HORSES AND HISTORY

Bushman engraving at Giant’s Castle

Giant’s Castle, Drakensberg

Mick Goss
Summerhill Stud CEOOne of the aspects of thoroughbred racing in which the sport’s fans take pride, is the integrity of the breed. There is no species (ourselves included) on earth with a better documented genetic history, and it’s a matter of fact that there is not a horse on Summerhill (or anywhere in the thoroughbred world, for that matter) whose ancestry cannot be traced to the original three founding fathers of the breed, the Godolphin Barb, the Darley Arabian and the Byerley Turk. All of these horses were of Arab origin, two of them from what we know today as the Middle East (or old Arabia), and one a North African.

In the context of its domestic relevance, the Byerley Turk led the charge of Captain Robert Byerley at Ireland’s Battle of the Boyne in 1690, where the Gosses and the Maguires stood shoulder to shoulder in the nationalist cause.

History tells us too, that long before the Spaniards and the English began their human plunder of the West coast of Africa, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians and the Arabs were engaged in the trade of slaves on our Eastern seaboard. That they reached as far down as South Africa is evident in this engraving, found in a remote cave just a short drive from here, among the fabled ramparts of Giant’s Castle.

No, the image is not one of Shogunnar on his way to the start for Saturday’s Gold Circle Derby (Gr.2), nor is it one of Stubb’s elegant elongations of the horses’ form. It is an original Bushman engraving, thought to date before Biblical times, though we have no precise understanding of when it was sculpted. What we do know, is that the Bushmen captured the scenes of their day, and it predates the arrival of the amaXhosa, the amaTembu, the amaMpondo (the three tribes that gave us Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki,) and the amaZulu (from whence came Shaka and Jacob Zuma), whose arrival the anthropologists suggest dates back between 1400 and 2000 years.

Six or seven years back, Cheryl and I made our fourth journey to the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe race meeting in Paris, as the guests of the late Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Maktoum al Maktoum. The “Arc” is Europe’s greatest horserace, and it has taken place at Longchamps in the Bois de Boulogne on the first Sunday in October since 1920. Paris is dressed in its autumnal finery in October, and if you are lucky with the weather, it’s arguably the best time to visit the French capital. On this particular occasion though, it was pouring cats and dogs, and on one of the days approaching the race, we did our usual thing by visiting the Louvre, where they had assembled the greatest collection of Impressionist art ever exhibited in a single location. The “Violets” and the “Sunflowers” were there, so was Monet’s Lily Pond, the best of Renoir etc, and while we had to endure the pouring bleedin’ rain for several hours and pay something approaching R500 at the door, it was the best spent cash I can remember. Sitting in the taxi on the way home, Cheryl and I could scarcely believe ourselves, that we should’ve been fortunate enough to be there to witness this work of 500 years ago. It might never happen again. It dawned on us though, as we alighted from the taxi at our hotel, just how lucky we are as South Africans, and especially in the context of this exhibition, to live where we do.

As dawn breaks, we look out from our bedroom, as I’ve recounted before, upon a canvas comparable to anything on the planet, where the shoulders of the Drakensberg stretch for hundreds of kilometres from north to south, with Giant’s Castle as its pinnacle. This is Southern Africa’s greatest mountain range, providing a spectacular backdrop to what we call our front garden.

Yet its influence on our lives is considerably greater than mere scenery. The withering effect of the weather on these peaks has witnessed their retreat over millions of years from Hilton near Pietermaritzburg to its current position, leaving in its wake a wondrous endowment of mineral riches in our valleys. These days, the towering magnitude of the Berg determines our weather, and guarantees us one of the most reliable climates in the world.

But it’s the history of the place that intrigues us more than anything, and the fact that it was once home to the most spiritual people on this earth, the Bushman. In ancient summers, five or six thousand of these fascinating people occupied the strongholds of the Drakensberg. With the onset of autumn, they followed the great herds of Eland, the Black Wildebeest and the Red Hartebeest across the plains of Summerhill and its neighbours, down into the bushveld of the Hlanzeni and the hunting grounds of the Zulu kings, where they spent the winter.

