Ariel shot of beautiful Brookleigh
Everything is set in place to ensure that this weekend's event, WAYER @ Brookleigh, will be a great success. The weather should be in the mid twenties, the ground has been well prepared, the Brookleigh estate looks fantastic and Kate Herren will there reporting on it all for An Eventful Life.
We caught up with Angela Ramsey, the treasurer of WAYER who explained to us a little bit about how the event came to be.
“Last year was our inaugural event so at least this year we have a bit more of an idea of what we are doing. To give you a bit of background, two events are held at Brookleigh each year but one of the committees had been running their event for a while and Polly convinced us to pick it up, had decided it was time to stop so WAYER took over.”
Who are WAYER
WAYER stands for West Australian Young Event Riders and was started some eight years ago by PollyAnn Huntingdon. The organization aims to fill a gap in a training situation, which was developing from riders who were keen to be come professional riders but were not up to the standard to be picked for national squads. Top quality coaches are brought over from the Eastern states during the year to provide tuition for members and three years ago Angela became involved as the Treasurer. She also organizes and runs all the clinics. Karen Wood (yes, mum of Makayla, who is competing in the Young Rider Trans Tasman this weekend) has been involved with WAYER for several years, but understandably will not at Brookleigh this weekend.
“In the past this event has been a true One Day Event but since we have opened it up to preliminary level we now have to run over two days. We have got 167 entries and although the top classes are a little light we have got so many in the preliminary that we have split it into two senior preliminary sections and one junior. The dressage will start at 2pm on Saturday, with the CIC2* and CIC3* taking place in the evening. All the dressage from pre novice up will take place in the beautiful indoor arena (pictured above). That evening we all wine and dine all our officials and put on a sausage sizzle barbeque for everyone else. The course is looking really good and I think it will be challenging enough. Stuart Tinney, who is one of our regular WAYER coaches has commented that it was one of the toughest courses that he has ever taught over.
We try very hard to run WAYER @ Brookleigh as a boutique event, going the extra mile to make everyone who comes here have a great time. We have got wonderful sponsors for all our classes including:
Nikki Brooks, Olga Reveler Memorial – CIC3*
Fox United– CIC2*
Bindoon Tractors – Highest placed Young rider in 2*
Cadbury Fundraising WA – CIC*
Delamerie Park – Highest Placed junior in 1*
Brigid Woss – Senior pre novice
Saddles Plus – Junior pre novice + hats for XC jump judges and rider bags
Mudaring Community Bank - Bendigo bank – Senior preliminary A
Brookleigh - Senior preliminary AB
Dark Selections – Junior preliminary
We have also got wine sponsors, jump sponsors and lots of companies who have donated different things for our jump judges ‘survival kit’. It is one of the ‘rules’ of entry that you have to donate someone to help during the day – you can't just pay an extra $10 and get out of it. That said I feel it is really important that those helpers get some lovely goodies in their survival kit so they know how much they are appreciated.”
