Newmarket Oral History: Suni Carnes

Suni Carnes (b. 1943) speaks to interviewer Virginia Macleod. Suni grew up in Randwick and developed an early love of horses while attending the races with her mother and aunts. She left school at 14 to work at the Taxation Department, but by age 20 her life shifted decisively toward horses when she began working at Bruce Carnes’ stables in Challis Lane. The two later married, and Suni gradually became a skilled rider, developing a strong interest in show riding. She taught herself with guidance from Bruce and fondly recalls her first horse, whose exceptional qualities shaped her passion for training and competition. While raising two young children, Suni balanced running the stables with giving riding lessons in Centennial Park. The family later moved to 117 Middle Street near Newmarket Stables, where she kept horses and used the Inglis exercise ring behind the property. Their old stone cottage, once a Cobb & Co laundry, required extensive improvement, but its large yard allowed space for a stable. When the stables business closed, Suni retrained at TAFE and later joined Inglis in 1988, handling registrations, ownership checks, and health documentation, and working on sales days in the office and ring. She embraced the move to computerised x-rays and endoscopies and loved the Newmarket atmosphere. After leaving Inglis in 2009 to work with Nathan Tinkler, Suni continued riding, training, and competing. Today she lives on a rural property, breeding racehorses and retraining retired horses for recreational riding.

                 Today is Wednesday, the 30th of August 2017 and I'm speaking with Suni Carnes who was a local resident in Struggletown, the area near to Inglis Newmarket Stables and also worked for Inglis and Co for more than twenty years.  I'm speaking with Suni for the Newmarket Stables Oral History Project and my name is Virginia Macleod.

                 Suni, what year were you born?

                 I was born in 1943.

                 And where were you born?

                 I was born in Sydney.  My parents lived at Waverley, or at that stage they lived at Bondi Junction, actually, and moved to Waverley when I was a little older.

                 So you went to school in Waverley?

                 I started school at Bellevue Hill Public School.  I then went to Clovelly Public School.  I spent a little time at St Catherine’s School, and then I finished my education at Randwick Girls’ School.

                 But all the time you were living in Waverley, or did you move around?

                 No, no.  We were living with my grandmother at Bondi Junction and when my father came back from the war, when I was five, we moved to Waverley.

                 And what did your father do – what was his work?

                 My father was actually a builder, but he’d been in the air force and served in the forces, and he didn’t come back till about 1944 – no, sorry, that’s wrong.  No, actually, that's right.

                 ’44?

                 Yeah.

                 Got out a bit early, yeah.  And your mother worked too?

                 No, my mother didn’t work, no.

                 And how many brothers and sisters did you have?

                 I have one brother.

                 A brother.

                 He’s seven years younger than me.

                 And when you finished your schooling, what did you decide you wanted to do?

                 I wanted to go to go on with my schooling and go to university and become a vet because everyone’s mad about animals in the teens, but my father chose, that I should just go and go to work, so I went to work for the Taxation Department, and I worked there for five years.

                 Did you have to do, like the government service entry?

                 Yes, yes.

                 So you did that straight from school?

                 That's right.  I was fourteen and ten months old.

                 And you went straight to work, yes.  And you said you were interested in animals as a teenager?

                 Always loved horses.  My mother and her two sisters were very keen racegoers, so from the age of five I was at Randwick every race meeting.

                 And were you riding too in your childhood?

                 No, no, I didn’t ride, not till later.

                 And so you stayed five years at the Tax Office?

                 I stayed five years there, yeah.

                 Did you enjoy that work?

                 I didn’t know any other work, so, it was a means to the end, if you know what I mean.

                 Yes.  And were there a lot of other young people like you, trainees?

                 Yes, yes, a lot of young people, so that was quite good.

                 And what came next workwise?

                 Well, then I met my husband, [Bruce Carnes] and he had a livery stable in Randwick, and I was with him for a couple of years before we got married.

                 And were you working with him as well, helping in the stables?

                 Yes, yeah.

                 So you finally got to be working with animals.

                 Yeah.  I had learnt to ride well before that.  I used to borrow Tommy Smith’s lead ponies, and a few girlfriends used to do the same with other trainers, and we would ride on a Sunday in Centennial Park.  So, yeah, I had been riding a bit before I met my husband.

                 Is that where you met him, because he rode a lot in Centennial Park?

                 Yes, yes, actually, yes, that's right.

                 And so you say Tommy Smith let you ride one of his racehorses?

                 Not the racehorses, a lead pony.  They had ponies there – they used to lead the horses off – and, yes, he allowed me to come and ride of a Sunday, there.

                 And you knew him already or how did that come about?

                 I'd spoken to him at the races a couple of times, but I asked him one day, if I could go and ride his pony, and luckily he said yes.

                 Well, perhaps he was glad to have extra people to ride the ponies.

                 Could have, yes, could have.  Didn’t really personally know him that well - you know, I couldn’t say I'd ever had a real conversation.

                 So you would go down there and saddle up and get the horse all ready?

                 Yeah, and take it to Centennial Park.

                 And how long would you be there?

                 Just an hour, a couple of hours.

                 And then bring it back?

                 Bring it back.

                 Groom it and feed it?

                 Yes.  Well, the boys in the stables would do it.

                 Did all that, yeah.

                 I didn’t spend much time at the stables.  It was not something that you did: you didn’t walk in and stay there for any length of time.

                 You just had permission to use a horse and then you returned it?

                 Yes, that's right, yeah.

                 Interesting.  And tell me were there a lot of people riding in Centennial Park?

                 Yes, there was a lot of people at that stage.  It was much quieter in Centennial Park than it is these days, and, yes, there was a lot of people.  They had a pony club going there, that had quite a lot of members, and quite a lot of trainers’ daughters went to the pony club - Gai [Smith/ Waterhouse] actually went, Smith, went to the pony club.  Yeah, a lot of people rode, actually, but there wasn’t a lot of accommodation for horses around Randwick – I mean pleasure horses; there was racehorses.

                 No, it was all racehorses.

                 Yeah.

                 Plenty of them still or a lot of stables.

                 Yes, that's right.

                 But some people had a few other horses as well, presumably?

                 That's right, yes.

                 And so you were about – this was between fifteen and nineteen?

                 Something like that.  Yes, I couldn’t tell you exactly.

                 Yes, roughly.  And then when you started working with Bruce, your husband, what were you doing, what were your duties?

                 Just general in the stable, you know, but I also started to get interested in maybe, bettering myself as a rider a bit, and competing in equestrian events, which I did for a lot of years, but that was part of being at those stables was to learn more.

