30th anniversary 2012

Some local horses and riders of the 1970s and '80s (Part 1)

Searle Johnston and Shinda, Binda and other champions

Searle arrived in Australia from Kenya in the early 1960s. He bought a block of land beside the Federal Highway on the northern outskirts of Canberra, which he named Bendora, and established dog and cat boarding facilities and a horse agistment and trail riding business. Searle originally played polo but by the late 1970s it was becoming prohibitively expensive so he switched to the relatively new sport of endurance riding. His first endurance mounts were his polo ponies, including Telford, Tim and Adios, all stock horse types. Searle�s first ride was at Taralga in 1976, where he rode Telford. He remembers that as he plodded up one of the steep hills, a man ahead sang out 'This is the life. Searle was thinking 'Is this Hell?' To make matters worse, Searle arrived before his strapper at a travelling checkpoint. Fortunately, there was a water trough and a cloth. Searle and Telford successfully completed that ride and over the next few years Searle entered several of the local rides, with mixed results. The first horse he bought specifically for endurance was a powerful, well-put-together gelding that he named Pasha.

In the early years, buckles were engraved with the horse�s name and the year as well as the placing or other special award where applicable. Searle has buckles engraved with the names of Pasha (Tumut 1979), Adios (Adaminaby 1980 – that buckle is also engraved 'Oldest Horse', Adios being aged around 20 at the time), and Viking (Tumut 1981). Viking was a trotter that Searle tried for endurance but did not continue with him as he only just managed to complete this ride in the allowed time.

Pasha was a lovely horse and Searle completed several hard rides on him but, as he had a tendency to tie up, Searle concluded that he was not suited to endurance and sold him after a couple of years. As his next endurance horse, Searle chose a five-year-old steel-grey part-Arab gelding that he named Shinda, a Swahili word meaning 'to win'. It proved an apt name. Shinda was vetted out of his first two rides due to lameness in a front fetlock. Searle then started using bell boots and it was in these that Shinda completed his first ride, the 1981 Quilty. From there he went from strength to strength. In his 11-year career, Shinda accumulated 6,541 km, including many wins, placings and fittest horse awards in heavyweight and middleweight divisions. His successful completions included five at Brookvale, when the ride was 100–110 km long, and several at Adaminaby and Tumut, which were both 120–130 km long and very challenging due to the terrain and altitude. When he retired in 1992, Shinda was near the top of the list of all-time distance horses in Australia and one of the few to have passed 5,000 km. He also has the dubious honour of being the first horse to be vetted out of the Brookvale ride. Given the difficulty of the ride, Searle had asked the head vet, Richard Chapman, to be very hard on any horses showing signs of lameness. Shinda was the first to be presented for the pre-ride check and trotted out lame. He was later found to have had something digging into his sole and was actually quite sound but by then it was too late.

Searle won the heavyweight division of many rides, including three times at Brookvale, but the Tumut ride in 1988 was the first he won outright. He and Shinda completed the 125 km course in 9 hours 55 minutes. Searle switched from heavyweight to open shortly afterwards. In the 1989 Brookvale ride he and Shinda were placed second open and Shinda was judged the best conditioned open horse. (The weight category of 73 kg or more but less than 91 kg was called 'Open' until the early 1990s when it was renamed 'Middleweight'). Shinda retired in 1992 aged about 17, but lived into his 30s.

Shinda was one of several very successful endurance horses owned and ridden by Searle in over 25 years of competitive endurance riding. The other horse that Searle campaigned in the 1980s was Binda, a failed trotter with a tendency to cross-fire while in race training. Searle bought him for the riding school but decided to try him at endurance. This was a success and he became the preferred horse for the Shahzada, Searle�s favourite ride and one at which Binda excelled. The first four of Searle�s eleven Shahzada completions were on Binda.

Binda covered the ground very quickly with his big, gangly trot and though he was almost impossible to stop, he was very kind. Searle recalls how once, when he was being ridden by a fairly inexperienced rider who became unbalanced, Binda shifted his whole body over to prevent the rider falling off. Searle often lent him to other people to ride. He died of an aneurism during a training run in 1990 when he was about 17. By then he had accumulated 3,000 km in heavyweight plus open and many more in lightweight and junior. Riding a combination of Shinda and Binda, Searle was usually well up the state and national point scores during the 1980s, and was National Heavyweight Rider of the Year in 1986.

Following Shinda and Binda, Searle bought two young horses, Too Soon ('Narraburra Magnifique') and Traveller ('Ramazan Park Sharbacca'), and acquired another, Haraka ('Garfield Kibir'). Haraka, a beautiful white pure-bred Arabian with a reputation as a lunatic, was given to Searle to sort out or send to the doggers. Haraka and Too Soon each completed 5,000 kilometers in middleweight before they retired and Traveller had reached 3,000km before he had to be destroyed as the result of a paddock accident. They were followed by Brindabella Bold Boris, a grandson of Majura Gold. Searle has lost count of the number of kilometres he has personally accumulated in endurance rides, but it would be well over 20,000. Some of Searle�s greatest successes were with Haraka, Too Soon and Traveller, including two Top 10 Quilty finishes on Too Soon, several Shahzadas on Haraka, and National Middleweight Rider of the Year in 1993, during which he rode all three.

Searle and Kristen sold Bendora in 2003 and moved to a farm near Gunning, where they run sheep and breed Arabian horses.

By Melanie O'Flynn

Photo captions

1. Some of Searle�s early Snowy buckles
2. More of Searle�s early Snowy buckles
3. Searle on Binda
4. Searle on Shinda at Batlow c. 1983 (photo by Brigitte Heyer)

Other stories

Lorraine Danson and Stranger | Alison Parker and Majura Gold ('Sundance') | Janet Rose and Maizie | Searle Johnston and Shinda, Binda and other champions | Rowena Hadlow and Deakin Blue

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