AQHA Magazine May / June 2019 AQHA MayJune2019_WEBSITE | Page 39

The ARBC was kicked off on Saturday 20th April with
a strong field of competitors in our ARBC Western Dres-
sage Events. We would like to thank Western Dressage
Association of Queensland organisers Jim Whitaker,
Vivian Wearing, Lisa Berg, our judge Laurel Davies and
her penciler Jayne Leadbetter from Western Dressage
Queensland for making this event possible. A special
thank you goes out to all the callers for the riders.
Such a great number of entries for our ARBC Western
Dressage Event held on Sunday 20th April.
A total of 11 classes were run with over 45 tests complet-
ed at this great event. The Western Dressage Sanctioned
Event Champion for Basic Level and Level One Vivian
Wearing riding Tassawoods Ace A1-11534, Reserve Cham-
pion for Basic and Level One Gita Thomas riding Shiney Nu
Addition Q-80551. Mandy Camfferman taking out Champi-
on Level Two and Level Three riding Mondure Dunitlikea-
cowboy Q-65775. A full results listing is available on the
ARBC Website.
Congratulations to everyone and thank you for helping
to make it such a successful event at our ARBC Western
Dressage Event, we look forward to welcoming you all
back in 2020.
Our evening turned to the auction of an item hand drawn
by a special lady from the USA Ashley McLaughlin, she
drew this beautiful campdrafter sketch all the while
wanting it to be auctioned at the ARBC and all proceeds
going to the struggling farmers here in Aus. The
foundation chosen to receive the proceeds of this sketch
was GIVIT Pty Ltd and they have promised to show
Ashley how it has helped families in rural Australia. Well
done to everyone for supporting this foundation and Ash-
ley for her great heart to want to help.
In true ARBC Style we adjourned to the ARBC Saloon for
some well deserved drinks and catch ups with both new
and old friends.
We thank everyone that supported, competed or just
came to watch the action, we are looking forward to a
great year ahead in preparing for our 2020 ARBC Show
where we will be releasing news shortly of some new
inclusions to our already colourful and action packed
program.
Our dates for the 2020 ARBC Show will be 7th to 11th
April, Errol and Gita look forward to welcoming you all
along again next year.
The culmination of all events at the ARBC is the VIP
Dinner where we Celebrate our Champions and Thank
all our Wonderful Sponsors, this year we extended our
guest list to accommodate 200 seated guests and it sold
out weeks before the ARBC Show began. We would like
to thank our local restaurateur and caterer Col from the
Windsor Hotel, yet again there were compliments abound
over the quality of your food and presentation of the
mezzanine level of our great venue.
There were some special mentions at our VIP Dinner this
year as part of the formal proceedings of the evening.
We made the decision to continue the wishes of a special
lady Christine Parnell who lost her battle with cancer
last year and had started an award at the ARBC, the
Chris Parnell Sportsmanship and Encouragement Award,
recognising the great sportsmanship of a competitor that
perhaps didn’t win anything but showed true sportsman-
ship towards competitors and her pony. The winner of
this special award this year was presented by our reining
judges Donnie McLaughlin and Darren Simpson to Katie
Pope. Congratulations Katie you certainly showed amaz-
ing sportsmanship and we do hope winning this award
encourages you to continue on your path in reining.
The Dan Kingsley Custom Saddlery handcrafted
Derby Champion Trophy Saddle
This year we celebrated our Champions handing out
eight big cheques to the value of $25,000 to the great
Champions of the ARBC for 2019. As the Classic Chal-
lenge and ARBC OPEN Derby are the events that this
show was originally built on we presented the Champions
of each event with a leather Ariat Jacket embroidered
with their names. This year’s recipients were OPEN
Derby Champion Warren Backhouse and OPEN Challenge
Champion Robert Leach.
The proceedings moved into a Stallion Service Auction
chaired by the golden Microphone Jim Ryan, where we
auctioned off two stallion services kindly sponsored by
John and Lorraine Wylie from Xtreme Genes, the
legendary Gunners Special Nite Q-80153 owned by
Turnabout Farms and Chic Dreamin owned by Silver
Spurs Equine, both stallions getting top bids for a chance
to breed to them. Our two stallions kindly sponsored
by Nathan Wilson and Brydie Hughes, Beniah Q-72359
and Tassa N Smart Q-40837 also were auctioned off on
the evening to some competitive bidders. Thank you to
these great people for putting forward these services to
amazing stallions.
Warren Backhouse, Cody Stevens, Rob Leach, Nathan Wilson
and Tyler Smith showing off the BIG CHEQUES worth in
excess of $25,000
For full results go to www.ARBC.NET.AU
May • June • 2019 • The Australian Quarter Horse Magazine • 39