they remained near to my heart. Chris spent hours of his business and personal time designing and updating my website. He answered phone calls and e-mail at all times of the day and night to resolve problems I may have had understanding my computer.

I am indebted to Chris for the brilliant work he did on the website. Although James was kept busy with school, work and social life, we managed to spend time together and the messages he would leave on my cellphone always reminded me of his keen sense of humour and his talent at languages.

I depended on the companionship and help of some faithful animal friends, setting out with Rosy, the mare I’d owned for five years, and two dogs — Brae, my Sheltie, and Zig, a young Border Collie. Along the way I acquired more horses —packhorse Doug, (also known as Kia Kaha), and later faithful d’Artagnan. Towards the end of the trail Captain took over when Doug hurt his back.

From all indications the animals really enjoyed the journey; the horses seemed to have a ‘presence’ when they passed others temporarily abandoned in corners of paddocks, or being trotted around in tight dressage arenas. Brae looked with disdain at the dogs that had to stay home; it was as though he knew that NZ belonged to him.

The farriers, vets and horse dentist I used along the way provided an excellent service. The horses’ coats shone, their eyes sparkled and throughout the journey they looked a picture of health from the wild foods foraged along the way. Veterinary attention was minimal; they got through thirteen sets of shoes. Brae’s feet stood up well to the travel but he didn’t like the special leather boots I had had made. As it got hotter and the roads more difficult he just spent more and more time riding behind me on Dart.

To all those New Zealanders who aided and abetted me, who so willingly gave up their best paddock for the horses, I cannot thank you enough. I was given good and bad advice, whether I needed it or not. There were small and even large services for which I wasn’t allowed to pay. The many children who obligingly shifted out of their beds for me — thank you. I cannot mention all my benefactors by name, there are just too many, but you know who you are — thank you, thank you, thank you.

The many people who rode along with me for parts of the journey — Lawrie McVicar, Lee Oldfield, Jenna, Lawrie O’Carroll, Lisa, Rodney, Diane, Erin, Jan, Fiona, Michelle and Jodie, Donna, Ann, Evelyn, Beth, Carol, Kaye, Vicky, the Auckland Mounted Police and Grant Latimer, and the brave, courageous Lee Gabriel, Abbey, Betty, Sel and Kathleen — I enjoyed your camaraderie. We had a lot of fun, didn’t we?

To CompuServe Pacific, who sponsored my time on the internet, I am grateful for being able to keep in touch with my many friends around the world as I rode, and making new ones too. You provide a wonderful service, far greater than any other internet provider does. Being able to tell friends and relations where I was at that instant in time was so amazing.

More than once I stayed at a remote location, hooked up my computer to the phone to chat with someone else around the world and found my e-mail friends knew someone in some way connected with the people with whom I was staying! The excitement and energy in the air just about exploded my laptop! If you’re looking for some of the people I met, try the CompuServe Pacific Forum.

And lastly I’d like to say I met many people who have had similar dreams, but haven’t yet fulfilled them. When I set out I didn’t know if I was a capable enough rider, or had the courage or dedication to complete such a journey. I took one day at a time and eventually found myself at Cape Reinga. I learned a lot, in particular about myself. Now I won’t be afraid to take on new challenges.

To those people who are still dreaming I say: if you really want something all you need is the heart and desire to do it. Go for it. This is your life, live it. Enjoy it. Life is too short to sit around wondering what to do and whether one can do it.

Kia kaha. Be strong.

No reira tena koutou nga hoa nga iwi mo ou koutou maanakitanga.

Jacqui Knight

INTRODUCTION

This is the story of a journey I took on horseback the length of New Zealand, from Bluff at the bottom of the South Island to Cape Reinga at the top of the North. It took me 105 days’ riding over a period of eleven months — a total of 2538.2 kilometres. I was 46 when I set out, and although I’d been dreaming of it for over thirty years, it all came about very suddenly.