                 Learn more riding?

                 Yeah.

                 So did you take specific riding lessons, or you just learned from talking to people and riding?

                 No, I just learned from myself, yeah.

                 Watching other people?

                 Watching, yes, yeah, and practising.

                 And did you have a sort of mentor because you're doing a particular kind of riding?

                 Only Bruce, only my husband.

                 And which sort of riding were you specialising in?

                 Just the show riding, just hacking and just that type of riding, yeah.

                 Tell me a bit about it because I don't know a lot about show riding.

                 Well, hacking really, it’s the look of the horse and the presentation of the horse and the ability of the horse to work how you want the horse to work.  It’s the education of a horse.  What I loved doing, what I really loved doing, was taking a horse, a thoroughbred horse from the racing, and educating them to be a show horse.  So it was a process of education with the horse, getting to know your horse, and then going and competing.

                 And you like a thoroughbred horse because they're very responsive?

                 I just thought they were, the ultimate horse to ride. But we did have a lot of other horses.  We had ponies and Arabs and others but I always felt the thoroughbred was the ultimate horse to ride.

                 And these would have been racehorses that had finished racing?

                 Yes, they'd finished racing.

                 And then you could ride them?

                 Yeah, yeah.

                 And do you remember your first horse that you had?

                 Yes, I do; I remember the first horse I had, that I owned myself, was a horse that my husband had bought, And he wasn’t a thoroughbred horse, actually.  He was a big what we call ‘coloured horses’, brown and white, and he was the most marvellous horse that I ever had.

                 What was his name?

                 We called him Stony Burke but he could do everything and he was just an ultimate professional horse.  You know, if you wanted to jump he would jump, if you wanted to go hunting he would hunt, if you wanted to go dressage he’d do dressage.  We ended up using him to teach people on, and he was the most intelligent horse.  You could put a small child on him, and he would look after them, or you could put a good rider on him and he’d give them a good ride.  He was probably the best horse.

                 You ever had.

                 Yeah.

                 And that was your first one?

                 Yeah.

                 You were lucky.

                 Well, I got him for my twenty first birthday.

                 How lovely.  A nice present.

                 Yeah.

                 And how long were you riding him and keeping him?

                 He lived to be about – well, look, I couldn’t really say how old he was when we lost him – maybe twenty, maybe nineteen or something like that.

                 So you had him for, what, fifteen years?

                 Oh, easily fifteen years, yeah.

                 And when you say you lost him, he just died naturally?

                 No.  Look, he was turned out in a paddock and, we seem to think a snake might have got him, you know, but I was never really sure what happened.

                 Did you just find him yourself?

                 No, somebody else found him unfortunately, and I didn’t want to go up there and delve into it.

                 No.

                 Yeah.

                 Very sad.  And so you used him from the stables to teach other people?

                 Yes, yeah.

                 And do you feel he taught you?

                 Oh, yes, definitely, yes.

                 When I asked about a mentor, it was the horse, not a person.

                 It’s probably him, yeah.  Yes, you're right, it’s probably him.  No, he was a lovely horse.

                 And then you went on to have another horse at each time, or you just had some horses?

                 No, I had several horses.  We bought a few horses through here [Newmarket] and I we would re-educate them, and maybe sell them on, so I had a few horses – in fact, I had quite a lot of horses, I'd say.

                 How many - half a dozen or a dozen?

                 Probably between half a dozen and ten or something like that, yeah.

                 And I suppose somebody might make you an offer and then you'd sell them on?

                 Yes, yeah.

                 And Bruce had other horses in the stables too, didn’t he?

                 He had clients’ horses there; yes, he had quite a few clients’ horses - and he was always interested in the harness and trotting horses.

                 So you were both quite busy.  And what about your daily routine in the stables – did you have a pattern?

                 Well, it changed over the years.  When I was first there, it was quite easy because we only had maybe a few horses, or one or two of our own, and clients’ horses, so the routine would be that I would go down, they'd get fed, ridden, exercised, do whatever needed to be done during their day, and that and feed them in the evening and that was it.

                 And did you start fairly early in the morning?

                 At that stage, yes.  No, not till about six o'clock or something.

                 Not as early as some, yeah.

                 No.  But as time went on, and we started teaching more people to ride, I would get up at about five and take a lesson at six because we did before school, so I'd have to have the horses ready and that before then.

                 So how many lessons would you do in the morning then?

                 Well, I'd only do one early one because at that stage we were up here, living up here.

                 In Middle and Jane Street?

                 Yeah, yeah.  Well, when we first got married, we were living in the stables.

                 In Challis Lane?

                 Yes.  It was easy there because I'd just roll down the stairs and do it all.  When we moved up here, I would take an early morning lesson.

                 In Centennial Park?

                 Yes, yeah.  No, none up here – never gave lessons up here.  Then I would come home, for an hour or two and then go back and do whatever clients’ horses and whatever.

                 And then you did after-school lessons as well?

                 After school.  It was hard on my children, because ...

                 Yes, I was going to ask when did your children come along in this?

                 1970 the first one and then in 1973.  Barton was the baby.  He must have been born 1972, I think.

                 He was two or three years younger, yeah.  What was his name?

                 Barton.  He still lives in Randwick here.

                 And the older one was?

                 Matthew.

                 And so you were juggling small children and doing riding lessons and looking after the stables?

                 Yeah, yeah.

                 But I guess Bruce was there at the stables if you were out doing lessons? 

                 He was there all the time, yeah.

                 So, yeah, between you, one of you.

                 Yeah, so between us both we managed it, yeah.

                 And tell me about your pupils.  Who were they mostly?

                 Lovely people.  I was very lucky to meet an enormous amount of lovely people - well, Bruce would probably remember them more than me – but Harry Miller was a client, Pam and Graham Nock and Sir Norman Nock.  Who else?  We had lots of well-known people.

                 And their children were learning to ride?

                 Yeah, and their children.  I'm trying to think of people you would know but I just - - -

                 It doesn’t matter.  I meant more, you know, was it just local schoolchildren?

                 No, no, no.  Well, they were Sydney people, local to the area.

                 Randwick.  I mean did people come from quite a long way?

                 No, no, no, they were all local because at that stage there was only one other riding school and ours wasn’t really a hire school, it was a teaching school.

                 Right, yeah.  So you were filling quite a need and also very lovely to have it right in the middle of the city like that.

                 Yeah.  No, it was very nice.  We had some very lovely clients, very, very nice clients, yeah.  As a matter of fact I'm still very good friends with quite a few of them.

