One of Victoria’s last suburban pony clubs, which has a unique reason for remaining barely 10 kilometres from Melbourne’s CBD, celebrates its 50th birthday this Sunday.
Williamstown Horse and Pony Club president David Vinycomb said the club had survived because it was lodged in a buffer zone between an oil refinery and one of Melbourne’s wealthiest residential areas.
“We think it’s the last suburban pony club left in Victoria because most of the inner-suburban clubs have all gone by-the-by now, including Altona, Yarraville and Footscray,” he said.
“We’ve managed to hang on due to the fact that we’ve got quite a large agistment paddock which is next to the pony club, in Maddox Road.
“That land belongs to Mobil so they lease the land to us at peppercorn rates and we look after it and have turned it into a horse agistment. That’s one of the main reasons why we’re still viable, really.”
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Conceived by Dorothy MacAdie, the club was established by Vi Colquhoun and Pat McDonald in 1963. It remains predominantly female with 26 members ranging in age from five to 22.
Mr Vinycomb said the club might be small, but its members were very proactive.
A few years ago, it needed money for a sand arena so it contacted singer Paul Kelly.
“One of our members is his builder,” Mr Vinycomb laughed.
“So, he said to Paul, ‘Could you do us a favour?’ So we lined up that and a few of the Triple J bands and had a massive concert down at the Pines and that was a huge fund-raiser for our sand arena.
“We got some [Hobsons Bay] council grounds at Quarry Reserve, which is next to the cemetery. But we’ve now got permission to actually have a sand arena built where we do show jumping and dressage and things like that.”
Past and present members and supporters are being invited to the arena’s opening and anniversary from noon on Sunday.
It will be held at the club’s rally ground in Quarry Reserve, Park Crescent, Williamstown.
» Kate Sagar, 0412 563 597