I sold my home. I didn’t want to, but when I did I knew I’d made the right decision. The mortgage that weighed heavily around my shoulders had gone. I was free. My sons didn’t need me to be on hand for their lives, the house didn’t need me any more. The people who had bought ‘Merriemont’, my old kauri villa with its pretty, lacy fretwork, gabled roof, and the solid back door step that had worn away with the boots of many farmers, and the dark, mysterious corridors; they were able to do the restoration that I couldn’t afford.

What better thing to do than to have a holiday… Do something for MY health and MY future. Something I’d wanted to do for thirty-odd years.

So it was that on 4 April 1996 I set out to ride the length of NZ. I didn’t intend to be ‘roughing’ it. I had a laptop computer and a cellular phone, and I hoped to stay each night on farms, on marae or with local schools.

I took a laptop not only to record my writing but because I was so active on the internet. For the previous six months I’d made excellent friends all round the world through an internet service provider (ISP) called CompuServe. I’d become deeply involved with their Travel and Pacific forums and earned myself a reputation for answering people’s queries with regard to touring NZ — almost like an electronic Visitors Information Centre. This had increased my desire to see our own country more closely.

I just loved to tell people about the wonderful place that I lived in. As a consequence, the previous summer people from Canada, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, UK and the US had accepted my invitation and visited my little farm. With each visit I had made more friends. They’d told me about parts of NZ I’d never seen, and it made me keener to make the trip I’d been dreaming about since I was in intermediate school.

I had been about ten years old when I opened up an English textbook and found the lesson centred around a book called ‘Tschiffely’s Ride’. This was one of several books written by Aimé Felix Tschiffely and covered his epic journey with two ponies from the pampas of Patagonia, from Buenos Aires to Washington DC. Tschiffely’s destination had been New York but when he got to the US he found the traffic ‘too heavy’. And this had been in 1925!

The tale inspired me. As a teenager I dreamed about being the most beautiful girl to do the ride. The first girl. To do it in record time. It was my secret. I told no-one in case they laughed at me. I measured the distance and the shortest route. I pored over maps and clippings files in newspaper offices, studying mountains and rivers that might obstruct my path. I tried to find if anyone had ever finished such a journey.

I’d always been a ‘frustrated’ horse-lover. My parents told me they couldn’t afford for me to have a pony. Aunt Sybil always encouraged me, and my horse-loving cousins and I would spend weekends or parts of the school holidays on her farm at Taupaki, much of the time on horseback. But to own my own pony and ride regularly was an unfulfilled dream.

In my family my father felt girls should stay in the kitchen. My mother took me to ballet classes but I was discouraged from playing any sort of sport, whereas the whole family was committed to my three brothers’ soccer. And while my father would get into rough and tumble games with the boys outside, I was always told to ‘go inside and help my mother’.

I’d dreamed of becoming a vet but my father felt girls should find a nice job until they get married. After that they became mothers and stayed home to raise the family. To me, it sounded like life was over.

When I left school I became besotted with motor sport, much to my father’s disapproval. Car rallies satisfied my wanderlust and thirst for speed. I excelled at map-reading, problem-solving and navigation, and with my driver we were often in the top ten nationally.

And, then, I fell in love. Mark and I had such different interests; he was one of the country’s leading sportsmen, a ‘Double All Black’ having represented NZ at two sports. I didn’t know the first thing about cricket around which his life centred in the summer. But love changed my whole purpose in life. I gave up all of my interests to follow his cricket career. In hindsight I realise it was the wrong thing to do. My purpose in life became… him.

We married in 1973. By 1975 Christopher was born and in 1979 James had arrived. Mark spent more time with his cricket and golf and I grew interested in the boys’ growth and development. Child health and education were important issues, and from that grew an interest in self-sufficiency. I founded a national environmental group focussing on organic gardening, a more natural lifestyle and green ways of living.

