Meg Ross: Australia’s Greatest Rookie Horsewoman Winner 2024

For the third consecutive year, Australia’s Greatest Horsewoman has been the feature competition at the Australian Cowgirl Co event held at the Tatura Park Exhibition complex in Victoria. Kim Petersen of The Australian Cowgirl Co ran the 2024 event from the 17th-21st of April, and this year, for the first time, added a Rookie Horsewoman title to go along with an Open and Junior competition. The four days incorporate clinics, workshops and tradeshows, and is described as “the must-see, can’t-miss event.” It is a matter of sisters are doin’ it for themselves, as the Tatura event is similar to the popular Cowgirls Gathering in Queensland.

Meg, from Lucindale in South Australia, took out the inaugural Rookie Horsewoman title, and Horse Deals caught up with her after the event.

“I live on the family farm at Lucindale, and I am a registered nurse and paramedic, and I like to spend my spare time with my horses and my dogs. I rode on the farm from an early age before going to Kingston Pony Club when I was nine or ten. Jackie Baker, who is instrumental in running the Naracoorte Young Rider Three Day Event, was one of my instructors at pony club and she is wondering why I am doing Western competitions rather than eventing. I have done eventing, and I have done showing. I live in eventing territory, but there are plenty of people around here who have been involved in the Queensland Cowgirl Gathering. We are in the wrong district and wrong state to get much exposure to Western competition, so The Australian Cowgirl Co is great for us down south.

“We do use horses and dogs on one of our properties, and it is inefficient for us, but it makes a big difference to the cattle and their longevity. I bred Billy Jean, the mare I took to Tatura. She is by Rachel and David Neale’s Myarra Southern Star (by Royalle Heartacre by Acres Destiny and out of a Dinkum Pepsi mare), and Billy Jean is out of a mare by Boonderoo Blackward HSH. A bit surprisingly, she is 16.1hh, which makes her elegant and lovely to watch, but much further from the ground than a cow.

“My horses need to be diverse. I want to make my horses into whatever I think they need to do on that particular day. As a young adult, I used to do a lot of clinics with the late Ken May. He and Anita Martin would come to Willalooka for three weeks every year and give horsemanship and cattle work clinics. They could do things with horses that I had never seen where working cattle was involved. I wasn’t going in a Western direction at that time, but each year I would go, and the knowledge was just layered on, and that style of riding appealed to me. They were performance horses, but they also had a purpose on the farm, and I liked that. They were not arena-bound, and that’s how I moved away from my traditional English style. Mum always had Stock Horses and Quarter Horses, and my dad’s family had Stock Horses that they used to play polo on, so I grew up essentially with cow-bred horses.

“I heard about the Australian Cowgirl Co and their first event at Tatura in 2022. Ken was talking about it in 2021. I had it in mind to do the first Australian Greatest Horsewoman, but when it came around post-COVID, I didn’t think Billy Jean had had enough exposure, as she was just five years old. I just thought I would see how that first event played out, and someone I really admire, Jess Smith, won that first Greatest Horsewoman event, which was amazing. I thought, if she can do this, it is something I can definitely achieve. So, 2023 came around, and I missed the entries. They are really early; it’s an Autumn event, and the entries were closed in the Spring before. I had some friends who went to the ’23 event, and they had a great time, and I was pretty annoyed I missed the entries.

“I did not miss the 2024 entries and put my nomination forward for the Rookie section the first time they ran one. The nomination is like a resumé: all about you and all about the horse. There were three divisions, Rookie, Junior and Open, with roughly twenty in each section. There were four competitions within the event.
• Reining
• Cutting
• Obstacle Challenge, run by the National Cowboy Challenge Association NCCA and similar to a Ranch Trail class.
• Reined Cowhorse.

“There were also other competitions conducted at the event that I was not involved with: colt starting, a liberty comp, a stand-alone Reining and Cutting comp and an Obstacle Challenge. Before the competition started, there were three days of open forum clinics conducted by invited clinicians: David Cowley from Canada, Magen Warlick from the US, Kate Elliott and Lana Kelderman from Victoria and Skye Liikanen from Queensland. There were discipline-specific judges for the events and a changing panel of judges for each event. Billy Jean’s favourite event is the Reined Cowhorse; it is what she’s made to do.

“There is a big atmosphere in the Tatura indoor, and it doesn’t matter how many times you get up at 3 am to work them in there, it’s not the same. Nothing prepares them for the competition like the experience of doing it. Across the four competitions, the Rookies didn’t get a comp-by-comp running score, and you don’t know how you went until the winner and placegetters are announced at the end of the competition. As it turned out, she did the best in the Reined Cowhorse; she did the best she could, and it was enough.

“There was not a clean slate final in the Rookie Division. All competitors entered the final phase, the Reined Cow Horse finale. Nobody knew the scores, so all you could go on was a feeling as to how you had been going. I thought I had gone pretty well, as I went in with the attitude: ‘do not leave the door open for anybody,’ and we gave it all we had. It was a very strong field of riders, and they called the placings in reverse order. I thought, ‘If I come in the top five, that will be amazing.’ They got to five, and it wasn’t me. Then four, and it still wasn’t me. I thought three was really good, but it still wasn’t me. It was just me and the girl I thought was the strongest competitor left, and I was thinking second would be wonderful. Then they called me forward as the winner. There have only been a few times in my life when my heart was in my throat, and that was definitely one of those times.

“The Rookie Division was a really good inclusion because the calibre of the Open competitors is amazing, and I am not there yet. I would love to go to Queensland for the Cowgirls Gathering, as there will not be another Australia’s Greatest Horsewoman until 2026, and of course, now I am not a rookie. I would like to do a circuit in Queensland and do some of the traditional Challenges, and in 2026 I will be ready.

“I was in Tatura for a week. When I go to a show, I am in full competition mode. I had a nice time, of course, but I am not there for a good time; I am there to do as well as I can, but I did celebrate when I finished. It was a wonderful event, and I am very grateful to the organisers, volunteers and the judges. I do two, maybe three, big shows a year and smaller shows in between across many disciplines. I’m working towards Battle On The Bidgee Stockman’s Challenge at Gundagai in October.
“My aim is to ride hard and never fear the spill. If you have any resistance about going out and trying something new, you are already hampering your ability to do it. Just go and have a go.”

Article: Anna Sharpley.