Newmarket Oral History: Simon Pitkethley

Simon Pitkethley (b. 1967) speaks to interviewer Virginia Macleod. Simon grew up in New Zealand, where he studied horticulture before moving to Australia in 1989 to work in the ski industry. After several years, he shifted into gardening, spending eight years with Astro Vass, who maintained the grounds at Newmarket. During that time Simon began his own business, and was eventually invited to take over the Newmarket contract himself. Working closely with Reg Inglis, he transformed the gardens—clearing overgrown areas, replanting, and creating a more colourful English-style landscape around Newmarket House, complete with hedges, circular beds, annuals and autumn exotics. Maintaining the gardens for sales was demanding, with unpredictable weather, storms damaging plantings, and constant restoration needed after sales and events, including weddings. Simon redesigned the enclosed courtyard so plantings framed the annual VIP marquee, and he trained espaliered citrus along the walls. With several century-old trees onsite, he also managed crucial tree maintenance, dealing with storm damage, falling branches, and the ongoing mess created by fruit bats in the old Moreton Bay fig. Features of Newmarket’s gardens are now being recreated at Riverview, Warwick Farm, where Simon has helped plan the new landscape. He values the friendly community, the rhythm of preparing for major sales, and the unique atmosphere created by working among horses—even if his true passion remains the gardens themselves.

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Today is the Friday, the 11th of August 2017 and I'm speaking with Simon Pitkethley.  We’re talking together at the Newmarket Stables for the Newmarket Stables Oral History Project.  My name is Virginia Macleod.

Simon, what year you were born?

I was born in 1967.        

And were you born in Sydney?

No, I was born in New Zealand.

New Zealand?  Right, whereabouts?

I was born in a place called Whanganui but when I was eighteen months old we went and lived in Gisborne which is on the east coast of the South Island – that’s where I grew up.  From there went to university down in Christchurch, Lincoln University, where I studied horticulture and did a diploma in horticulture there.  My parents were very keen gardeners.  We had a huge, huge garden down on the river in Gisborne and I guess that’s where a lot of my interest came from.

Did you help alongside with your parents?

I helped a bit, but also they were involved – my father, in particular was involved – with a lot of citrus growers, kiwi fruit growers, so I was always doing weekend work out on orchards and things like that, so from there went over to university and studied there.  And I came to Australia in 1989, I think it was, mainly to go and work down on the ski fields.

In the skiing industry?

Yeah, in the skiing industry, but still having that background.  Did that for a few years, at various ski seasons and then, eventually got a job working for a guy called Astro Vass [aka Vercellio], an Italian man who actually lives just down the road from here at Inglis’, and he had the contract looking after the gardens here, and that’s when I first came onto the property.

What did you - - -

I was just a garden hand.  I was doing a lot of tree-work for him as well.

What, around Randwick area?

Around everywhere; he’d travel around.  But this was one of the maintenance contracts he had, so we would just walk all the gear down the road and, spend a day here, tidying up and whatnot.  It wasn’t that involved then; I think maybe three of us would come down here for a day, and tidy it up and that was about it.

And then after some time you took over as the contractor.  Did you start up your own business?

Yeah.  After working for him for about seven or eight years, he actually lost the contract to this place during the time that I was with him - I think he’d shifted his business more into tree-lopping and tree-surgery.  During that time - I think I worked for him for about eight years – I started my own business up. And I'd always been looking at this place, thinking it would be a great place to look after, ‘cause I really like coming - I liked all the horses being around and whatnot - and then Jeff Matthews rang me, saying they were looking for someone to look after the garden.  That was about a year into having my own business.

So it was good timing.

It was good timing, excellent timing.  So we went from, just myself and one other guy, to getting another staff member on, and doing a fair bit of work here, which turned out really good.

And when you came in, were there plans to change things or did you propose plans?

Yeah.  When I came in, Reg Inglis was general manager, and he wanted me firstly to tidy the place up, and then also submit a few plans, to renovate the gardens a little bit.  So as we went on in our first years, we spent a lot of time initially just getting on top of the garden.  I think I remember we took about, six or seven twelve-metre skip bins out of, just around the office area here, just in debris that had built up.  From there, we started doing little bits at a time.  I mean the circle garden was done – that used to just be a grass lawn, on there, with a birdbath in the middle.  So we tidied that up a little bit, put some nice buxus hedging around, tried to get the gardens looking a little more English, if you like.