There were times when Mark would be away on tour overseas for three or four months at a time, times when I had to become completely independent. It was like being a solo mother. Friends and family would put you on a holding pattern socially until he returned, when celebrity status would suddenly be thrust back on you, and if you blew your nose it was controversial. Christopher summed it up succinctly when we drove past Eden Park one day. Oh look, Mummy, he said. That’s where Daddy lives.

Our marriage was shaky. My interest in the environment and child development led us further apart. Mark had always had other women in his life, and I wanted to be (what I thought was) the perfect wife, to have the perfect marriage. It must have been stifling for him. We divorced in the middle eighties. Other relationships didn’t work for me. About the same time my mother died suddenly and her loss fed my sense of failure. I buried myself in my sons and my work, starting a small business, and studying for a qualification. Nothing made me feel successful.

What terrible weights we carry around from our childhood. Why should I feel such a failure? I did courses on self-esteem; I read books on positive thinking… Nothing worked. Then in 1987 failure again; with the share-market crash my business collapsed.

There were good times though. Chris and James were growing up healthy, intelligent young men. Chris won a scholarship to a leading boys’ school. James was a charming young lad, full of confidence as he tackled his school day. At six years of age he would catch a bus from one side of the city to the other and make his way to my office. With Chris’s scholarship, however, we needed to shift to South Auckland. I sold the house and looked for something to satisfy our needs.

I saw many places but found nothing; it was frustrating. My father, formerly a builder, always vetoed what I wanted — something old and with character. ‘Too old’, he would say. ‘Too much maintenance.’ ‘You’re going to have to paint it.’ ‘You’re going to have to repile it.’ I wanted him to approve of my choice. He wanted me to buy a maintenance-free, rape-proof box. Dullsville. I had to find satisfaction somehow. What was I searching for? I was lonely, so alone, having to make these decisions. There were definitely advantages in being married. Even if it’s the worst marriage at least there is someone with whom to share the decisions.

Counselling helped. I realised I still sought my parents’ approval in everything I did. I resolved to find a home that I wanted to live in, not necessarily one that would suit the boys and not to meet my father’s conditions. I found my old settlers’ home set on ten acres deep in the mountains, my dream home, which we called ‘Merriemont’ after the Knight family property in Somerset. Now I would be able to have a horse, to keep a cow for milk, to find self-sufficiency. Find myself. My father didn’t approve. All my life I’d wanted his approval and now I knew I’d never get it.

Chris, James and I lived at Paparimu for eight years, eight of the happiest but hardest years of our life. At last I could own my own horse – and after trial and error found Rosy, a beautiful chestnut thoroughbred, 16.1 hands high, one of those horses you could leave for weeks, catch her again and she would behave as though she’d been ridden only the day before. She looked magnificent in Western tack, and we spent some great days hacking around the Hunua hills.

I never had enough time or the spending money to participate in the clubs I joined. I spent more time slaving on the farm, and chasing writing and secretarial work to pay for the upkeep and improvements to the house.

There were often setbacks too. One August I had taken my car and trailer to buy some hay, but en route we were hit by a drunk driver. Chris saw it about to happen and saved James’ life. The impact tossed me right through a prickly hedge into a paddock. It crippled me temporarily and my finances permanently. After that the mortgage repayments were impossible. I tried everything to make a living working from home but it was unreachable. School bus driving, artificial insemination and pregnancy testing of cattle, relief milking.

I started commuting into Auckland, a journey of two hours if you went at peak time. The lifestyle was slowly killing me; I didn’t enjoy it; certainly the animals hated it. The dogs tied up all day, Rosy never getting ridden. Finally I put the place on the market. When it sold, so very quickly, I decided I should reach for the goal I’d set myself so many years previously. So I packed up all my belongings, my special bits of furniture and favourite books into a large container. Cleaned the house. And walked out.

Writing it down makes it sound very simple and organised. It wasn’t. It was hell. At the same time as I packed I was making plans for the ride, selling or finding care for livestock, and even as I left Paparimu I wasn’t sure everything was settled. There were so many loose ends. Throughout this crisis I had wonderful support from neighbours and friends, amazingly helpful, coping with my stress and uncertainty. I hope to repay them some day.

