30th anniversary 2012

Some local horses and riders of the 1970s and 1980s (Part 2)

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Melanie O'Flynn and Piedy

After moving to Canberra from Queensland in 1982, I (Melanie) did several horseback trips into the mountains with a Tumut-based company, Talbingo Trails. Their horses were accustomed to the steep terrain and high altitude, and by mid-summer were very fit. The owners of the business and some of the people who worked as guides would take part in the Snowy Zone endurance rides in the latter half of the season and it was from talking to them that I became interested in endurance riding. When the company was sold in 1985, I bought Piedy, a 14.2 hh piebald gelding then aged about 10. He had not done any endurance rides but was a popular trail horse, being keen but reliable.

Our first endurance ride was the 120 km Kevin Miners Memorial Endurance Ride at Adaminaby in December 1985, which we completed successfully. We had some problems with tying-up during 1986 before I worked out an appropriate feeding regime, so it was not until 1987 that we got going properly. That year we made it into the national Top 10 Distance Horse and Rider lists and finished fifth in the NSW One Horse One Rider Team of the Year. Piedy was often written off, by people who did not know him, as being unlikely to finish a hard ride but he usually proved them wrong, completing a Quilty, a Shahzada and a Victorian State Championship Ride, as well as the Adaminaby ride two more times, and the 100 km Brookvale ride, twice with me and once with Celia Kneen. One of his few vet outs was in the inaugural Scone 200 in 1989, when he successfully completed the 150 km first day but was lame after the last 50 km the following day.

I decided to retire Piedy while he was still going well so, after completing the 1991 Quilty, did only the one more ride needed to qualify him for his 3000 km scroll. He lived for many years in retirement before he developed cancer and had to be put down.

After Piedy retired, I continued endurance riding for several years, firstly on a chestnut stock-horse-type mare named Amber that I brought down from Queensland and then on Kimba, a big bay standardbred gelding given to me by Searle Johnston. Kimba had been taken on by another endurance rider after being injured during trotting training and was passed on to Searle. He had done a few years of endurance riding with Searle and several other people before coming to me and I did a lot of rides with him over the next three years until he developed a chronic lameness in 1999. Now aged 30, he is still with us and looking fit and healthy.

By Melanie O'Flynn

Other stories

The Neal family | The Dyason family | Carol Sparkes and Zamfir | Kristen Proudfoot and Coco | Melanie O'Flynn and Piedy | Paul Sheils and Visty | Debbie and John Wallace and Glenallan Solitary Man (‘Solly’) | Marie de Monchaux and Tilden Zeichen | Bob Perriman and Persius | Dianne Georgeff and Jedda | John McGinn and Pinocchio

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