Spelling agistment is the first baby step towards what could ultimately be a stronger involvement within the thoroughbred racing industry for the new owners of Squillani Park.
Meghan Dineen and her mother Robin Lucey purchased the 14-hectare Echunga property around seven weeks ago, chiefly as a home base for their own horses.
“But it’s got such great facilities that it seems a shame for us to have this beautiful property with only our three or four horses on it,” Meghan said. “So we thought we could start with some spelling agistment.”
The late Terry Board, who lost his battle with cancer just over a year ago, was the previous Squillani Park proprietor and the property consigned an Adelaide Magic Millions-topping ($270,000) colt by Kermadec earlier this year.
Squillani Park is regarded as a premium horse property, boasting extensive facilities, including post and rail fencing. It already has a long history as a racehorse agistment, pre-training and rehabilitation facility, but for the meantime Meghan and her mum are taking it slowly – with good reason.
“We’ve got a lot of horse experience, but we don’t know much about the racing industry,” Meghan said.
“We’ve got a couple of young warmbloods at the moment whom we bred specifically with dressage in mind. My mum previously has played polocrosse and I just had a little show hack who’s enjoying retirement at Squillani Park now.
“We previously kept them up at Mount Lofty, so it's nicer for them to have more spacious, flat paddocks now.
“We’re thinking that at some point down the track we would like to have a trainer come and work from the property and maybe look at some way of getting involved with the industry.”
Meghan said information passed on from Kerrie van Tijn, who was formerly at Squillani Park, provided an insight to the property’s capabilities.
“When we took it on, Kerrie did say that the trainers who had kept their horses here loved the property and would probably be happy to keep utilising the facilities in the future,” she said.
“Because there’s the walker, there’s the treadmill, some really big rehabilitation stables for long-term stabling – it has some great facilities to offer some value, if people are that way inclined.
“As we’re not qualified in dealing with horses that need full-on rehab we’re just looking at getting some horses in paddocks and seeing what the interest is in the racing industry. If the interest is there, down the track we may look at employing someone to take on the role similar to which Kerrie did.”
Squillani Park has large share paddocks or smaller irrigated paddocks for recovery. It is situated about 30 minutes from Adelaide.
For any inquiries about Squillani Park phone Meghan Dineen (0408 503 589) or Robin Lucey (0407 795 568).
IMAGE: Meghan Dineen (right) and her mother, Robin Lucey, at Squillani Park.