I had two dogs left — my Border Collie pup, Zig, and six year old Shetland Sheepdog Brae. It would be difficult taking them with me, but there was no alternative. Already I’d left Ludo, my older working dog with neighbours and I felt guilty doing that.

Time would tell how things would work out.

Chapter One: My Journey Begins

1 Blenheim Wairau Valley 29 km Total distance covered South Island: 29 km

Woman hung by bra. I imagined the headlines. Or perhaps Horse bolts – woman strangled by bra!

Why on earth had I embarked on this… adventure?

Obviously I was not as proficient a horse-rider as I had imagined.

I was on the corner of a busy intersection in Blenheim, one of the liveliest little towns in NZ at harvest time. I had dismounted to straighten everything and fix my cinch, and as I got off the horn of the saddle had hooked into my bra. With my weight the saddle slid down Rosy’s side until my toes touched the ground, taking my weight. And there I dangled, suspended by my underwear.

My T-shirt tightened around my neck; the skin under my breasts started to tear.

It was the start of a double mastectomy without an anaesthetic. My eyes filled with tears, pain mingled with embarrassment, so that in the background the rushing traffic merged into one busy kaleidoscope of colour.

What a sad beginning to my great adventure. From Bluff to Cape Reinga, the length of NZ. On horseback.

Should I turn back… or continue?

I had been dreaming of this for well over thirty years, but had only decided to do it some months before. And as part of the route would take me through the backbone of the South Island, the Southern Alps, with Winter approaching it had seemed wise to do that bit first before the snow came. So several weeks before it was to begin I had packed Rosy’s belongings and sent her south from Auckland to Blenheim on the first available horse transporter.

I shut the front door to my house on Good Friday, Easter 1996, collected my sons, Chris and James, and we drove south to Wellington, across on the ferry, arriving at Blenheim late the next afternoon. We would have time for a few days’ holiday together before they took my car back to Auckland.

One of the first things to do when we arrived was to check on Rosy. She was very happy at the vet’s yards where she’d arrived a few days before. The pasture was excellent, there were horses next door… what more could a horse want? She didn’t even seem particularly impressed to see me. But that was typical of her.

Rosy… a beautiful chestnut thoroughbred, a statuesque horse, well aware of her own importance and the impression she made. Large dark eyes, long eyelashes you would swear she darkened with mascara. When she knew she had an audience she would turn on a real performance, prancing and dancing to any imagined tune. It was always good to be on her back as she shook her mane and arched her tail.

That was probably how she’d scarred her back legs so badly… she’d probably been watching out for members of her fan club. Apart from those scars I thought she was perfect in every way.

I’d owned her for something like five years, having tried several other mounts that just hadn’t suited me. Somehow when I saw Rosy in the paddock I just knew she was the one for me. I am a very nervous rider but when we met I knew she was a good ‘fit’.

I had phoned the Alabama Road Veterinary Clinic from Auckland and they had agreed to look after her for me until I got there. On Easter Sunday, vet Stuart Burrows even obligingly pulled himself away from his family to allow me to retrieve my gear. And they didn’t charge me a cent for their support! I hoped the rest of NZ would be so hospitable.

Motels and hotels at Picton had all been full when we arrived. After many phone calls we found Kerry Raeburn and Tim Newsham at Spring Creek, a few minutes north of Blenheim, who were converting an early settlers’ villa to tourists’ accommodation. This was heaven!

I enjoyed sitting in a large wrought-iron bed looking out the window. A very organised one-acre garden, birds flitting around and singing in the treetops, blue and pink morning glories twisting up bamboo poles next to tall, green corn, golden artichokes in flower, ferny asparagus, and large dark beetroot leaves alongside the feathery carrots – what a view!