                 Some of your ex-students.  Yeah, that’s nice.

                 Yeah.

                 So you mentioned that you came to live here near the Inglis Stables in Middle Street.

                 Yes, yeah.

                 And what precipitated that and when and why?

                 What it was, was when Barton was born, we actually were living in a one-bedroom flat just next to the stables, and I had Matthew and him, and a client of ours, a lady called Pam Nock - that was Sir Norman Nock’s daughter-in-law – she was investing in properties, and she came in one day and said, ‘I saw a house that you would like and I think you should buy it.‘  I had tried to buy at that stage, the stables where we were with the house in front of it, and it fell through anyway.  And so I came up and saw and it was a very old house, very, very old, a bit dilapidated, but I liked the situation.  We had the exercise ring at the back where the horses were, it was on a corner block, Inglis’ was across the road here. [house address 117 Middle Street]

                 You knew them already or knew of them?

                 Well, I knew them from coming to the sales there and also I had worked for a few people with yearlings, here, so I didn’t know them, but I knew them, if you know what I mean.  And so I was desperate to get out of the one-bedroom flat.

                 I can imagine, yeah.

                 So we bought that house and it was very, very dilapidated.  The bathroom had a big hole in the floor and, it had no hot water, and it was quite a mess.

                 Was it a timber house or a stone house?

                 Well, actually it’s a beautiful house.  It was stone in the front, and it was quite old – it was two hundred years old or about that – and the back had been built on with fibro, and just patched up everywhere, you know.  So it was only two rooms – like it was two stone - - -

                 What, the original bit?

                 The original was just two rooms, stone rooms here, and a fireplace that had been built over in the kitchen, and the rest was all just fibro and patched work, Had no fence around it, but it was quite a big block.  Yeah, but to me it was a mansion, because to get into our own home.

                 And you had a big backyard, I presume?

                 Yeah, the backyard was great, yeah.  So when we moved up here, a friend of ours actually owned the livestock depot.  I don't know if you know where that is.

                 That was up on Barker Street, was it?

                 No, no.  [Looking at aerial photo] Wait till I find Jane Street.  It’s there – it’s across there, actually.  It was up there; it was onto the hospital there.  They had about thirty stables there that the big trucks used to use as a depot, and a friend of ours had bought it.  So we’d been in the house here when he bought that, so, I actually had a few horses up there that I was training, and I would bring them down and ride them here.  So it was really fantastic for me, it was terrific.

                 So you'd walk up across Barker Street - - -

                 Yeah.

                 - - - and then walk the horse back - - -

                 Yeah, walk the horse down.

                 - - - and then train it on the….

                 It was nothing to ride horses around the streets in those days.

                 Still in the ‘70s?

                 Because even then when we first moved in the horses would come from here - - -

                 From Inglis, number 3, yeah.

                 - - - that were down the back here, being broken-in and such and they would ride those horses down to the Randwick Racecourse.  So you would hear thirty horses – it was nothing to hear thirty horses - - -

                 Every morning?

                 - - - yeah, come down the road.  So, you know, in those days you could ride horses very easily.  I used to ride from here to Centennial Park, all the time.

                 Right.

                 Yeah.

                 That’s good.  And who else was living around in this area?  Was there other stables at the time?

                 Yes, yes, yes, the stables opposite me which are now townhouses, which was these here, there, that one there.

                 On Middle Street, yeah, the corner of Middle and Jane …

                 Here, this was Ken Turner.  He was a racehorse trainer.  He bought that place and he trained out of there.

                 Diagonally opposite corner from you?

                 No, straight across, straight across.

                 Straight across, yeah.

                 Then next door to him was a big stable that I think Jack Green’s wife owned.  I'm not sure whether it was Jack Green’s wife, or Darby Munro’s wife owned it – one of them did.  And Max Crockett was in there.  He was a horse-breaker.  He broke in horses for everyone, all the big trainers.

                 So we’re moving west along - - -

                 There’s me there.

                 There’s you on the south side.

                 That’s Ken Turner whom I'm still very good friends with – I went to his eightieth birthday party not long ago.  Next door was - - -

                 Moving west, yeah.

                 - - - yes, was either Mrs Munro or Mrs Green owned those stables and Max Crockett, he rented them and he was there for quite a while.  Up here, there was a set of stables right on the corner.

                 On Botany Road, yeah.

                 Now, who was there?  Not Cyril Rolls or one of the trainers was there - so there was a few trainers there. 

                 Yes.

                 Down here was Harry Meyers.

                 In the Inglis’ stable 3?

                 Yes.  He used to break in.  And then when he left, John Drennan went down there and he broke in mainly for Tommy Smith.  Who else?  That was about the only stables around, I think, until you got across the road up here and there was quite a few.

                 Yeah, the other side of Barker Street, yeah.  But there’s still a lot of people and stables and horses and people in the community.

                 A lot of horses, yeah, a lot of horses.

                 And the other houses, do you remember the other families who were there, who your children played with?

                 Yes.  This was Astro Vercellio [aka Vass].  His children were the same age as mine and we were good friends with them.

                 Just across Jane, and the dead-end bit of Jane Street, yeah.

                 Yeah.  There was a derelict old house here that I should have bought and it was an old slab wood house - I don't know how they ever let them pull it down.  This was Mrs Quigley.  She was a lovely, lovely lady.  She lived there with her mother and Mrs Quigley was well into her nineties when she died, so she’d lived there for a long time, and she died before I moved away from here.  She was an absolute charming woman; she was lovely.

                 On her own or with family?

                 She had her mother with her for a while but the mother died.  Next door to me was a man and woman – I can't remember their surname; Bob and Nes(?) – they were an older couple.  Next door to them a girl lived there with her twin boys and her mother, and then there was the Italian couple that are still there as far as I know.

                 On the corner there of Botany Street?

                 Yeah.

                 So quite a few children around as well?

                 There was quite a few children around, yes.

                 And were most of the people there working in the horse industry in some way?

                 No, I don’t think so.

                 Not necessarily?

                 No, not necessarily, no, no.  I mean this side where the stables were and down here but he was a horticulturalist, Astro, and he did beautiful work.  He did Botany Cemetery, and all those and did beautiful work.  His wife still lives there.  Yeah, so that’s about all the neighbourhood.  This was the old church.

                 Yes, just up Middle Street.

                 Yeah.  And they used to do plays there when I moved into here.

                 Really?

                 So we used to walk across and go to the plays.