This is around the area where the Newport House is, is it?

Yeah, between the office and the house.

What, you wanted to complement that period building?

That period building, and also I mean a little bit the Newmarket name over in England is a very formal kind of name, so we wanted to formalise the gardens a little bit.  We also brought in a few deciduous trees to give us a bit of autumn colour.

So what trees?

There’s some maples out in the clivia bed just out there, and again try and get a few more annual beds, so that when the sales are on, we could make the place look a little bit more colourful, rather than just being green.

Yes.

So I mean that was a good thing, but it also presented a lot of challenges, I guess, with timing for sales.

So, you're looking at the two big sales of the year, the Easter and the February?

Yeah, the February and Easter.  There have been times where we have been able to stretch annual planting between February to Easter, but every year Easter changes, and I mean it’s very climatic.  You may get a really dry, dry, hot summer and the plants will go off quickly; or the opposite, you'll just get a heap of rain.  And quite often we used to plant petunias out there.  The rain doesn’t do well for them: they just brown off.  So we’re always doing emergency planting, all of a sudden, halfway through the year we’ll go, ‘Oh, it’s not going to make it’, so we’ll quickly get some new plants in and as long as it’s looking pristine for the two sales - - -

The two occasions, yeah.

But in saying that there’s always budgetary things, that we’re trying to stretch the plants to make them last.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Yes.  Nature has her own way.

Yeah, definitely; you just can’t predict it.  I mean we had, down alongside the Newmarket Room one year, it was two days before the start of the Easter sale, we had that whole garden bed – it’s actually changed now; it’s got more perennials in it – that we had it full with about half a metre high marigolds, African Queen marigolds that were in full bloom, and they just looked incredible, and we had a little hailstorm that night, and a huge amount of rain, and we came back in the morning and they were all snapped off, lying flat.  So that day ripped it all out, out to the nursery, and replanted it all up in colour about four o'clock the next morning, so on the morning of the sale it was all - - -

Nobody would know?

No.  People noticed, but at least it had something in there.

Yeah.  And did you and Reg kind of design it together?

Yeah.  Reg had quite a big influence on the garden.  He’d walk around, he’d come out and he’d say, ‘I like this, I don’t like that.’.  He was very definite about what he wanted, and usually we were on the same page.  I'd present him an idea and he’d say, ‘Yes, do it. ‘ There was one stage I found two beautiful big topiaried horses, that I thought he would love, and I thought I'd found the jackpot, and showed him the photos and he said, ‘No, definitely not going to happen.‘

He wanted real horses only, yeah.

He didn’t want those in the garden, which was fair enough, and the more I think about it, they would have been a pain to maintain.

To keep as a horse shape, yeah; be difficult, yeah.

But, no, he was very keen, and very supportive - I mean they all have been.

So you’ve put in quite a lot of these little low hedges to make a formal English-style garden around the house.

Yeah.

And then there’s a big area at the back where the Newport Room is.

Yes.

And that’s like a walled garden, isn't it?

That is – it’s fully enclosed.

Tell me what you’ve done there.

Well, when we originally took – from my memory, there was a jacaranda growing in the middle of the lawn, and that’s all that was in there; it was all just lawn.  I think initially we planted a garden bed around the jacaranda, that had standard roses in it, and, tried to just highlight the garden bed a little bit that way.  And then eventually they decided that they were going to buy the marquee, and put a marquee in there for the Easter sales.

What, for refreshments?

No, well to entertain pretty much the VIPs, in that garden area there.  So in doing that we had to remove the jacaranda, which we did, and it was lawn for a year.  And then once the marquee – I think they rented the marquee the first time and then they said, ‘No, look, we’ll get one made and buy one and have it so we can set it up for a number of sales.’ which they did.  And when we got that measured up, we designed four garden beds at the corners to just complement the marquee, make it look very formal, again with planting areas that we could put annuals or perennials in, and that was done probably about ten years ago, twelve years ago, and I think it just sets that little courtyard off.

So the marquee has this beautiful ready-made garden into which it fits?

Yeah, it fits beautifully in there.  I mean we did make one tiny mistake, just not allowing for one of the stands for the tent.  That’s just popping a few buxus out each year and then they go back in once it’s done.

Go and fill the gap, yeah.

But, yeah, it really sets that area off, especially when you see it full of people and everything’s out in flower.

So what goes on in there?  Just entertaining …?

