Takes Off
RIDGMONT By Glen Latham
Swapping the security of an ‘office’ flying at 30,000 feet and the bustling lifestyle of Hong Kong for the Hunter Valley and lush paddocks replete with mares and gambolling foals sounds very much like a quantum leap fraught with peril. But for Ridgmont’s Mitch Cunningham, wife Stephanie and their four children, their question is ‘why didn’t we do it earlier?’
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risbane born, Cunningham has seen a lot of the world, and that was even before he graduated as a pilot with Cathay Pacific at just 23 years of age. His father Gary, a small stakes punter with a love for hunting down a winner, had business interests in the US and one of Mitch’s fondest memories is his mother Lorilie lighting up the local racecourse. “Having moved to Tennessee in the early 90s, I have vivid memories of the Steeplechase held there once a year, and of my mum dancing on top of the cars as the horses passed, which, if you know her, isn't much of a surprise. I guess it was at an early age I realised just how much fun the industry is, and equally the effect horses can have on the collective mood.” Back in Brisbane and having finished school, Mitch took a year out to travel Europe before enrolling in a Degree in Aviation at Griffith University, then finding his way to Cathay’s headquarters. “A lot of the airlines have cadet programmes, run sort of like Darley Flying Start, taking in people from around the world. It's great to get onto because those selected avoid paying the huge cost of flight training and university. I got into the cadet programme with Cathay and that fast tracked my way into the airline allowing me to jump a few hurdles pretty quickly - I was a 747 pilot at 23. I wouldn't say that I was a lifelong aviation enthusiast or had a great deal of passion for that industry, but I found myself in a really interesting job pretty quickly and certainly enjoyed my time flying. I was flying for just shy of 11 years and flew the 747 for five of those before progressing to the 777 for six years. By the time I left I was a Senior
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First Officer and Relief Captain on the 777-300ER.” Then came that leap from a career behind a console to running a progressive Hunter Valley stud. So just how did that all come about? “In about 2017 Dad and I were discussing doing something in the industry and early conversations were around buying a few broodmares and agisting them somewhere, along with selling a few yearlings and racing a few fillies. Very quickly, this conversation snowballed into a far more ambitious model, which would necessitate my resigning from Cathay Pacific and moving back to Australia, which I did in early 2018. I spent the next 6 months with my ears pinned back, meeting with as many industry participants as I could as well as leveraging my existing racing contacts in order to grow our network.” “I had decided that the business was going to be two pronged - racing and breeding, but significantly biased towards breeding with racing being the hobby/feeder system into our broodmare band. We would predominantly buy fillies with strong pedigrees and put them in the right stables, and if that all works out then hopefully they'll form part of a growing broodmare band. That then quickly morphed into “well if we're going to be doing this at the scale we're talking about, then why not buy a farm?”. Through existing connections it became apparent that the old Glastonbury Farm was for sale which we bought and renamed Ridgmont. Soon after we bought a neighbouring lucerne property which gave us close to 500 acres in total and a bit of a blank canvas.” ➤