Tragically, these people who knew more of our origins and the world around us than we’ll ever know, were hunted out, literally, by the settler tribes of the era; we have much to account for in the fact that they are no longer, but that is a story for another day; we shall not dwell on it, as it’s more productive to speak of what they left behind.

The exhibition at the Louvre had triggered memories of the paintings and engravings in our mountain fastness. For R50, by contrast, and within a half an hour’s drive of Summerhill, you take your Land Rover, your family and your dog to Giant’s Castle or Game Pass Shelter, where the work is not 500, but 1500 and 15,000 years old; and unlike the Mona Lisa, whose mocking smile says “keep your 10 metre distance,” here you get personal at a few centimetres.

Wherever we live in life, we tend to take the things around us for granted, and South Africans are not exempt. Often enough, we dwell on the things that irk us, forgetting there’s a balance to life. Those of us who live where the “first people” once did, are also unbalanced. We tend to forget there are things that irk us.

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IT'S ALL ABOUT UPBRINGING

Autumn on the Summerhill Estate
(Photo : Summerhill Stud)

“On Saturday, we’ll bid another consignment of the farm’s hand-made yearlings farewell.”

You’d be forgiven as you approached Summerhill Stud, for believing that its immediate precincts would be the perfect world of any one with a taste for beauty and an appreciation of tranquillity. A warm vein of cordiality greets you at the gates, and it’s quickly apparent that Summerhill is its own form of freemasonry, with the horse as its icon, where the groom and the boss belong to the same brotherhood, and their material differences seem incidental. Here the horse is not so much a way of life, as a reason for breathing. This is more than good real estate. Rolling hills and deep complex soils over sandstone and basalt, hundreds of great trees and emerald green pastures tell you the country is kind, but not soft. With their stately prime ministerial residences, their rich racing heritage, and the old chapel basking in the lee of Giant’s Castle, Summerhill and Hartford are national treasures.

These farms are deep in horse country, just outside Mooi River, a slow village with a little railway station, left behind after the Anglo-Boer War. There are more churches per capita than anywhere else. Old families and a bit of old money still abound. To get there you drive in over rolling hills, past storied battlegrounds, you glimpse the ramparts of the Giant to the west, and there it is, 3000 acres of some of the best stock raising dirt in the world, cascading lakes and the slightest suggestion of Eden. It doesn’t really need a sales pitch: you learn soon enough what this place is about.

At the same time, it strikes you immediately as the most idyllic place on the planet to live, but this isn’t the owners’ private world. It is a place of business, the centre of operations. The private world is at Umvumvu, high up on the Giant’s road, and adjacent to the Summerhill complex of farms. “Farm” doesn’t quite seem the right noun for this place though. Yes it is a farm, but it also has the air of a Zulu elder’s kraal overlooking the Mooi River and its surrounding valleys, more about aesthetics than bushels to the acre, more a place of peace and beauty than of industry. Places with class have space, the farm doesn’t intrude on the land, and it doesn’t want to use all of it, as is often the way on stud and agistment properties.

One thinks of meadows rather than paddocks, of copses and coverts. In high summer, the meadows are green and sweet, the swards thick: kikuyu, some rye grass, white and strawberry clover interspersed with oats. Creamy butterflies ride the summer winds. Fish eagles cry, that most African of sounds, and barbets cackle away in the ironwood trees. There is always birdsong here. Wild ducks are everywhere, on the dams and the lakes, and the stream is still and pregnant with the rain, until the breeze whips around and sends ripples skimming towards the glowering ramparts of the Drakensberg. Wedged-tailed fish eagles swoop down from there and occasionally snatch a trout in their talons, disturbing a clutch of reed buck. Jackals hunt for duck eggs along the riverbanks. A thrush has sculpted the neatest of nests, like a teardrop done in leaves and a bit of mud, in an acacia in the courtyard.