Yeah, they just entertain: drinks, lunches they put on.  There’s a big kitchen down the far end that they get caterers in.  But that’s, actually, when people walk in there, a lot of people don't know it’s there; it’s a pleasant surprise, walking in there.

It’s a bit like a secret garden almost, isn't it?

It is, it is a secret garden.

And also it’s got these walls on which you’ve espaliered various fruits.

Yes, we’ve done oranges – initially it was oranges and we found one of them was actually a tangelo – but they’ve taken years to get up to that size.

Ten years?

Be a good ten years.  Down the back, there’s lemons, Meyer lemons, growing against the wall there.  They’ve been a little bit harder to grow, I think because that wall is just totally north-facing, maybe a little bit too hot, but they're a real feature.  I mean when they're up and full of fruit they look good too and that’s something that they're taking out to Riverview with them as well.  In the beer garden area near the hotel, they're actually trying to replicate that.

Are they?  The same idea?

Similar idea, yeah.  I think they're growing them on an actual frame, a steel frame, which would probably be a little easier for us. But there’s a lot of maintenance involved in trying to get them back, and picking a leader, and then picking laterals – it takes a little bit of effort.

Yeah, a lot of careful preening and directing.

It does, it does.  And then there’s also, you know, keeping the pests and disease out of them as well.  Being against the wall without the air movement, I think they tend to attract a lot of - - -

Humid behind the plant?

Yeah, a lot of diseases and, a lot of spraying and whatnot.

And, yeah, talking about Warwick Farm, you told me that you're hoping to move some of the plants from here out to Warwick Farm.

There are a few that are going.  Well, actually, there’s two big figs, Moreton Bay figs, that we’ve grown from the gutter from where the big fig is.

You mean sprouted in the gutter?

Seedlings out of the gutter.

So you’ve picked a seedling out of the gutter, Moreton Bay?

Yes.  This would have to be sixteen years ago, fifteen years ago.  We took two seedlings out of the gutter – we actually took quite a few seedlings – and over the years we’ve been successful in growing two of them and they are now in thousand litre grow-bags down at the back of the property, ready to go, and they are actually going to go in the ground out at Riverview, and they are direct descendants from that.

From the main fig by the sales area?

From the main fig, yeah.

Lovely.  Keeping the tradition, yeah.

Yeah.  I mean they're going either side of the big hotel, they’ve got plenty of room to grow.  I mean they're a long way off looking like the fig out here.

No, but they grow quite fast once they get going.

They’ll get there.  There’s also another two smaller ficus benjamina just by the front door that have bonsaied themselves somewhat - we’ve re-potted those and they're going out.  Then there’s also the big crepe myrtle [Lagerstroemia ]on the lawn that we’re still in discussion.

You're hoping to take that?

We’re hoping to take it.  I guess it’s just a matter of affordability and somewhere to put it and the chances of it surviving, all factors I think you have to take into consideration.

And talking about when the sales happen, does that have a big impact on the garden?  I mean is there a lot of kind of repair afterwards?

It is a huge amount of repair afterwards.  There’s a lot of work leading up to it, getting everything done before the horses arrive, getting the lawns looking at their best.  Once the horses arrive, we’re somewhat limited in what we can do - mowing and whipper-snipping and things like that’s out. Although sometimes we’ve been known to sneak in early in the morning and just tidy up a few lawns that need a quick go.  The horses - - -

Do they mind that?

They don’t mind.  I mean we blow every day during the sale - - -

Leaf blower, yeah.

- - - and all around the office and the big fig and that’s very noisy.  The first couple of days, the yearlings can be a little bit tetchy, but they get used to it - it only takes a few days.

What, they sort of neigh and stamp in their boxes?

Well, yeah.  When they're leading them around the parade ring here, the odd one tries to get loose, but you just have to keep an eye on them initially for the first two or three days, but after a while they get used to it, it’s not an issue.  The broodmares even less so: they're quite happy to have a mower running next to them; they don’t usually mind so much.  But after the sales, when all the marquees come down, and everything’s gone, there’s usually a huge amount of work.

What sort of thing?

It’s mainly regenerating lawns.  A lot of the annuals will have to be ripped out and quickly replanted for the next sale, but it’s the lawns is the biggest issue, trying to get them fed, aerated, sometimes we may have to top dress.  You'll get vendors that'll tip big thermoses of hot water out on the lawns and leave a big burn patch, so we’ll replace some areas, but usually every year we’ve managed to get them back looking pretty good.  The issue, I guess, is at the end of Easter it’s starting to get cold.  I mean if it was coming into Spring, you'd get them back a lot quicker but because it’s the end of the year, it’s starting to cool down, it usually takes a good few months to get them up.  I've even known to dye the odd lawn.