I was impressed with their way of farming organically. Since they bought the property some eleven years previously they had transformed it from an almost bare corner of a riverside sheep farm to a jungle of colourful trees adding nuts and fruit to their semi self-sufficient lifestyle. The herbs were used as companion plants and their garden was an interesting combination of colour and practicality.

Applying permaculture methods to the land they put the ecological balance to best advantage. Different types of farming are blended with the by-products put back into the land. Fruit not good enough for their table or for sale was cheap, fresh food for the chooks. The poultry produced meat and eggs, and vital ingredients to the compost heap.

Staying there was a bit like living with elves. One morning as I sat in bed working on my laptop I heard a noise vaguely outside and went out to investigate. My sleuthing was rewarded with a tray of tea and hot, home-baked bread, butter and jams on the kitchen table. I took the tray back to bed and continued writing. It was tempting to abandon the journey — not a bad place for a homeless person!

I did get out of bed at last to a cloudless sky; the boys and I drove off to do a recce of the Marlborough area, colourful orchards and vineyards, (Chris just itching to get into the cellars) and up and over the forested mountains into Nelson. The scenery was picture postcard stuff all the way, indescribably beautiful.

I drove with trepidation. Just south of Nelson, at Hope, I had a meeting with 67-year-old Lawrie McVicar, a man I’d never heard of until two weeks before. What would he be like?

When I’d decided to start my ride at Blenheim I’d made phone calls to Marlborough horse people. The trail had let to Lawrie who agreed to help me get on my way.

Firstly, I’d need a packhorse… and he agreed to find me one. I might know a little about riding but pack-horses were different. In my forty-odd years I’d never seen a pack-horse advertised for sale, and I knew that just any horse wouldn’t adapt to having a dead weight on its back, and following behind the ridden horse. I had found a pack-saddle, but didn’t know the first thing about how to pack the load. Lawrie would help.

Then I needed to find my way through the Alps, a high and often inhospitable area.

Why do you want to go through Molesworth? he’d demanded on the phone.

Molesworth is the largest farm in NZ, 180,000 ha.

I can’t ride a horse down SH1 through Kaikoura, I’d told him, wondering whether he really was the person to help me. It’d be too dangerous – craggy cliffs, main road, one lane tunnels, and the raging surf… There’s no grass, only sharp stone beside the road and sheer drops to the sea. Molesworth would be the only way to go.

But Lawrie had a plan of his own.

You could go the Rainbow route, he said. In the 1950s the NZ Electricity Department put through a road to build their transmission lines. It goes from Top House to Hanmer. A good way to go… far better than Molesworth.

Tell you what, he continued. You come down, bring your horse and pack saddle, and if you can be at Top House just after Easter I’ll meet you there. I’ll find you a packhorse, and make sure he’ll do. You’ll have someone to ride with plus we’ll bring provisions and supplies for three horses and four people. We’ll do all the cooking and make and break the camp. And we’ll provide a four-wheel drive vehicle and horse trailer too just in case there’s an emergency.

It sounded like he did know what he was talking about after all. As it is in the mountains all over the world it is very easy for the weather to change in a matter of minutes. So the boys and I drove south from Nelson, found Hope and turned into his driveway. I took a deep breath. What would this man be like?

Lawrie’s wife, kindly enough, met us at the door and ushered us inside. The lounge was dwarfed by a huge, leather Western saddle, decorated with silver conchos and leather tassels, which sat to one side by the fireplace. I reached out and shook Lawrie’s hand; he had sounded so large on the phone I was surprised to find him short and wiry, built like a jockey weathered by years of experience. He in turn introduced me to Lee, lanky and wiry, sun-dried skin… another cowboy.

Their cross-examination was thorough. I wondered if I had passed? I felt as though I was a city girl, a real dude, being given the once over.

Lawrie had grown up working with horses and was still very active in the world of Western riding — that very weekend he’d made it to the finals of the Western Roping. Having grown up on an isolated farm in Westland, he could talk non-stop about his days of dependence on horses, their only link with civilisation.

