Christchurch and Sydney

9:01am, Monday 1st of August 2011, by Simone Kann

We had a busy last week, had a quick trip to Christchurch to visit look at some horses. Big thank you to Alice Montgomery for the use of a car with seat warmers and for collecting us from the airport and the drop off. We had a good time catching up with Mel and Ross Smith who have just had a new baby" Harriet Smith". They have a lovely place just out of Christchurch with some seriously nice facilitys. I think the high light of the trip was Ross offering for Donna to have a jump on his two stunning imported jumper stallions Quite Cassini and Ajardo. We were most impressed with the two stallions  temprements and athletic ability. Unfortunately for us they were not in our budjet...........oh well back to the eventers.

Our flight home was rather eventfull as we landed into Auckland airport about 9.30 pm, Donna saying to me that we were being folowed rather quickly by a fire truck with his lights flashing...well i was rather tired so chose to ignore what was just said and shunned it off as a mumble. Then as we were unloading i could hardly see the flight attendants for the what i thought was haze or smoke....now both of us were really really tired so still not putting 2 and 2 togeather. As we drive out we pass another 12 or so ambulance and fire trucks, so we started thinking that there must be a plane about to land with problems......No not the case, as we get home we hear on the radio it was actuallly our plane that had smoke problems and they still didnt know where it was coming from!!!! Ah to be tired and not know whats going on is sometimes good.

Quick trip to Sydney for the Weekend horse trials to catch up with my parents who flew down to Sydney to watch and support both Donna and rebel, who was having her first 3* run in a while. Donna rode rebels Tall Jan in the competition and also had a sit on Georgetown(Lizzie Browns ex horse)after poor Jess had a fall off her young horse earlier in the day.I must add that the weather was absolutely fantastic. Tall jan finished in 3rd which we were really happy about, she is a tall elegant mare with a lot of ability. rebel also had a super week with the mid week having Corambo and Hillgrove Enviable cantering around slow and steady around the 2* double clear for both horses. On the weekend event Rebel having her first 3* run since Oaklea Groover(Athens olympic Mount) in 2005. Reb rode amazing and its great to see her back jumping around the big fences, so double clear for the 3* run. The 2* horse ran 4th and looked super in all three phases.

It was super to see alot of friends i havnt seen in about 5 or 6 years or even more since i last competed in Aussie, in actual fact we were discussing that we think the average age is lifting, so a comeback is more than acceptable.......

We hope to have a few of our Aussie mates over at the end of the year depending on horse power we have for Richfields/Puhunui events for a bit of international exposure for them. So heres hoping we have a few extra horses spare that Donna, Patrick and i cant fit in to the schedule.