What, a green patch, have you?

No, the whole area out in front of the old Newmarket barn, once the marquee came down from that this year, we dyed that whole lawn, because there’s a lot of wedding functions down there weeks after.

So it needed to look green.

And it comes up, and it does the job.

Very clever.

Well.

And tell me about the trees, because there are quite a few heritage-listed trees on the grounds.  We’ve talked about the big Moreton Bay fig by the sales ring, but what other big trees have you got?

Yeah.  There’s a few decent trees on the property.  There’s the big Norfolk Island pine - we haven’t worked on that for quite a while.  Usually, we just keep it away from the roof, and keep the first segment of the trunk uplifted.  A number of Moreton Bays on the property and Port Jacksons.

Are they a hazard?  I mean do you have to look at the branches?

You have to keep an eye on them all the time. Usually, two or three times a year we’ll get a big southerly come through.  We might find the odd branch down, and you'll get a lot of hook-ups, where branches have held on but actually snapped, so we have to go up and get them down.  We had an incident a few years back, right in the middle of a sale, where on a beautiful fine day, not a breath of wind, a big branch just fell off the Moreton Bay, and landed on a few people.  Actually, they were auctioneering horses when it happened.  I was sitting in the sale ring.  No, actually, I was over where Jeff and Dave stand, where they direct the horses into the tunnel and we just heard this almighty crack and a large branch just came off it.  So they held the sale up for a few minutes, and we ran around there.  Fortunately, everyone was okay.  I think there was one woman who was a little bit injured, but was all right.

Nothing serious?

Nothing serious, and we dragged the branch away. We had an arborist come and do a full report on all the trees, and she just couldn’t work out why it happened.  There was no decay; it just let go.  Ever since then, we get yearly reports, but also we’re always looking up and climbing them and maintaining them.

Yeah, the big branches.

There’s a fair bit of work in the trees alone.

Yes.  Looking after old trees is tricky, isn't it?

Yeah.  And they're getting older.  And saying that, the big fig is in incredibly good health; for the age that it’s at, it’s in really good health.

Do we know how old it is?  Not exactly.

Well, there’s a hundred, there’s a hundred and forty.  I'm thinking it’s around the hundred years old.

Well over a hundred, perhaps, yeah.  And there are photos.

There are some photos where you can look back and see.

At least a hundred, yeah.

Yeah.  I've seen a photo that’s, I think, a hundred years old and it was quite a nice size tree then.

Even then, yeah.

Yeah.  But I've climbed it for the last twenty-three years.

You climb it yourself?

Yeah, and I still climb it now, just to go up and do the work on it.  I mean every year it gets a lot of sucker growth coming on it, so we go up and just snip all that off.  And then over the time we’ve taken a few larger branches off that have become too low, or hit the buildings, and whatnot.

Just keeping it maintained.

Yeah, it’s just a matter of maintaining it and keeping it contained.  We would take off that tree alone, I would say two hundred kilos a week of leaf and fruit.

Leaf litter, gosh, and the fruit, yeah.

Yeah.  When the fruit comes, it’s just a lot of weight.

Do you get bats coming when it’s in fruit?

We do get the bats, yeah, and then from the bats comes, what bats do.

A lot of cleaning up, yeah.

Yeah, there’s a fair bit of cleaning up from it.

Do you get whole colonies of bats or just a few?

No, just the night-time you'll get a few come in there.  I mean at about eight o'clock you see them flying around everywhere, in the morning.  They're only there seasonally, and then they move off as soon as the fruit’s done.  But the fruit is a big issue because around Eastertime we get a lot of fruit dropping, and when it’s wet it sticks and it’s - - -

Messy, yeah.

- - - yeah, messy and a lot of maintenance.

And have you had any really big storms through here?

We’ve had a few.  Actually, when I was working for Astro, we had the big hailstorm come through.

In ’91, yeah.

Yeah.  Was it ’89, ‘99?  Yeah, O.K.

I think so, yeah.

Yeah.  There was a huge amount of foliage on the ground - it virtually stripped all the trees.

What, the hail just knocked all the leaves off?