Mrs Goss would shoot me if she knew I was telling this story. It’s her private world, and Mr Goss always says it became hers when the project went past the budget for the third time. But our readers want to know our personalities, and Umvumvu is like her, languid, understated, private and quietly purposeful. She has never been a demonstrative lady, yet you know she’s hopelessly in love with this place, not for its flashiness, because it’s not that way, but for its ethnic elegance, the way it fits into the natural world. When the Gosses first arrived here, our Zulus had never put one brick on top of another, yet here they’ve crafted a homestead unique in its African style and character, which gazes out onto a World Heritage site. By contrast, the Drakensberg is stark and spectacular, stretching away for 90 kilometres to Sani Pass, and if you stand at the summit of Giant’s Castle, you think of a French nobleman’s chateau presiding over the Somme.

Mrs Goss loves trees, this is her botanical garden, and particularly those that are true to Africa. They’re a second family to her, and she tends to them like she does her cattle, a herd of Ngunis that turn every view through a picture window into a work of art.

Down below, stretching from its verges to the floor of the valleys, is the home of the champion breeders. This is the life’s work of generations of Summerhill families, and we all know what it means to be part of it. On Saturday, we’ll bid another consignment of the farm’s hand-made yearlings farewell. They’ve had the benefit of one of the finest upbringings known to man. Some of them will be departing their birth-place forever; others, we like to think more fortunate, will eventually find their way “home”. Either way, it’s a fair bet they’ll be writing their own piece of Summerhill’s future history.

Enquiries :
Tarryn Liebenberg 27 (0) 83 787 1982
or email tarryn@summerhill.co.za
www.summerhill.co.za

WONDERFUL WORLD

A yearning for Africa…
(Photo : Gareth Du Plessis)

“…the yearning for the
Great Outdoors of this Country.”

Mick Goss
Summerhill Stud CEOThere’s an old saying that you can take a man out of Africa, but it’s difficult to take Africa out of a man, and we were reminded of this on the weekend. Just a few kilometres from Summerhill, on the newly re-surfaced Giant’s Castle road (what a joy!) we were startled by a unique sight. Thousands of people make the pilgrimage to the Drakensberg (uKhahlamba) World Heritage Mountains every year, in search of the ubiquitous Lammergeier, the bearded vulture whose origins go back to Tibet. Because of its scarcity, many are disappointed at not seeing this grand bird, but they nonetheless return year after year, charmed by the other marvels of this magnificent park.

When we were last at Giant’s Castle, my son, Nicholas and I were fortunate enough to find a Lammergeier soaring just outside the main Giant’s camp. Their habit is to appear for a few moments, and then those great wings whisk them away on the back of a distant thermal, and consign them to our memory banks. It wasn’t unlike that on Sunday, but in this case, we found two of them hovering not far from the crest of a hill, right in front of us. Again, they allowed us just long enough to identify them, and then gracefully, but almost torturously they spiralled off into the blue, winging it back to their mountain lair.

Not long ago, the Lammergeier (so named because they see lambs as prey,) was the scourge of sheep farmers, looked upon as the enemy and treated as fair game. Thanks to the work of the body of our conservationists, today it is seen for what it is, a magnificent bird on the edge of extinction.

But this is Africa, and we are not only about Lammergeiers. This weekend alone, we saw Fish Eagle on our lakeside banks, Reedbuck in abundance, Oribi and Blesbok and countless Jackal, which keep us awake at night with their haunting calls. There were traces of Lynx Rufus (Rooikat, Bobcat) in the vicinity of the old Up The Creek Barn, while the celebrated ceramicist, Michael Haigh of Cafe Bloom, reported a leopard sighting on the Giant’s Castle road.

What a privilege to live side by side with these creatures, and to share it with some of the continent’s finest Thoroughbreds. It is a rare harmony, quite unique in the world, and one of the many charms of our existences.

Ask any South African emigrant living abroad, how he feels about his adoptive country, and you’ll hardly ever get mixed signals. But the one thing most of them have in common, is the yearning for the great outdoors of this country, and what they hold. There just isn’t another place quite like it.

