Well they said that the venue for Camperdown Horse Trials was beautiful but WOW! After a 3 hour drive through fairly typical flat Australian countryside, we approached Camperdown, which is a very lovely Australian country town (despite driving on the wrong side of the road – it is still in Australia; more of that later) then headed out of town to the venue for the event. You drive up a road, up a steep hill, turn a corner and suddenly there below you is a huge crater filled by a lake. Stunning.
Camperdown lies within the 'Lakes and Craters' region, sitting at the foot of mountains which are part of a large extinct volcanic complex known as the "Leura Maar”. To the immediate west are the deep volcanic crater lakes Bullen-Merri and Gnotuk while to the east is the crater Lake Purrumbete popular for its trout and Chinook salmon fishing.
The venue for the event is the Camperdown Golf Club which again is slightly unusual. The area is lush and green but the ground seems pretty firm. Megan Jones has had a chance to walk the slopes that the cross country is on today and said that, although fairly hard the soil is volcanic and therefore crumbles, making it good going for the horses as it absorbs the impact. Unfortunately Megan has left Jester at home due to an abductor muscle spasm and so she decided it better to skip this event and to see if she can get him ready for Sydney but she will play it by ear.
The event has record entries this year with 14 in the CIC 3* and good entries in all other classes so we have a big day of dressage ahead.
(By the way, about the roads, it’s hard to describe but the lovely big avenues have roads on both sides of them with traffic going both ways. A little bit scary but interesting)
