Horses in the coal fields

Our group was taken way into the Upper Hunter Valley today to see where the big horse studs are situated. The scenery was beautiful and after a rather foggy start the weather turned out to be perfect again. We had a guide with us from “Upper Hunter Tours” who was not only a local but he was also a horse owner and breeder so we were given plenty of information we would not have gathered except from an expert.

I knew there were coal fields in this area but from Craig we learned about the size of them and the way they are encroaching on the arable lands of the Hunter. As time goes on there will be less and less of this beautiful country left. Already many of the vineyards have one as have horse and cattle studs. The land has been acquired by the coal mines.

We were taken in to see the layout of one of the horse studs owned by the Sheik of Dubai, “Woodlands” The entrance was quite impressive but not ostentatious.

This place is for breeding mares and as we passed the different paddocks we were told, “In this paddock on this side the fillies have two weeks to go before foaling” and “On this side they have two days before they foal” and “They will be moved into this paddock when they are within 12 hours of foaling”. We were told how the veterinary nurses knew when that was.

We all stopped to take a photograph of a fiberglass statue of the horse from this stables that won the Melbourne Cup. 

We were taken to the top of a small hill from where we could look out over the property, what glorious country! The Hunter River runs through the property and no one photograph could contain all the land in the property. 

After lunch we went further afield to see another horse property and to see how close the coal mines were getting to it. 

The little town of Denham where we had our lunch.

Quite staggering! The dust from the coal is over everything and in spite of assurances to the contrary by the mining bosses, the dust is definitely affecting the health of the animals and humans living close to it.

To finalise our day we drove to the tip of Soldiers Point, near to our hotel and watched as the sun went down. Since there were a few clouds the sunset was quite spectacular.

A fellow was just finishing cleaning his fish as we arrived and his audience of Pelicans looked so hungry!

 The sun was not down at this point but the fish cleaning was almost finished.

Rather than show you a sunset I will show you the effect of the sunset on the boats in the marina at Soldiers Point. 

I thought they looked so beautiful.!

AJ