South African Breeders' Championship : THE BIG FIVE

A misty Summerhill morning
(Photo : Greig Muir)

“More Bulldust Part 3”
Extract from Summerhill Sires Brochure 2009-2010

Horses are a language we can all share.

Sometimes there are quiet asides, sometimes dramatic moments, but there’s always a story to tell. Look hard enough and you’ll find romance in the life of every great racehorse.

At Summerhill, we think we’re the luckiest people on the planet. We wake up on one of the great pieces of real estate on earth; we gaze out upon a World Heritage site, the Drakensberg; we go to work with some of mankind’s finest human beings; and we get to work with the noblest creature the good Lord ever created.

On the way, we’ve visited the mountain top, a place few people ever get to go. In the annals of recorded history, only six farms have ever aspired to the South African Breeders’ Championship, the tightest contest in all of racing. In what must surely be remembered as the “Summerhill decade”, we’ve known so many champagne moments, but they are mere footnotes in an extraordinary tour de force.

Understand, there was no big enterprise or family cash behind Summerhill. In a world as competitive as it’s ever been, and with massive fortunes pouring into the game, we’ve had to do things differently. A bit of inspiration, loads of perspiration, the occasional celebration.

The result is an animal that’s had to be different. A horse that runs like he knows what he owes.

The “Toyota” of South African racing: excellent quality, great dependability, and outstanding value. The virtues our nation has come to respect most. And they know too, this is the “Genuine Article”. Honest, authentic, the original.

Any number of records and five consecutive Breeders’ Championships later, besides God, we owe these victories to the racehorse. Our history was written on his back. We are his heirs, but he is his own heritage.

For close on a century now, our families have devoted themselves to this religion. We are unashamedly proud of our connectivity with our sport, and the fact that every day, there’s a new story to tell.

So mark this then. When you’re dealing with Summerhill, you’re not only buying a horse or a service. You’re buying a piece of history.

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Click below to read “Bulldust” Part 1 and Part 2

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF A CHAMPIONSHIP : Part 3

The Giant - Giant’s Castle
(Summerhill Stud)

BUILDING CAPACITY:
NOT WITHOUT THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN THE RIGHT PLACE

So we came to the realization that we needed to flatten our management structure, and that experts in each division would be far more effective than subordinates answering to someone who himself was no expert beyond his own qualifications. Instead of bookkeepers, we put chartered accountants in charge of finance; instead of a part-timer we put a serious agriculturalist in charge of the farm; and the stallion manager was exactly that, a stallion man, dyed in the wool. The Broodmare Manager is a graduate of a veterinary school, the Building and Maintenance Manager was no longer a handyman; the trading store demanded a trader in the proper sense of the word. And so on.

The increments that flow from this approach are remarkable. Having an expert doing his job properly means others can concentrate on theirs: the need for duplication is cancelled and the added capacity is palpable. Not only does this mean the job gets done the way it’s intended, but it also means there is plenty of room for more horses, more stallions, for more feed, more foals, more customers, for more guests at Hartford, more insurance through that division, and so the wheel grinds on, and the team gets better by the day. We’ve been here thirty years now, but the real work started only fifteen ago. The word “only” is appropriate here, as fifteen years is a big chunk of any man’s working life, either way.

The other thing that flows from a job well done, is the satisfaction of having done it. I’ve always said I’m the luckiest man on earth, living where I live. I wake in the mornings and gaze out through double doors upon a world heritage site, at the centre of which is “The Giant”, the pivot around which our lives revolve. Like Gulliver after a well earned rest, he lies there prostrate across the length of the Drakensberg, the tip of his nose and the point of his chin signalling the apex of these great mountains.

I wake up next to one of the loveliest ladies in Mooi River, and I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years; I go to work with some of the finest people on this earth, and I get to work with the greatest creature the good Lord ever created. What a noble profession, made the nobler by the quality of those around us, and the excellence of what they deliver.

The next episode will follow next week.

Click here to read :
THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF A CHAMPIONSHIP : Part 1
THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF A CHAMPIONSHIP : Part 2