Kim Bilton and Jane Mitchell have notched up 10 years on the Dandenong Show horse committee.
“We were showing. We were sitting waiting for our children to finish and we were watching these elderly gentlemen trying to pack up, pulling out star pickets,” Kim said.
Jane continued: “We were lying on the grass, it was a beautiful day, and I said to Kim ‘look at those poor old blokes’.
“Jack Rae tapped us on the shoulder,” she said.
The now near 70-year show veteran asked them to come to a committee meeting.
“What they really meant was ‘would you join the committee?’,” Kim laughed.
“That was 10 years ago.
“We do the program, we organise judges and stewards, we have to organise all the ribbons, setting up all the rings – that’s a big job – and we need more people on board.
“We really need more people on the committee.
“They are all elderly. There’s no young ones coming through.”
Jane said: “It’s us that pulls the star pickets out now.”
Kim said that loyalty to the show was behind their commitment.
“If we don’t do it, how else is going to do it?” she said.
Jane said that in a normal workplace, someone always stepped into the empty shoes.
“No one steps up to do these things,” she said.
“Like sporting clubs, people are keen to participate but don’t want to help.
“Everyone wants to exhibit and there’s less and less shows.
“We both decided it was time to put back.
“So many communities now have lost their agricultural shows through various reasons.
“It’s part of the heritage of the area.”
The horse section receives about 1500 to 2000 entries over the two days, most from the South Gippsland area but some from as far afield as the other side of Melbourne.
Kim’s been involved with horses since she was a kid and got her first horse at age 14.
“My parents bought a children’s holiday farm which enabled me to have a horse,” she said.
“A few years later I started breeding horses and I’ve been doing that ever since.”
She now has seven Australian ponies and riding ponies on her Upper Beaconsfield property.
Her horse Autograph gave birth just hours before the Journal met her and Jane there.
“I can’t remember how I really started with them,” she said.
“Years ago they were very popular.
“Once you start you just keep going.
“It gets in our blood, I think.”
Jane said she mostly had thoroughbreds on her Narre Warren North property. She came from “a very non-horsey family”.
“I begged, borrowed and stole rides as a kid, and made friends with people with horses and rode their hoses when I was allowed,” she said.
“I didn’t get my first horse until I was 20.
“Horses are my thing, they’re my life.”
She shows them and both her daughters have done some show jumping.
“For the kids we always said it was a really good, outdoor, healthy obsession,” she said.
“Our kids were pretty good. They did their own horses, they did their stables. They grew up outside.”
Kim said her daughter rode as well.
“Our daughters are good friends so they went to pony club together,” she said.
“We were like a big family when we’d go to the shows.”