Just knocked all the leaves off and shredded the leaves – it was incredible – but the trees came back really quick.  We took tons and tons of leaf away; I think it was about two days to clean up the whole area just around the office.  It was amazing how much leaf came off it.  But apart from that we’ll get the odd blow.  There was another storm after that, that dropped about six big eucalypt trees down in the carpark.  It may have just been a freak angle the wind came but we came in in the morning - - -

And they were down?

I mean we knew there was going to be some damage, but there were six big eucalypts all ripped out from the roots, that were lying in the carpark and they had to be chopped up and removed, and replanted.  They're the main storms.  I mean every year you get the odd storm - - -

Storms in Sydney, yes.

- - - that does a bit of damage in Sydney.

And do you use the horse manure at all in the garden or it’s not recycled in that way?

No, no, we don’t.  It’s recycled – it’s taken offsite.

It’s taken commercially …?

But not directly for us, I mean mainly because it’s full of oats.

So you get weeds?

I mean you can put it down - within three or four days you’ve got a carpet of oats growing in your garden beds.

And you don’t want to be harvesting oats.

No.  I mean if anything it becomes a pain, because some people do flick it into the garden and we always end up having to go around and weed it out.

Weeding it out, yeah. 

Are there particular plants that you’ve introduced here?

Yeah.  I guess me personally, we’ve brought a lot of the buxus into the place, the hedging, again for that formalisation of the gardens.  Azaleas, I think we planted a huge amount of azaleas - the idea is to just try and get a little bit of colour in during some of the sales.  And the standard figs down at the big old Newmarket barn, that was something.  Again, it was more just to formalise the beds would be most of the plants that we’ve kind of introduced that weren’t here initially.

And you’ve sort of picked fairly hardy plants, I guess?

Yeah, hardy plants.  I mean the conditions here are good: there’s a lot of humidity in the summer; we don’t get the frosts - I think in my time since I've been here we’ve had one frost – but it’s mainly the heat and the humidity that causes us our problems.  Irrigation’s been an issue for, a long time, because we’re using bore water.  Some of the bores are good, some of them are full of iron that stains a lot of the plants and stains, the buildings – hence the colour of the fence outside.  I think that was to match the iron in the water to nullify the - - -

Red, a rusty colour, yeah.

Nullify.  The fences used to be a beige colour, but always the iron would stand out so, I think they’ve got a colour now that, yeah, suits the iron well.  And then just the annual planting is something that we’ve introduced to try and again give the place a bit of colour.

And it goes with the formal hedge borders - - -

It does, yeah.

- - - and then the plants in the middle.

Yeah, it fits in nicely.

And what are the things you particularly like about this site?

This site, I mean it’s the excitement of building up towards sale time, of getting everything looking at its best to certain times.  It’s not just, the monotony of having just a garden looking good: there’s certain times of the year that you really have to - - -

Push out the boat, as it were.

- - - yeah, and really make it stand out.  We’ve entered the garden in a lot of gardening competitions with Randwick Council.

And you’ve won?

Yeah, pretty much every year we’ve entered this place we’ve won it, until such a time as they changed the category, ‘n we didn’t have an entry.

You fell out of the picture.

We dropped off then but my business had another contract out at – we used to look after Eastern Suburbs Crematorium as well and quite often we’d pit the two properties against each other.  That would create a lot of fun between the employees that were working at either - - -

One or the other.

- - - but we were either first or second, in either gardens.  But a lot of the judges that used to come here, that was something that they would really enjoy.  A lot of people didn’t even know this was here, let alone the gardens, and then to go that one step further and take them into Boss’ yard and show them in there, that was even more of a secret garden.  So a lot of the judges would always comment, like, ‘Oh, we never even knew this place was here.’

Yeah, it’s quite a hidden treasure, isn't it?

Yeah.  So I mean those are the kind of things that make it nice to work here.  I mean the staff that employ us, have always been fantastic.  They’ve always supported us and every time we’ve wanted to do something they're positive, so it’s a good place to work.  And a nice environment close to the coast: you can shoot down to the beach after work for a quick swim if you need to in the summer.

That’s good.

Yeah, it’s a good spot, really good spot to work.

So are you going to be working at Warwick Farm when the Inglis business moves there?

Yeah.  All indications are, that we’re going out there to look after the property out there with them.  Been involved a little bit in looking at some of the designs and the plans and speaking with the landscape architect, about plants and what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.