                 Amateur theatricals?

                 Amateur plays, yeah.

                 Yeah, so you'd go there.

                 So that was them.  I think the people are still in there that lived next door there – he was a fireman.  And this house was sold a couple of times so I'm not sure who was there.

                 And was it a sort of cohesive neighbourhood?

                 We all got on fairly well.  There wasn’t too much argument.

                 Yeah, children played, and I imagine playing in the street/

                 A lot of them didn’t like horses.

                 They didn’t like horses?

                 No.

                 … the wrong place.

                 Well, the ones that bought this place, the old church, they hated the horses and the fellow next to them, he was really rude, you know, he was terrible about the horses.  This eventually went into three housing blocks, so that went - - -

                 Jane.[Street]

                 - - - and that’s now townhouses, so that went too.  But there was a lot of complaints because of the horses being ridden up the street.

                 Were they afraid of the horses bolting, or they didn’t like their noise?

                 No, no, I think they just didn’t like the noise, yeah.

                 They just didn’t like it, yeah, and so it was changing a bit.

                 And when I moved in here, of course I got much friendlier with John Inglis and Mrs Inglis.

                 You got to know them just because you were exercising in that area?

                 Got to know them, yeah.  And then I started doing a few yearlings here, for different people.

                 Training them?

                 No, just getting them ready for sale.  Yeah, so that’s about my history for here.

                 And just thinking about your house there - you’ve described it quite graphically – what did you do?  Did you do much to change the house?

                 Yes.  After I divorced my husband, I bought him out of the house.  I had it valued and I paid him exactly fifty per cent of it.  Now, I could have got really nasty with Bruce.

                 [Pause]

                 Yeah, so you split the house and you stayed on there.

                 M’mm.

                 And what did you do there.  We were talking about what you did to the building to change it.

                 To the building?

                 Yeah.

                 Well, it was literally falling down.  I was frightened the council was going to condemn it, it was so bad.  I had big holes in the ceiling and the floors.

                 Had anyone been round to threaten you on the council?

                 No, no, but I just used to worry about it.

                 No.  You just had this feeling?

                 And it was really dilapidated - it got to the stage where I was probably living in one room. And I was really worried about all the electricals, and things like that because we’d never done anything to it, never.  And I knew I couldn’t keep living on it like that, and I had people come around and look at it and say, ‘Oh, you could patch this and do that and patch things’ and I said, ‘No, I'm going to wait till I can’ – you know, I was paying a mortgage on it –‘wait till I get the mortgage down a little bit and then re-borrow a bit more and I'm going to pull the whole back off it.‘  So that’s what I did: I pulled everything down from the front two rooms at the back and built a new back on it.

                 So all the fibro add-on - - -

                 Everything went.

                 - - - but you kept the two stone room, sort of thing?

                 So I kept the two stone rooms, plus the fireplace and I just built a nice back on it.

                 So you kept the chimney with the fireplace?

                 Kept the chimney, everything - yeah, the fireplace still worked when I left.  And then what I had done previous to this, before we were divorced is, I'd built a couple of stables in the backyard, so I used to have my own horse there because by this time we’d lost the business long before this. And I had my own horses in the yard there.  I really only had one, and where the stables were when I renovated, I made that into the garage. 

                 Quite a lot of change, yeah.

                 Yeah.  But it was a beautiful house.  I'm very, very sorry I sold it, actually.

                 Yeah, you’ve got good memories of it.

                 Yeah.

                 And you had this big – I can see in the aerial photo – a big fig tree in the back garden, a Moreton Bay fig, I guess.

                 That's right, yes, which was full of bats, actually.

                 Really?

                 Yeah.

                 Yes, they like them, don’t they?  They like the figs, I mean.  So you stayed on living there for quite some time?

                 I stayed, while I was working here.  I was working here prior to renovating it, so I stayed on until – now I'm not sure of dates here – but I was here over twenty years.  Then I got offered work from Nathan Tinkler, and by that time I was ready for a challenge and a change, and I went to work for him for about eighteen months.

                 Is he in Randwick too?

                 I set up his Randwick racing office, in Alison Road.  Then I decided that I would have liked to get out of Sydney, so that’s when I sold the house, and bought the place in Yarramalong.

                 So how long were you working – when you say setting up an office, what did that involve?

                 Well, what it involved was finding a place to set it up.  So I found an old terrace house in Alison Road, just down from Belmore Road, and I set that up as an office for him, which his racing manager used.  So I had to literally start from scratch, get all the cabling in for computers, set up a kitchen, so that I had somewhere for visitors that I could actually make a cup of coffee, and do things like that, set his racing manager’s office up.  And then what I would do – I went in as his assistant racing manager – every time we had a race running at the races, I would go there.  The manager might go to Randwick, I'd go to Newcastle, or I'd go to Kembla, or I'd go to Randwick and he’d go to one of the others.

                 So you were covering - between you, you covered all the races?

                 So between us we used to just about every day be at the races, yeah.

                 Busy, yeah.

                 Yeah.

                 And you enjoyed that?

                 I love the racing.  I was always a racing person from five years old.

                 You were right at home on the racecourse.

                 Well, mum used to take me to the races, yeah.

                 So you lived it and breathed it all your life, yes.

                 And my best girlfriend’s father was an SP bookmaker, so of a Sunday morning I used to go with her and him to all the stables while he’s collecting.

                 Right.  So tell me about that.  How many did he have to go round?

                 Well, we were only very young, you know.  We would go to about four or five different places, yeah.

                 Well, there were so many stables then, weren’t they?

                 Everywhere, everywhere.

                 So that was your Sunday morning walk.

                 Yeah.

                 And you enjoyed seeing the horses, I guess.

                 Oh, yes, we loved seeing the horses.

                 And did people put you on them for a ride?

                 Yeah, they used to do things like that because, I think we were only about nine or something like that.

                 Yes, good age for that.

                 Yeah.  So we loved going to the stables.

                 So you’ve mentioned that you came to work for Inglis, so how did it come about and what were you doing – what were your duties?

                 It came about by default, actually.  What it was, we had lost our business, and my husband was no longer able to work, and it fell upon me to try and keep the home fires burning.  So I had, once the business had gone, I took myself back to university and did a course there, which was communications, computers, a course that got women back into the workforce.

                 Where did you go?

                 We went to the annex at Dover Heights – we did it there.

                 Is that part of TAFE eastern suburbs?

                 Well, it’s part of the University, yeah.

                 UNSW, is it?

                 Sorry?

                 Which university?

