AFTER visiting the Macleay Valley two months ago, Joy Poole, chair of the Australian Stock Horse Association, believes a movie could be made about the area’s history with stock horses.
Ms Poole visited the Willawarrin region in June to investigate one bloodline she did not have much information about.
Now chair of the stock horse association, she has been researching and writing about Australia’s stock horse history for the past 10 years.
And she describes the Radium 3 bloodline as the missing link in that history.
“I’d heard of Radium 3, but I hadn’t found out a great deal about him,” Ms Poole told The Macleay Argus, adding that the breed had a huge effect on the North Coast.
While upriver Ms Poole met with ‘Coggy’ Wilshuen, a horse breeder who lives west of Willawarrin.
In 1937 Coggy’s grandfather Victor Farrell brought Radium 3 to the Macleay Valley.
Mr Farrell bought Radium 3 in 1937, paying £200 to buy the horse from Roy Harwood, a dairy farmer from the Taree area.
Mr Farrell had been so eager to buy the horse he handed Mr Harwood a blank cheque and told him to fill it in.
The dairy farmer initially did not want to part with Radium 3 but later relented, then with the proceeds of the sale he built a new house and dairy.
Almost 10 years later Radium 3 accidentally choked himself to death when he got his foot caught in a fly veil covering his face at a demonstration campdraft in Sydney.
The search was then on for a similar breed, which unearthed Radiant, a brother to Radium 3.
Radiant was crossed with Joy’s Pal, a mare owned by Joy Flood - the publican’s wife in Willawarrin - and on Australia Day, 1955, a horse called Abbey was born in the stable, which is still standing behind the hotel.
Abbey went on to form a formidable partnership with champion rider Harry Ball, until he was killed in a car accident at Frederickton in 1964.
Abbey was put in the care of a friend of Harry’s, Theo Hill at Quirindi, until the champion stallion died in 1982.
By then the Abbey bloodline was well developed.
Ms Poole said there were about 32,000 descendants of Abbey around the world.
She said the next most successful stallion has about 12,000 descendants.
The bloodline has a formidable reputation and Ms Poole described the breed as tremendous all-round horses - there is little they can’t do.
The visit was Ms Poole’s first to Willawarrin, which she described as a key spot in Australian stock horse history because it was Abbey’s birth place.
And it allowed her to research the missing link - how Radium 3 came to the Macleay Valley.
“If nothing had happened to Radium 3, Radiant wouldn’t have come to that area and Abbey wouldn’t have been born,” she said.
“It certainly cements Kempsey’s spot as one of the real hotspots in the stock horse society.”
Ms Poole will be returning to the Macleay Valley to continue her research, although because she is the current chair of the Australian Stock Horse Association she is unable to have the research published now.
She is hoping to write a book called The Pub At Willawarrin, acknowledging Abbey’s birthplace, to recount the dramatic story of Radium 3 and Abbey.
And another ambition is to shoot a movie.
“You wouldn’t have to change anything for the script,” she said.
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