The Randalls– Retirement from RDA

September 2007
Popular brother and sister team Graham and Margaret Randall, who belong to the Hunter Club, were recently given a ‘retirement from RDA’ luncheon at the Raymond Terrace Lower Hunter RDA, with many of their RDA friends in attendance to say thank you for their wonderful support over the last 34 years. Both have been closely involved with Riding for the Disabled since its early days in NSW.

Margie began coaching riders in Sydney at Pearl Batchelor’s Riding School at Pennant Hills. She then was accredited as the first RDA riding coach in NSW and commenced coaching at the RDA Tall Timbers Centre at Kellyville. She later won a Churchill Fellowship to study RDA activities in the UK and spent about 6 weeks visiting UK centres in 1974. After moving up to the Cessnock district in 1984 she continued to coach at Kellyville for two days a week for some years. She then had a short break before commencing coaching night classes once a week at the Raymond Terrace RDA Centre. Margie also became an RDA Assessor and visited various centres around Australia to carry out assessment tasks. Margie is very highly regarded as a riding coach and has a very good eye for a horse and its movement.

Graham has been particularly interested in carriage driving for a long time. He successfully competed with their grey Welsh pony mare Fairlight Symbelle in the 1980s and later with their stylish black pony Cadet. In the meantime Graham was doing a lot of work at the Kellyville RDA, being able to turn his hand to anything that needed building or fixing. When the first RDA wheelchair loading vehicle arrived from England in 1989 Graham immediately became interested in becoming an accredited Whip, so he could teach carriage driving. He was duly accredited by Diana Lawrence (now Morton) in 1990, along with others including Ken Thomas, Janet Muspratt and Chris Reinhardt. Another vehicle was soon built by Cessnock TAFE, with Graham closely supervising, and doing most of the finishing touches. Graham then started driving with clients from RDA at Kellyville, using Cadet. He brought Cadet down from home near Cessnock once a fortnight for these lessons. A star pupil soon emerged – Greg Pike, whose wife Jan is a current medalist in Paralympic dressage. Graham gave Greg all his early driving instruction with Cadet. Later Greg drove with Ken Thomas and Greg and Ken ended up in Germany at the World Championships for Drivers with a Disability.
Carriage driving was by now established at Raymond Terrace so Graham decided to continue his coaching there, along with Cadet. It was much closer to home. Since then Graham has put in many hours as a Whip as well as maintaining the carriages and being a ground helper when not in with a client.
In recent years Graham and Margie have scaled down their RDA activities after a long stint of service, and have enthusiastically joined the Hunter Harness Society. They both drive, and go to most Hunter events and a number of shows each year, with their grey pony gelding Koorana Ovation, whom they broke to harness after he had been a stallion for a number of years. Graham is currently working on the restoration of another sulky, one of many he has done over the years, and yet another pony has been broken in to harness by these very competent quiet achievers!
Janet Muspratt