                 I think it’s New South Wales, I'm pretty sure.

                 New South Wales, yeah.

                 It was a course – you could look it up if you're interested – it was a course called NOW, N-O-W, New Opportunities for Women, and it was a full-time six months course.  So I took myself off to that, but at the same time I was working for people that I was very good friends with that owned a catering business and I had taught them to ride – I'd met them through the horse - - -

                 In your riding, yeah.

                 - - - and they owned a big catering business called the Keiron at Charing Cross, and one here at Randwick.  So what I would do, I would work for them on their functions of a night, and do this course during the day.  So just about finishing the course, I got offered a job by, the same people I was working in the catering business for.  Their son had a television, a freelance television company, and I got offered a job in that office and I really wanted to take it because I was desperate to get some work.  So I went to the administrator of the course and said, ‘Look, we’ve only got four weeks to go or something and I really want to finish this course and get my diploma for it.’  And anyway they allowed me to – I worked for the television company in the afternoon, and I went to the course in the morning, and did the second afternoon of the course of a night at home.  So I got through that all right, and I worked for this television company for about – I only worked part time; I used to start work about half past twelve in the day and I went to about five thirty – I worked there; it must have been two, three years.  Anyway, I was coming home late one evening, about half past nine, and there was a lady who worked here called Tia de Burke and I was friends with her, and I was coming home and I saw her walking down the street and I stopped and said, ‘Can I give you a lift home?’  So she jumped in and I had a pile of papers on the seat that I was going to take home for the weekend and she asked me what I was doing and I said, ‘Oh, I'm working for this.’ and she said, ‘Oh, are you happy there?’ and I said, ‘Not really.’  She said, “Why don’t you come and work for Inglis’?’  And I said, ‘Oh, I don't know.’ you know, and she said, ‘Well, I need someone to help me part-time.  Can you come over?’  So I just walked in here and sat down.

                 And started?

                 Yeah.

                 How wonderful.

                 I spoke to nobody.  Nobody knew I was coming.

                 Nobody knew?  She just said, ‘Come on in!’, yeah.

                 I just walked in and sat down and never got out.

                 Wonderful, nice.

                 And Arthur was here at the time, and she’d already cleared it with him that I could come, but nobody else knew who I was.

                 And you just blended in, obviously, and naturally meant to be here.

                 So it was quite funny.

                 So what sort of things were you doing?

                 Well, it was really difficult because I really didn’t know anything about computers, and I wasn’t a very good typist, and it was like showing me something written in Chinese, to look at these pedigrees and have to type them.  So I sort of just fitted in to where I could.  Look, I actually started – what I did, I came in here and I looked at the way things were being done, and I started asking questions. And I said, ‘How do you know you're selling the right horse?’ and they said, ‘Oh, well, because that’s what the vendor puts in.’  and I said, ‘But don’t you get any documentation to say that this horse has been DNA-ed?’  In those days, it was blood type; they had to have their blood-typed and it would come up.  So what I did, I created it, actually, a section that I would check every horse.  Now, I can remember one Easter sale here where we took over two hundred bloods out of horses because they hadn’t been blood-typed.  And the worst thing was we’d sell them and I'd have to wait for the results for about three months - - -

                 Took that long?

                 - - - and lo and behold, you'd have one that wasn’t the right horse.  So it went from there.  So then I started to liaise with the stud book about, ‘Why can’t we identify these horses sooner, blah, blah, blah?’  So to cut a long story short, in the time I was here, I liaised with the stud book, and we set up processes of identification, documentation on it, and it went from having quite expensive documents to having a card with their documents, I liaised with the AJC registration department because we would sell racehorses through there that had six owners, and I'd have nothing. 

                 No record of it?

                 People would buy them – they couldn’t race them because they couldn’t transfer them.  So I worked quite closely with the registrar down there, and we set up a process there, that I would have permission to sign on behalf of the owners, providing they signed an entry form.

                 If they did, yeah.

                 So I would check the entry forms, get up, tell the boys they weren’t to fax them, they’ve got to have originals, you know, and do all that.

                 So you set up a thorough tracking system for all the horses passing through, making sure you knew exactly - - -

                 I mean we quite often had the wrong horse here to sell, you know, and nobody would really know, except that I would get a result of it.

                 Yeah, so after that you knew exactly what was happening, yeah.

                 Yeah.

                 And at which point roughly was this?  Because nothing was computerised then, I guess.

                 When I came in here, they were just starting to do pedigrees on the computer.

                 And what sort of date was that, roughly?

                 That was about ’88.

                 ’88.  Yeah, computers were still early, yeah.

                 And I taught myself how to do the pedigrees on the computer, so, I got very good at that, and I used to do a lot of that for them.  I'd do the blood-typing, everything, and then the computers if I wasn’t busy with the other one.  Yeah, so I just worked through everything, yeah.

                 So you carved out a good niche and made a good system, yeah.

                 Then over the years, yeah, that was my role here was handling all the registrations and, checking the horses, seeing if they were okay to be sold, and checking the ownerships and everything like that, and passing them onto the new owners.

                 Yeah.  So you would have been particularly busy, obviously, in the periods leading up to sales?

                 I was particularly busy on all the periods.

                 All the time, okay.

                 I couldn’t even take a holiday.

                 There’s no seasonal fluctuation for you!

                 No, no.

                 Yes, because you were constantly following up and lining up the next lot and following up?

                 Yes, that's right, that's right.  Yes, I would work prior to the sale and everything, and then after the sale I've got to - - -

                 And did you get involved in the actual sale day?

                 Yes, for a long time I worked the computer in the ring - we shared it, a few of us, we did that, but mainly I would be in the sales-day office, mainly talking to people and people that had a problem with their documentation, or something like that.  And then, that's right, a new process came in called endoscopic examinations, where they would look down the horse’s neck, so I had to handle that too.  So I would have to be in the sale day office because, as the horse got sold, I would have to organise the endoscopic.

                 Afterwards, yeah.

                 So that was continuing on, and then afterwards I'd have to get the certificates and send them out.

                 Together, to the new owner?

                 Yeah.  So it was mainly documentation that I did, yeah.

                 Quite complex when on the sales day you’ve got lots of horses and lots of owners.

                 Well, I set up a process of that.  Now, they used to do it in America, prior to us, so when this was suggested I had no idea how to work it.  So what I did, I set up a process with the vets, and they still use it today, that process.  I just refined it as I went, and they ended up people coming from overseas, using the same process.

                 So they copied your method?

