A Personal Reflection on the Thoroughbred Industry in the Upper Hunter Valley for the UHSC Coal and CSG Forum

I was born in Dalby, QLD and grew up on a horse stud between Toowoomba and Warwick on the Darling Downs. The irony of that is not lost on me as I stand here today at a Coal and CSG forum. At the age of 14 I moved to Victoria to spend 10 years there on several horse studs and in racing stables. Of course there was schooling along the way but my life has always been centered on the breeding, raising and racing of thoroughbreds.

Whilst growing up, I have been fortunate enough to have lived in some of the most productive and fertile parts of Australia. This is no coincidence – thoroughbred breeding happens in fertile valleys with gently undulating slopes, using the Valley walls for protection from the elements and the valley floor for its flats and watercourses.

I also grew up spending time being around some of the very best horse men and women in Australia and one thing always stood out to me – that everyone spoke of a place in NSW called the Hunter Valley as being the place to be, as it had the best of the breeding stock Australia had to offer, on the best stud farms. When asked where someone from this region lived, they would invariably reply that they lived so many miles from Scone, spelt Scone, as it was expected that anyone in our industry, however poorly educated, knew where that was and that it was regarded as the Thoroughbred epicenter of Australian breeding. I even remember looking it up in my atlas and dreaming of someday visiting this wonderful place where legends such as Star Kingdom, Biscay and Bletchingly stood for service at their equally illustrious and famous stud farms.

As fate would have it, an opportunity arose for me to work in the Scone district and so I got to visit a small farm that had just bought the mighty racehorse Rancher, a Victorian superstar who won eight races in a row, including the Blue Diamond. After walking through the farms paddocks which contained 30 or so of Australasia’s best race mares, including Blue Diamond winners, Golden Slipper Winners, Oaks Winners and even two Australasian Champion race mares, I could only ask how much did they want me to pay so that I might work in their horse heaven, located just a few miles outside of Scone!

That farm went on to relocate to Jerry’s Plains under the name Arrowfield and become one of our industry’s major players. During my time with them I had the fortune to handle, educate and treasure Australia’s international Champion Sire Danehill, before the property became what is now Coolmore.

I have been in the Valley for 26 years now and am halfway along the road to becoming inducted as a local. In this time I have seen my industry grow from strength to strength. We have gone from importing pedigrees to strengthen our Australian bloodlines, to nowadays exporting our horses to strengthen international bloodlines. Because of the difference in our breeding seasons we have access to all of the Northern Hemisphere stallions, as they have access to all of ours in our off season. This has led to what we call the reverse-­-shuttle situation and is what has helped to make our industry so attractive to international clientele. We now have relationships with England, Ireland, France, Japan, America, South Africa, Asia and many more of the countries who participate in the international studbook. Many of these countries have their own farms here or have joint-­- ventures with Australian farms, all to the betterment and strength of the Australian market.

Along with this growth has come billions of dollars of investment, employment, community growth and wealth, not to mention the strengthening of our state and federal coffers. It is with wonder then that I have watched in the last few years as my industry has been slowly but surely threatened by coal mining, with seemingly no regard for our industries worth.

I now manage a 3,500 acre horse stud north of Scone and imagine my consternation when we were asked to defend, no justify, our existence when threatened by a coal mining proposal at the Bickham site. Not only did we need to justify ourselves at our expense but we had to explain to the regulators and policy makers the importance of our land and aquifers. This beggars belief and seems almost surreal, especially when you can drive not less than one half hour down the road and see first-­-hand the legacy of coal mining. Around about the time this happened we were notified of the Queensland to Hunter Gas Pipeline that would be coming through our property, whether we liked it or not, and so, where would we like it? Then we were told that we would have Wind Turbines and their related infrastructure overlooking our beautiful property, not 3 kilometers as the crow flies from our boundary and adjoining a National Park no less! But wait, there’s more, Coal Seam Gas is the new resource boom and we find that we are in a PEL under consideration for exploration in the near future.

Now I’m as keen as the next person to see a healthy economy and find cleaner, greener sources of energy but just how much uncertainty and intrusion can a landholder be expected to withstand whilst this search is carried out? My employer stated categorically that he would relocate if the Bickham Coal project went ahead and I must say that he is none to pleased about a gas pipeline running through his horse paddocks with a 30 meter easement going the length of the property. He is obviously concerned about the proximity of the Wind Turbines and unsure what to make of the possibility of CSG extraction taking place in our district. He is concerned about the resale value of his property, as horse studs are very industry specific in their resale value, i.e. once built they generally can only be used for breeding horses unless demolished completely. Are other breeders going to buy his land with the encroachment of mines, CSG with its relevant pipeline activity, Wind Turbines as a backdrop and the possible diminishing critical mass of breeders in the region? Is his product, the horses he breeds, going to suffer in the market place due to the threats to air, water and land, whether they are perceived or actual? Can you tell me why he and the 100 other breeders in the Valley in his situation should continue to spend their money to fight to stay in an area that has been nationally and internationally recognized as the best, when no regard has been shown to them whatsoever for what they have achieved by the governing bodies?

It breaks my heart as an environmentalist, to fly over the coal fields of the Hunter Valley and see the irreparable damage that we have all allowed to happen. With this in mind I therefore cannot understand why we are here discussing the pros and cons of the situation – what has happened in the past must not happen in the future, protect your iconic brand.

You have a choice to make, I know that you will deliberate on it with gravity it deserves but please make it soon so that my industry can then make their choices and we can all stop living with this financially and physically costly, uncertainty.