The sound of hooves: Stories about horse riding and horse loving from Adelaide and South Australia
According to one of our guests in this episode, Andy Ide, there are 1.5 million horses in Australia and about 5,000 horse businesses. So the question is, why does our love affair with horses linger, given it’s been 100 years since we replaced them as our transport partners?
We then pick up the sound of horses as modes of transport in the Musical Pilgrimage, thanks to a song we were introduced to by Libby Green of Classic Carriage Drives in the Adelaide Hills.
The full spotlight, however, goes to South Australian horse, Noddy, who works with people with disabilities in southern Adelaide as part of disability services provider, Heartfelt Support. You can see Robert and Anne from Heartfelt Support pictured with Noddy in the image, above.
The SA Drink Of The Week is a Nippys Cloudy Apple Juice which we try guest taster, Dr Travis Brown from fellow South Australian podcast, This Medical Life.
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Running Sheet: Horse Riding And Horse Loving Around Adelaide
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction to the show.
00:02:30 SA Drink Of The Week
This week’s SA Drink Of The Week is Nippys Apple Juice, which Steve tries with guest taster, Dr Travis Brown, from the This Medical Life Podcast.
We chose this drink to honour the connection between horses and apples/carrots, but also because Travis referenced horses in a recent episode of his podcast about blood pressure, in which a horse was an integral part to the first measurement system.
Discover the episode from the fellow South Australian podcast, This Medical Life: Hypertension, Too Much Of A Good Thing.
00:17:35 Robert Godden and Noddy
Earlier this year, I met Noddy, a brumby who is an integral part of a program for people with disabilities. He is co-owned by, Robert Godden; a political contributor to The Adelaide Show who also co-runs Heartfelt Support, a disability support service in Southern Adelaide. I was prompted to do this interview because brumbies evoke a lot of love from keen horse people and, tragically, they made the news for the wrong reasons recently when 11 horses were slaughtered in Kosciuszko National Park.
So the South Australian we’re really shining the spotlight on today is Noddy, but his spokesperson will be Robert Godden, which is the next best thing to hearing these stories straight from the horse’s mouth.
Robert, let’s start with brumbies themselves: how are they different from other horse breeds?
Why do so many people love them?
Of course, on the other side of the equation are people who view brumbies as a community that requires “management”; we’re looking at you, governments of NSW and Victoria. What’s the latest we know about these eradication activities in Kosciuszko National Park, involving Arrowboy and 10 other brumbies? Here’s a media release on the topic from the Australian Brumbies Association.
Is their method the only way of dealing with brumbies?
Was Noddy ever at risk of a similar fate as Arrowboy? What’s his story?
Beside horse riding, what are the bonds and interactions like between Noddy and his riders?
00:35:17 Andy Ide
Owning horses is similar to having children; you’re responsible for a lifelong adherence to care for them. This means keeping records of their health and development, whether or not you plan to sell them or their heirs.
Enter Any Ide and his software product called Horse Records. As Andy explains, Horse Records is a locally-developed package that delivers everything you need to record performance, veterinary, farrier, feeding, dentistry, chiropractic, serving, foaling dates, pedigree, progeny and much more!
01:22:19 Musical Pilgrimage
In the musical pilgrimage, we have Singing Shoes, by Pete Denahy.
We are breaking the rules slightly because Pete is not a South Australian singer songwriter however the horse-loving community let us know he was heading over to SA for some local concerts and his song is all about that lovely sound of horses hooves clip clopping along our roads arising from horse riding and horse and carriage travel.
So, we’ve made an exception in the way a ridden horse will dodge obstacles and adapt its path on the way to its destination.
One of Pete’s fans is Libby Green who runs Classic Carriage Drives in the Adelaide Hills. So we have a chat and a ride with Libby who then introduces Pete’s song.
Here’s this week’s preview video
SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.