So that my mother didn’t have to cook over an open fire my father used a packhorse to bring a wood-burning stove fourteen miles through the bush, he told me, making sure I could understand what conditions were like way back then. We used horses because we had to. We couldn’t get through rivers without them, and the only way of moving stock up and down the valleys was along the riverbeds. I learned all about droving while I was at primary school. Guided a group of city doctors on a fishing trip when I was only eleven years old. They wanted someone who knew the track, so I got the job.

Later he worked as a blacksmith and for ten years was huntsman in Brackenfield before becoming Master in North Canterbury. In the late 1950s he moved to rodeos, first working as the pickup rider. When the bell sounded for the end of a ride on a bucking horse the pickup takes his own mount alongside the competitor and rescues him from the horse.

He got into calf-roping in 1966. A few years later he and his cousin were contracted by the National Parks Board to remove the wild cattle off Farewell Spit. By this time he was winning trophies in Australia and America for bulldogging, and to celebrate his sixtieth birthday he won the national title for team roping.

Come out the back and see your packhorse, he invited. We’ve been calling him Doug.

Doug had been a trotter, Anvil Dancer, first sold for $20,000. After a few wins he hadn’t shown much more promise, preferring to trail the field, so now he was destined to become petfood. At $350 he was a bargain.

At the trotting stables he’d been known as TJ. It was Lawrie who had called him Doug. He was tied up to the fence, and looked bored brainless. A bay, that’s brown with black legs, mane and tail. He wasn’t the prettiest of bays and had a very wide face.

Horses with a wide forehead are more intelligent, said Lawrie, but I suspected this was just a sales pitch. And he’s bombproof. I’ve taught him to follow behind, to carry all the paraphernalia of packing and to be hobbled too. He’s a sound, sensible horse. Plus you can ride him if you get stuck.

I was amazed at how much Anvil Dancer/TJ/Doug changed over the course of the ride. He’d looked such a plain, boring horse tied up there to the fence. Even his colour was dull but over the year he became a rich, red bay. And he grew cheekier — in fact at times he became quite a nuisance. If one of the horses had to get into trouble or mischief, it would always be Doug. If we tied them up, only Doug would untie his tether. That is, of course, unless Lawrie had tied him up; then he recognised there was a skilled horseman around and was always well behaved.

Lawrie asked me all about the horse I’d brought down with me. It seemed everything was wrong about Rosy. Piercing me with his keen eyes he told me he didn’t approve of mares, not as trail horses anyway. He didn’t think much of thoroughbreds. It sounded like a chestnut thoroughbred mare was the equine equivalent of a dizzy blonde.

The next day I wondered if there was some truth in what he said. I drove out to see Rosy and her nearside leg was cut and bleeding. How could she have done this in such a small, safe enclosure? It was a public holiday too, but finally I tracked down an emergency vet who came and treated her with penicillin.

I’ll give her a shot of tetanus toxoids – can you get her to my clinic? he said. It’s just up the road.

I’ll bring her round there, I replied. That way I can see if she’s sore and how she’s going to behave in this terrible traffic.

Rosy was quiet enough in the paddock as I put on her saddle and bridle. However, when I took her away from her friends she became a two-year-old filly, on heat and going out for her first race. She pranced and danced around, smashing my new riding boot, tearing it to pieces and bruising my foot. It was half an hour before she finally settled down… and then only until she caught sight of this beautiful chestnut mare reflected in the shop windows. Of course, it was herself she saw — talk about dizzy blondes.

The vet claimed she was sound enough to be ridden so I could take her back to Spring Creek, eight kilometres north of Blenheim. Rather nervously I searched for a quiet back street of Blenheim, somewhere where I could get on, where no-one would be watching.

Chris held her head and I took a deep breath. I asked him to lead me for a few hundred metres…

You can let go now, I said as I focussed on my deep breathing.

Rosy was fantastic. Whether she was looking after me or oblivious to my nervousness, she