                 Yeah.  Then after that they set up in the sales that the horses, as a voluntary process, they could lodge x-rays for the horses.  That came about very suddenly, so once again I had no idea of what to do, and Reg went to America and he came back and described what I had to do, and I still had no idea what I'm doing.

                 He’d seen it but you hadn’t.  Yeah, so it was harder.

                 So I rang America, actually.  I got some contact numbers, and I rang some people in America and I said, ‘Look, I need you to tell me how you set this up because I've got to set it up and I haven’t got a lot of time and I really want to get it right.’  So they showed me the process.  So at that stage with the big sales like Classic, Premier, Easter, you know, the big sales, I would get x-rays in.  They would deliver them here, prior to the sale, a week before the sale, so what I would have to do - they had to lodge thirty six views. What I did, instead of pulling them out and counting them, I'd weigh them, and if there was a discrepancy, then I'd count them.  So I had to lodge in every set of x-rays.  We had a repository across the road here.  I'd set it up colour-coded for numbers, and set it up as that and that worked – it was very hectic but that worked well.  Then we had a computer manager here, and we were trying to get an easier system because, it was really hard.  We were in an old house; we didn’t have much; you know, it was really, really hard with all the vets and everything.

                 You were in an old house – you mean the office?

                 Yeah, across the road over here.

                 Right, the other side of Young Street?

                 Yeah, a little sort of cottage there.  And all the vets would come over and you'd have twenty vets in there, and they'd all be screaming because they didn’t have a screen, and it was really chaotic.  So this computer manager, Ed, sat down and he said, ‘What do you want to do to refine this?’ and I said, ‘The biggest problem we have is the bulk of these x-rays.  They're huge, they're heavy, I've got to count them all.’

                 How big were they?

                 About that.

                 So half a metre across?

                 Yeah.

                 Yeah.

                 So we sat down and, he got onto some medical people, in Wollongong, that handled the radiographs going from the bigger hospitals, one to the other.  So we went down and had a meeting with them, and asked them, ‘If we could do the x-rays digitally, can we process them so that the vet can sit down and look up them on the screen and if he wants to send them to America for a second opinion it can be done?’  So we had about three or four meetings with them and, what I'd have to do in the meetings, I'd have to look at the human lists that they would do, and give them the horse list that they had to do, just the documentation, you know.

                 Yeah, so that they could change the program.

                 Because they didn’t know anything about it, they didn’t know how to describe it, or, and what would have to be lodged onto the x-rays, because we would have to do the brands, and the microchip number.

                 Yes, right.

                 So we set up that process, and we then made another repository down at the back of the old stables down here, where we would set up computers and the vets would come in and look on the x-ray.

                 Just look on the screen.

                 We’d give them a password - so they couldn’t get in unless they had the password.

                 And that controlled it, yeah.

                 Yeah, so we set that up, and I'm sure they’ve refined it more since I've left.

                 But that was a big breakthrough, wasn’t it?

                 Yeah, it was a huge breakthrough.

                 So this was all late ‘80s, early ‘90s?

                 No, no, no, no.

                 Later, much later?

                 This would have been only – I can’t give you a date on that – it would only be, maybe 2002 or 3, or something.

                 Yeah, okay.

                 Yeah.

                 So when did you stop working here?

                 I stopped working here in – gosh, about - - -

                 You stopped in about 2009, you said?

                 Yeah.  I should know the date but I don’t.

                 No, dates.  It’s more you remember oh that was the year that something happened, or whatever.  So, yes, that would have been a big breakthrough, wouldn’t it?

                 Yes, it was a big breakthrough.  It was really because I felt stale – I'd been here for a long time - I was doing the same thing.  I loved setting up the scoping, I loved setting up the x-rays, I loved the challenges that they showed me, but I was getting no other challenges.  I was doing the same documentation, the same of everything other than that.

                 So you wanted a change, you needed …?

                 I just felt I needed a challenge in my life, yeah, so I took on a big one.

                 Yeah, you moved out …

                 No, no, I went to work for Nathan Tinkler.

                 Right, you went to him.  You went back to him?

                 No, I went with him when I left here.

                 Right, okay.

                 So that was a fair challenge.

                 Yeah, very different.

                 I liked it, actually.  Yeah, I did like it.  I took on a big job and I think I did pretty well at it.

                 It’s good to keep challenging yourself, isn't it?  It makes work more interesting.

                 Yeah.

                 And when you worked here, you mentioned the woman who suggested that you come to work here - - -

                 Yes, yeah.

                 - - - how many women were working here?

                 There would have only been the receptionist, Tia, Miffie and Karen – four.

                 Four and you?

                 And nobody had ever worn a pair of slacks in here.

                 Really?

                 Until I came.

                 You mean no woman had ever worn - - -

                 No woman.

                 Yes, right.

                 Sorry, no woman. 

                 Yeah, because it seems quite a male-dominated industry.

                 It was very male-dominated.  All the gentlemen working here had to wear a shirt and tie.  John Inglis was very, very strict in his beliefs, and they really had to be well-dressed, well-spoken.

                 Well-presented, yeah.

                 Well-presented, yeah.

                 And so were the other women working like on sales day, and other things like that?

                 Not very many, no.  At that stage, at that early stage, when I first started here, I can’t recall any other women coming in for sales, yeah.

                 But did it change - because you were here for quite a while – over that time?

                 Oh, it changed over the years; it changed a lot over the years, yes.  Everything got a bit more modernised, and everything changed: the computer systems, the way the place was presented.  I mean the stables changed; the stables were old when I started here, they were old wooden stables.  Everything changed.

                 Was upgraded, yes.

                 Was upgraded over the years.

                 And, of course, when you came, this new office was quite recently built, wasn’t it?

                 It was fairly new, yeah.  But in those days there didn’t seem to be as many people - I don’t think we had as much staff.

                 Then?

                 In fact I'm sure we didn’t have then as what we have now, yeah.

                 So there were just you, five women?

                 There was Tia, there was Karen, there was Miffie and myself and the receptionist, yes.

                 And did you socialise after work or was it just work, all nine to five?

                 No, the people here were like a big family.  I was an older person, in a young business, so I didn’t really socialise as much.  I was far older than most of the people here, at that stage.

                 And you still had children you were bringing up?

                 Oh, yeah.  No.

                 They were grown up?

                 They were just about grown up, yeah.  I think my youngest son was still at school, I'm not sure.  Yes, he was still at school, yeah.

                 But it was very handy for you, living down the road?

                 Very, very handy.

                 Did that mean that you went to work more days a week, or not really?