Because in a way it’s quite specialised, isn't it?  I mean apart from the seasonal thing and the sales, you're in an area where, a) sometimes there are a lot of people, and sometimes there aren’t, and also there are horses and it’s an unusual sort of combination.

Yeah, there’s a few little details, that can make a world of difference, just to maintaining a property.

What sort of things?

I mean things like, you know, here at Randwick, there’s just having timber fences running through the lawn area becomes a huge issue to actually whip around and mow around and things like that, whereas if you just move those fences six inches, so they're actually off the lawn area, it can cut down on hours and hours of work over time.

Hours of work, fiddling, yeah.

Little things like that that we’ve been able to suggest to the landscape architect and he’s taken all of that on board.  I mean as far as an employment point of view it’s probably not the best thing because I'm cutting myself out of work, but you have to be practical as well.  I mean out at Warwick Farm, they're looking at growing ficus along the wall.

Espalier too.

Yeah, and the espaliered lines and things like that.  At one stage, they were going to have buxus cones running all the way down the driveway, and we had to knock that on the head, just simply, because it was a massive maintenance issue.

You mean clipping that shape all the time?

Keeping the shape - - -

Yeah, big work.

- - - of forty or fifty, standard columns of buxus would just be crazy.  So there’s been a bit of influence there.  I mean we’re excited about it.  It’s a massive project, compared to here.

Different microclimate too out there.

Yeah, we will get a bit of difference.

You'll get frosts.

We’ll get the frosts.  We won't get the humidity, I don’t think, as much, I'm hoping, being away from the coast, but we’ll get the heat in summer.  So the two extremes will probably be a little more, but it shouldn’t be too bad.  There is a bit of a difference in soil type out there as well, a little more clay.  We’ve got a lot of sand here.  Irrigation here, the water goes straight through; as soon as you put it down it disappears, whereas out there it should be a little easier for us.  But it’s going to be exciting and a much bigger project, I mean just working it out how much maintenance hours we’re going to need out there.  I know here at Randwick we’ve got one thousand four hundred buxus, for all our hedging.  Out there, there’s five and a half thousand buxus going in.

A lot of hedge clipping.

I mean in summer we’re doing those hedges maybe three or four times over the summer months.

Yeah, it'll be much bigger.

So it’s a little bit more maintenance out there.

Bigger maintenance, yeah.

And there’s two hundred advanced trees going in out there, over two hundred trees, but it’s going to be an exciting project.

Now, most people I'm interviewing are really in the horse industry but obviously you're in the landscaping industry, but are you interested in horses?

Probably not, as much as everyone else here.  In saying that, I mean I love looking at them.

You said it was nice when they were here.

Yeah, yeah.  It’s just the atmosphere of the whole place, goes through the roof when the horses are here.  You know, the broodmares are always nice: you can walk up and give them a pat, and they're happy to see you.  I'm not a big gambler - - -

Not into racing but you enjoy the animals?

- - - but I do find the actual horse people very interesting, you know, the amount of experience they have, knowing how to handle the horses, and things like that – I take a bit of interest in that.

Yeah, you’ve watched that over many years.

Yeah, yeah, we’ve seen it all here.  We’ve seen pretty much everything happen, that can happen with horses.  But not a huge interest; more so in the gardens.

So what particularly has pleased you working here, satisfied you?

I think watching my staff come and go and kind of enjoy working here as well, is something that’s enjoyable for me, probably winning a few garden competitions over the years.

Recognition, it’s nice.

Yeah, getting recognition.  Also getting recognition from the staff who work here.  A lot of people have always had nice comments to say about the gardens, so that’s probably the most enjoyable thing. Just being outside and watching everything change over the years.  I mean there’s been a huge amount of change.  I think when I came here for Astro in ’90, stable 1 was an old stable, the old brick stable.  Stable 2, that was an old stable.  That’s where our shed was, actually, when we first took the contract over, we were located in stable 2 - - -

The other side of the road.

- - - at the back of the drycleaners.  We had our work shed in there, and then they pulled that down and built the new stable there, and moved us down to 3 where we are now.  It’s just the change and the evolvement of the place – I guess that’s something that’s exciting that we’ll be taking out to Riverview, to watch it grow, and it'll be very interesting.

Thank you, Simon, thank you very much.

That’s all right.

That’s really filled in a nice insight into the gardens and what it means here.

Little gap.  Good, good.

Yeah, thank you.