This is the story of Natalie & Shadow's first trip to the Brisbane Ekka in 2001
Well, being a relative newcomer to the world surrounding horses, I had never taken a horse to the Ekka before. I had been many times with dogs, but never horses. I spoke to many in the lead up and all gave me adolescent memories of pony club days: campouts, fun times, no sleep and lots of talking. They all said, wow, you get to sleep in the lofts. So prepared I went for all sorts of capers, but having the thought of how time blurs your memory, I was prepared for a no gloss sleep. On arrival, I went to get a stable allocated. They said I could have this one or that one, but they were all up on top of the hill. I said I would run my poor little horse over when I went down the hill. I requested one over the road, near the Horse Breeds Expo. A loft was allocated nearby. After many delays, including a truck parked in front of the stable door, I finally got Shadow into his stable. I had to remove a whole heap of the bedding from one corner as underneath it was a delicious spread of old mix feed. Shadow was trying to vacuum it all up. Once I had this all cleaned up, we were set to sit and wait for our event to come along, we still had a few hours and my groom was not arriving until the 1.45pm train.
As the time for our event drew closer, I dusted of the sulky and changed my clothes. Then I started to fiddle with Shadow’s mane and tail. It was now time to harness up. Spectators drew round as the last minute preparations were being carried out. Now we were set, time to head for the main arena. The hardest part was trying to wade past vehicles and crowds. The tides were parting for huge Clydesdale as they clip, clopped their way on the concrete. Shadow made this relatively small pitter, patter, and without a daunting size presence it was difficult to move crowds rapidly out of the way. The lack of size did make it slightly easier to get through narrow areas though. Into the main arena, we stepped. Now, I had been told that horses jump out of their skin when you take them to the “Big Brisbane Show”. Well now, Shadow was considering jumping back into his pajamas, he was asleep within five minutes, while we waited in the sun, on the grass, for our class number to be called. I guess, there’s not going to be any hell rides around the arena on an out of control mini horse.
All that said and done, I was really happy with how Shadow performed on the day. He was very obedient and stood calmly. I was a little disappointed with his head carriage, as I had been doing heaps of work on that but on the day he wanted to have the look of Big Arnie, with a big square jaw jutting out. But hey, you get that, it gives you something to work on for next time. I am really glad I went, and I will be going back next year, all things considered. It was great fun to go to the Ekka with Shadow. The lofts are definitely not the Hilton, more like a dusty little spare room, with garbage trucks and the like pulling up outside at about one hourly intervals, but they are very cheap and affordable (they would want to be). We also won a few ribbons and were up on the big screen. You get the chance to help put a smile on so many faces, promote your breed to be more than a solar powered lawn mower and talk with many new people. I also got the chance to catch up with a few interstate harness friends.
The one thing that really surprised me, were the hordes of people saddling up their riding horse in the middle of the night to go and exercise their horses in the main arena. I thought I was weird, but this really surprised me.
Fireworks. These were a new experience for Shadow; he cut a few laps of his stable when the really big bursts went off, but the rest of the time he was just really alert. He actually forgot about them when I threw him a handful of lucerne. Because the stable walls are so tall, all you could see from the outside were these pair of ears doing laps around the enclosure, much to the humour of onlookers.
Parking, loading and unloading can be a problem, as access is quite limiting. It wasn’t too much of a problem for me, in the ute, but I did see on many occasions amazing driving feats of three (or more) point turns in vehicles with horse floats in tow in alleyways not more than ten metres wide.
As usual for me, I rapidly departed the showgrounds on Saturday afternoon to head off to another dog agility competition. I am a real sucker when it comes to over committing. I guess one day I will learn how to say no. But I have managed to reschedule next year’s dog comp. to the week after harness day. I did return to the Ekka the following Thursday for Border Collie lead-in day (see, I am learning some of this horse terminology). I was very happy as Nitro and I earned a 4th out of 10 entries. Let’s hope we can have just as much fun at next year.