                 Probably meant that I put in more hours.

                 Yes.  Easy to drop in and just do something more.

                 Yeah.

                 And thinking about the changes here, obviously it has changed over that time and what other things did you notice?  I mean presumably you came in on the sales days anyway, and either you were in the ring, doing the computer - - -

                 Yeah, or in the sale day office.

                 - - - yeah, what differences did you notice about the people who came?

                 The people that came?

                 Yeah.

                 I noticed that business had changed, not just this particular business, but I noticed the type of people, changed.  When I first came here, you got all the old regulars; you got all your trainers came to the bigger sales and bought horses.  Over the years, I've seen more big syndicates.  We didn’t have a lot of syndicates when I started here - we only had mainly individual owners, partnerships with trainers and such – but once the syndicates came in that have twenty people in a horse, you got a different type of person coming around.  Mainly the managers handled everything, but it became more of a – when I first started here, it was a very casual business.  You know, people would shake hands and that was a deal, and things like that.  Then it had to become more of a business, because the more the money came into it, the more you needed to have documentation, the more you needed to look into things a bit more thoroughly.  You know, there was people that would put their hand up and, not pay for horses, so you had to have people to chase money all the time and things like that.  So it changed into a more, modern, business than an old-fashioned family business, yeah.

                 More impersonal in some ways?

                 Mm.

                 Not everybody knowing everybody, yeah.

                 And you asked me the people that came here.  We started to get a lot of people from overseas, big owners, big trainers, big overseas horse owners, so it was quite different, yeah, it was different. And they went into it in a business atmosphere too.  They had racing managers, and managers to do their buying for them, and all the bloodstock managers, everything like that, yeah.

                 And that was something you really noticed?  Like it wasn’t so much overseas interest when started, yeah.

                 No.  When I first started there wasn’t, but as time went on you got bloodstock agents coming from all overseas, and different countries and, you know, the Hong Kong horses, and Americans coming over here and the sheiks.

                 Different scene, yeah.

                 A different scene, yeah.

                 And, of course, Inglis are moving out to Warwick Farm now, so I'm asking people – and obviously you left some time ago now – but what’s your favourite thing about the site?  When you think about Newmarket, what comes to mind?  Or it may not be a favourite thing, when you think of all the hours of work.

                 Oh, no, I loved the work, I loved the work here, I loved the work here.  I think being here was the best time of my life.  My favourite thing, with Newmarket.  Just the beauty of the place – my office was up there - and I looked out at these beautiful gardens.

                 And looked towards the old house.

                 I loved the people, I loved the people at Inglis’.  I loved, all the people coming here – it was exciting, and the sales were exciting.  I really loved it, yeah.  And I loved the family; I loved John Inglis; he was a great old bloke, a tough old bloke but, really good and the family.  And Mrs Inglis, her and my mother used to sit at the races together sometimes, and talk about the grandchildren, and that.  You know, it was lovely having that relationship, with people at work.

                 Connections.

                 And met some lovely, lovely people here.  Just a great bloke, Gerry Donaghy was a marvellous bloke – he taught me a lot, actually.  He used to chase the money here.  Graeme Challener, he was a really, really nice man.  You know, everybody; there were some really nice people here.

                 So it was a really nice working place.

                 Yeah.

                 So it was the best part of your life you say?

                 I think so, yeah.

                 Yeah, because you liked the people, you liked the place and you were getting the challenges in the work.

                 And I loved the atmosphere of the horses.

                 And the horses, yes.

                 And the racing – loved the racing.  Still racing: I still own six, seven racehorses.

                 You do?

                 Yeah.

                 So you're still at the races.

                 I'm at the races more than I'm at home, actually.

                 That’s good, yeah.

                 Yeah.  And the nice thing is, at the races I see all my old clients that were here. 

                 That were children, you mean?

                 No, that I've looked after here.

                 From here, sorry.

                 Yeah.

                 I thought you meant from when you taught them riding.

                 I still see a few of them too – they're involved, a few.

                 It’s interesting.  And part of that good time of your life was living in Middle Street there?

                 Yes, yes.  I think I made a huge mistake selling it.  No, I loved the house; I loved the history of the house.

                 And then when you remade it, you made it for your life style?

                 Yes, but it still had the history.

                 Did you do any research on who'd lived there before?

                 I tried to, yes.  I found it was the laundry to the old Cobb & Co.

                 The coach?

                 Yeah, but I couldn’t find out very much about it.

                 Nothing more?

                 No, no.

                 It’s often hard to get early records.

                 Yeah, no, I couldn’t find out any more.

                 But it felt like that as a place?

                 Yes, I loved the history of it.

                 So you'd go back and live there like a shot, would you?

                 Not after driving up through all the traffic.

                 No, not if you had to go anywhere in Sydney.  If you just stayed there and walked to Inglis, it would be all right.

                 If I stayed there I'd be all right.

                 So looking back, you said you trained all your show horses around here.  Tell me a bit more about that.

                 Well, when we moved in here, there was, what we called the bullring at the back of, my house, and it was very handy for me because I would train my horses there.

                 On your doorstep literally.

                 It was terrific.  And then of a weekend I'd take them to the shows all around the district.  We’d quite often go away to country shows.

                 Did you have favourites that you went to or is there kind of a circuit for the year?

                 No, it’s a circuit mainly, and mainly I would stay in Sydney because it was easier and I had the boys, but I feel I was a reasonably successful exhibitor at all the shows.  I had some very nice horses, won lots of champions, competed in big shows – Sydney Show, Brisbane Show, Canberra Shows, you know.

                 And did you get all dressed up?

                 Yes.

                 I mean you talked about the horses but what did you wear?

                 Well, in those days you didn’t have to wear a helmet, but you wore a bowler hat or a helmet, so I would always have a bowler hat, and a dark coat and long boots.

                 And jodhpurs?

                 And jodhpurs, naturally.  Or britches, actually britches.

                 Britches, yeah.

                 So we got dressed up in a shirt and tie, or a cravat.

                 And did you dress the horse yourself – I mean plait its mane?

                 Yes, plait them all up, and have beautiful gear, great gear, you know, great bridles and saddles.

                 Did you get them made specially?

                 There used to be a saddler on the corner up here, called Harry Smith, and I used to get my bridles made by him.  My saddle I got made in – which saddle was that – I got it made at Sutherland.  A bloke called Don Stuart made good saddles, so I used to get saddles made there, the bridles and rugs made up on the corner here.

                 Did you have your own special rug?

