by Carla Caruso

More trees and enhanced equestrian facilities are on the wishlist for owners who keep horses in Park 6 of your Adelaide Park Lands. 

The city Council is reviewing its Community Land Management Plan for Lefevre Park / Nantu Wama (Park 6).

Those who are depasturing horses in its paddocks want to ensure that the Park can be enjoyed for generations to come – and improved where necessary.

Adelaide lawyer Will Fennell and his wife, Lucy, both have horses depastured there. 

Rather than it being a traditional agistment arrangement, the City of Adelaide doesn’t provide food or shelter for the horses; this is left to the licence holders. 

Licences are restricted to one horse per person and applicants must live within 2km of the park. (The cost is $45.50 per week, with the park currently housing 13 horses.)

Will and Lucy have been licensees for about four years and use their horses for both sport and pleasure riding. 

“I would like to see some better equestrian facilities down there,” Will said. “We’ve got an arena, but the surface isn’t ideal. So, I’d like to improve that.

“I think we could rejig the paddocks [too] and put a tonne more trees in there. We could divide the paddocks up so there are more of them, and plant tree-ways for multi-use activity - much like the existing bridle track that is used for walking, cycling, and riding horses.”

His long-term agenda, though, is ensuring that “the opportunity I’ve had to have horses in the park is available to my children and other children of that generation”.

“I got to about age 40 and I’d been obsessed with horses my entire life,” Will says. “I’d always ridden them from time to time, but I’d never owned one.

“You can establish a deep bond with [the animal] and the relationship overall is hugely rewarding, even though they can be a lot of work.

“I treasure the time I’ve had down there so far, and I think anyone who lives within the zone should have that opportunity available to them.

“I’d like to see [the arrangement] continue forever really because the horse paddocks are an iconic feature of North Adelaide that have been there for well over a century.”

The bridle track, which runs the whole way around Park 6, first opened in 1939. The horse paddocks cover about 40ha of the park, with it also housing sports fields and courts and a playground.  

For Will, along with the paddocks being “a blessing from a personal perspective”, there’s “a huge amount of community pleasure” derived from the space too. 

“There are so many people when you’re down there, feeding or riding around, who just come to look at the horses. All the kids have got a favourite [animal].

“They might be our horses but there’s definitely a lot of public buy-in to them. People often stop us to ask about the horses and we’re always happy to chat with them.”

Though, he’d prefer people didn’t feed the animals as their diets must be carefully monitored.

This aside, Will says the space has so many pluses. “It’s much more of a natural environment for a horse than your typical agistment facility. The paddocks themselves are about 30 acres [or 12ha] each. So, these horses are moving about and grazing all day, which is important for their health.

“In terms of an animal welfare perspective, it really is a very, very kind place to keep a horse [too] because they’re companion animals, and they find security in the company of others. When you have a large herd of a dozen, there’s enormous security for them in that.

“If you think about it, it’s a pretty amazing facility. I would bet to say there isn’t another major city in the world that has horses on acreage within cooee of a city like Adelaide has.”

Will and Lucy use their horses for team penning – a western equestrian sport, which evolved from the common ranch work of separating cattle into pens for branding, doctoring, or transport. The couple ride their horses in Park 6 about three times a week. 

Other licensees use their horses for show jumping, hunting, and leisure pursuits.