6 minute read
A MOTHER’S LOVE
A: Evangeline Read and her mum, Shona Martyn, at the National Showjumping Championships at Werribee in 2017.
B: Evangeline on Foxground McLain at the NSW Showjumping Championships in Canberra. Picture: Oz Shotz.
FEATURE
Mother’s Day, Every Day
Shona Martyn is a publisher and editor, and not a horse person, her daughter Evangeline is a musician, and a horse person. When Evangeline showed a passion for horses, Shona swapped her heels for gumboots, and embraced a whole new lifestyle. EVANGELINE READ tells their story.
One of my earliest memories is standing in front of my Mum on a Saturday morning begging her to let me ride. We were living in an apartment in Elizabeth Bay, in the inner eastern suburbs of Sydney, and there was nowhere to keep a horse. My persuasive argument about turning the building’s communal laundry into a stable failed dismally. But I had imaginary horses; I was convinced that my first two-wheeler bike was a speedy pony. I would ride around our local harbourside park doing twenty-metre circles and go for ‘gallops’ when I felt that we were warmed up.
Ours was not a horsey family. Shona, my mum, had grown up in suburban New Zealand and lessons were a luxury that her Dad, a teacher, couldn’t afford. But when she was a cadet journalist she’d done a year of riding lessons.
Mum recalls jealously watching Sheryl, the girl across the road, (whose Dad was a builder) heading off to Pony Club on Saturday mornings with her saddle over her arm. On the other hand my Dad, Christopher, has always felt guilty at the idea of being on top of a horse. He would never have the heart to pull up a horse’s head if it was eating grass because he harboured the firm belief that: “the horse must be hungry”.
But I’m not easily dissuaded and so, for a time, pony parties were my parents’ means of satisfying my pony dreams. I rode in a horse and carriage on my fifth birthday, and for my seventh and eighth had Saddle Club-themed sleepovers followed by a trail ride in the morning, with all of us cheerfully singing the Saddle Club songs. I had all four albums, but no pony. Every Christmas list was headed with the words, ‘a horse of my own’. I wanted to be the girl in the car towing a horse float.
For my ninth birthday, my parents relented slightly with a term’s worth of riding lessons at Malabar Riding School, on a headland shared with sporting shooters (although riding and shooting were fortunately at different times) near Sydney’s airport. I loved the riding school because, as the owner Frank Leek would say, “the horses could be horses” as they grazed on 400 acres each night. I learnt to ride every type of horse imaginable - from grumpy Shetlands to prizewinning horses Off The Track.
Despite suffering horse hayfever, that term’s worth of riding didn’t end until I was 19 and had a waitressing job to pay for my own lessons. Over that decade,
every weekend my parents would drive me to the horses and watch me ride; they took me to watch high-level competitions such as three-day events out at SIEC. They understood this was something I was deeply passionate about and within their means (they were also paying for private school fees!) they helped me to pursue my riding.
In December 2008, my Mum was at a Christmas party where she started talking to her only Sydney horsey friend, Michele Neil. Mum was in a quandary. She couldn’t afford to buy me a horse but she knew I had far outgrown the riding school horses. The ever-practical Michele had a solution. Her friend, Simon Kale, a show jumping coach at Foxground on the NSW south coast was running a kids camp in a few weeks. She put in a word and my life changed. I remember that first kids camp so well, because unbeknownst to anyone – myself and my parents included - and despite childhood vaccination, I had whooping cough. But I tried my best to keep up with everyone else; my enthusiasm and experience in riding difficult horses outweighing any lack of technique (and the coughing fits).
The first time we drove the two hours plus to Foxground, Mum said firmly it was too far to drive every week. But after Michele lent me her speedy pony Holly and after numerous holiday camps, the distance seemed to lessen and within two years Mum and I were going down every Saturday after school sport.
The HSC rolled round and our six-hour round trips turned into study sessions with Mum quizzing me on my English texts and maths formulas en route. We would sit together at horse shows editing my assignments between jumping rounds up and down the South Coast and as far away as Tamworth. I even rode the day before my first HSC exam. Riding was a distraction that kept me calm.
Finally Mum bought me my first horse for my 18th birthday - a beautiful warmblood called Kenovia. She was the first horse I ever started under saddle, and I couldn’t have done it without my coach Simon. Mum supported me when I decided to work for Simon during my gap year and I had only been there a week when Kenovia died in a terrible paddock accident. Mum remembers when Simon called to tell her what had happened; she cried almost as much as me and took time off work to come and stay with me at the farm. There’s something so tragic about losing a horse in whom you have invested so many
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C: Shona in the paddock clearing fireweed with a muddy Zulu.
D: Shona and Evangeline with Kenovia, Evangeline’s beautiful 18th birthday present who tragically died at Foxground.
dreams. I spent the next year riding horses for other people until we found my current horse – Foxground McLain.
Over the last five years, Mum has come to every competition from the Nationals in Victoria to Elysian in Queensland. We even caught up in Rome to watch the Global Champions. She’s picked fireweed in the pouring rain so I could fit in riding five or six ‘work’ horses. She’s learnt how to start generators, hold horses and these days she can provide a commentary on a show jumping round using all the appropriate lingo. Having previously worked at Vogue my Mum is my equestrian fashionista advisor; she swears by Sard Wonder Stick for stained white jodphurs. She’s bonded with the horsey mothers and adult riders, documenting our riding adventures on social media. I often bump into strangers who know all about my riding from Mum’s Facebook.
Recently Mum and Dad helped me out with feeding McLain when I moved him briefly into Centennial Park so I could keep riding while working two jobs. Even my Grandma in New Zealand, who knows nothing about horses, has got involved – once driving to the Waikato to buy me a secondhand saddle in a paddock.
So now we have a float and I also have a young horse, Kaspian, the full brother to Kenovia, and I am proud that I was able to buy him myself. I will start his education under saddle soon. Today I am the girl in the car towing the float and McLain has moved north to my current coach James Mooney which is also closer to home.
What I know is that my Mum will continue to support me in my dream just as she always has, and I am extremely grateful to her. D