                 No.  I used to get them stencilled with my name on them so nobody’d steal them.

                 Get muddled, yeah.

                 Yeah.  But, yeah, I had a successful show career.

                 So at a weekend you'd put the horse in a float and go off to what - - -

                 Yeah, usually one day just early in the morning and come back in the evening but I used to do quite a few country shows in the southwest, Moss Vale and Gunning and Canberra, and those shows, so maybe I was away weekends.

                 Stay overnight, yeah.

                 Yeah, yeah.

                 Quite a lot of driving as well.

                 Yeah.

                 And were you doing jumping and dressage?

                 No, I didn’t do jumping, but I did do a bit of dressage, not as much as the show ring …

                 The show ring is the thing?

                 Yeah, yeah.

                 And what moves or manoeuvres did you have to do then?

                 You would have to do what the judge asked you to do.

                 It’s different each time?

                 Yeah, so it would be different each time.  The basic moves, you work on a circle, and the judge will call what gait he wants, trot or canter, or change direction. And then he would choose maybe six of the best horses in his eye.  They would come in and then they would have to work on his direction; you know, he would give them the directions he wanted them to work on.

                 And then you translate it to the horse?

                 Yeah, oh yeah.

                 And your wonderful horse knew instinctively?

                 No, no, you had to ask them to do it.

                 Yes.

                 So, yeah, it’s a bit hard to describe, actually.

                 No, I think I know what you mean.  And you would have to practice presumably? 

                 You'd have to teach your horse to do those things, because they don’t do them naturally.  The things that you might get asked to do - you might have to do an extended trot, which is a trot that they throw their legs right out.  Well, they don’t do that naturally, you have to teach them.

                 You have to train them, yeah.

                 Or you might have to do a sitting trot, which is a slower up and down movement; you'd have to teach them that; you have to teach them to change legs.  They have to lead with their inside leg on the circle all the time. So you’ve got to teach them all those things to do, and hold their head in the correct position. 

                 And you enjoyed that teaching?

                 I liked the education part, yeah.  You get a great satisfaction, out of taking an animal, a horse like that, from that ring out there that he’s been raced for five years and taught nothing but to gallop, and re-educate and take it to a show and win; it’s a very good feeling.

                 And the communication, is it through your hands, with the reins or through your legs?

                 Through your hands, through your hands and legs, yeah.

                 And your voice – are you allowed to speak?

                 Yeah, yeah.  I always taught my horses voice command, you know.  I'll go backwards now to that old coloured horse I had that I got for my twenty first – he was so intelligent that you would have to actually spell things.  You know, when I was teaching people to ride, I would get to the same spot every day and say, ‘Are you ready to canter?’  Well, he would canter before even …

                 He just knew?

                 He just knew; he was intelligent.  But, yes, you can use your voice, and I always used voice on a horse.

                 So it’s that communication between you and the horse – is that something that’s really - - -

                 It’s very, very nice, yeah.

                 Yeah. It’s a strong bond.

                 It’s very satisfying to do things like that, yeah.

                 And so you're still doing that now with your current horses?

                 Well, I'm not riding anymore because, well, I'm seventy four now.  I still could ride, but I've had young thoroughbreds up there for the last six years since I've been up there, six, seven years, and I was riding them for a while, but it just got to the stage where I thought if I have a fall I'm really going to hurt myself here, because they weren’t show horses, they were young thoroughbreds.

                 A bit frisky?

                 Yeah.  Well, they're only full of exuberance like young children, and they do the wrong thing.  So I was going riding just up till recently, with a friend of mine out in the valley.  She’s got hunters, and we used to go and exercise the hunters, which was good, but I haven’t even been doing that for a while because I've just been busy with other things.

                 But you’ve still got horses around you?

                 Oh, yes, yes, I've still got them around me and I'm still at the races all the time. 

                 So I don’t suppose you have been away for long, but you would miss them if they weren’t there in your life?

                 Yeah, I would, yeah.  I don’t think I could really not have a horse around me.  But what I do with my racehorses, we mainly race fillies, because my partner now is a breeder.  I met my partner through here, and he’s a breeder so he’s got mares. But if we have a gelding, if we keep a horse and it’s a gelding, after racing I rehome them - you know, I make sure I find a good home for them.  I might take them home and give them a little bit of work myself and retrain them a little bit myself, and then rehome them.

                 Find somebody who wants them?

                 Yeah, because I like to do the welfare with them.

                 Well, otherwise what happens to them?

                 No, they're looking after them very well these days; there’s a lot of people rehome them.  No, the welfare’s very, very important on them now.

                 But I mean the career of a thoroughbred is what, how many years?

                 At the best probably six.

                 Yeah, so they’ve got plenty of life left after that.

                 Yes, yeah.

                 So you're giving them a good life.

                 Yes.  And a lot of them go as jumpers, or eventers, and that.  And I still do jump judging on the eventing, so I'm quite interested in that.

                 So you go around?

                 Yeah.

                 That’s great.  It’s a lifetime interest and company, aren’t they?

                 Yeah.  Well, I did a lot of judging in the show ring too, but I stopped judging mainly when I came here because of the time.  They used to want me to judge of a weekend, and I'd have to work here at a sale for the weekend.

                 Yeah, there’s a conflict there.

                 So I really stopped judging then.

                 But now you’ve got the chance to get back to it again. 

                 Is there anything else you wanted to say, Suni?

                 I think that Inglises have made the right move, going to Warwick Farm.  I think it’s going to be spectacular, and something that is amazing and I hope that it works as well as Newmarket’s always worked.

                 Good, yeah.  You wish them well.

                 I do wish them well and I shall be there at the first sale.

                 You are, good.  You're hooked in.

                 Yeah.

                 You haven’t seen the site yet?

                 No, I don’t want to see it till it’s finished.

                 Till it’s ready, yes.  Well, that’ll be exciting next February.

                 I've spoken to Arthur, and Mark and they said, ‘Come and look.’ and I said, ‘No, not till it’s finished.’

                 You're going to see it in all its glory with lots of horses there being sold.

                 That's right, yeah.  And my partner’s in construction, so I see lots of constructions sites.

                 Not exciting.

                 I don’t really want to see another one.

                 Yeah, you'll see the finished product.

                 Yeah.

                 Well, thank you very much for talking with me.

                 It’s a pleasure.  I hope I've been helpful.

                 It’s been really interesting, and telling me about living around the area and your work here, and your interest in horses.

                 I hope it has been helpful to you.

                 Yeah, very.  Yeah, thank you.

                 Okay.