Lorelei Payne is radiant. Svelte and toned in shorts and a turquoise

Photo: Alyson McGovern
Lorelei and
Baharti
Q-47345, Be
Explosive
Q-59172 and
Beaonce
Q-52547
Lorelei Payne
Lorelei Payne is radiant. Svelte and toned in shorts and a turquoise Aztec-print shirt, sporting
chunky gold and turquoise jewellery and with a welcoming smile as wide as her funky new
turquoise glasses, Lorelei is a shadow of her former self and she is ecstatic.
In two years Lorelei has shed 50 kilos. Six months ago she began a stimulating new job; she
has a new man tucked away in the bush and a new horse lurking on the horizon. Life for
Lorelei just doesn’t get any better than this.
Lorelei and Baharti Q-47345
and Beaonce Q-52547
Photo: Alyson McGovern
Baharti, champion mare everywhere including the 2005 Brisbane Royal. Shown here with
Leanne Bartlett and Lorelei.
Photo: MaryAnne Leighton
Lorelei and her 14.1 hh Galloway, Signal,
most successful Galloway at 1975 Sydney
Royal and Reserve Champion Galloway at
the 1975 Horse of the Year Show
Alyson
McGovern
( Dip. Photo.)
Professional
Photographer
Phenomenal success in
the hack ring
Lorelei entered the western world the same way
many other distinguished western riders did
– from a successful hacking career. Her father
trained racehorses and when Lorelei was six
he told her, ‘If you want a horse, you do it all
yourself.’ She did it all herself with her first pony
and is still doing it all herself today.
enduring a long six months working with Vince
Corvi and riding his hacks and galloways, (many
of which were straight off the race track) she
declared, ‘I’ve had enough! There’s more to
life than show horses,’ and she decided to try
something else. The something else was Quarter Horses. Lorelei had occasionally spoken with
Lorelei and the Queensland Country Life Hack
of the Year, The Great
Gatsby, in 1980
With her first pony she did the usual rounds of
pony club, barrels and bending, then moved up
to big horses and the joys of eventing and hacking but realised she preferred to prepare the
horses rather than racing around on them and
thus was always found at the front of the line in
best presented classes.
When Lorelei was 14, Vince Corvi passed on to
her one of his rejects, a 14.1hh Quarter HorseArab cross who hated men and was a challenge
to train. Lorelei says, ‘I always liked achieving
with different horses and, although Signal was
supposed to be difficult, he turned into a pussycat when he was handled gently.’
With Lorelei’s gentle training, Signal was the
Most Successful Galloway at Sydney Royal in
1975 and at the 1975 Horse of the Year Show,
where at 15 years old Lorelei was the youngest competitor, Signal was Reserve Champion
Galloway. Together they won novice and open
Galloway classes everywhere they went and,
after selling him to Canberra, she agreed to
ride him again at Melbourne Royal where, once
again, they won the Galloway class.
Having an affinity for greys, when The Great
Gatsby was offered to her Lorelei couldn’t resist.
She nicknamed him ‘Tappy Toes’ for his habit of
dancing on the spot and away they went, winning everything, everywhere. The Great Gatsby
was named Queensland Country Life Hack of
the Year in 1979, 1980 and 1981 and Australian Stock Horse Association Hack of the Year
in 1980, 1981, 1982 and 1983. She had similar
success with other notable hacks including Wittwood, Quality Inn and Copper Dust.
Her success came from hard work, determination, and training with the best but, after
Lorelei and The Great
Gatsby, AHSH Hack of
the Year in 1980, 1981,
1982 and 1983
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of the Year, National Champion, State Champion and Champion at three Toowoomba Royal
Shows and two Brisbane Royal Shows. So much
for the so-called experts who told Lorelei that,
as a hack rider, she would never make it in the
western ring – she has lost count of the number
of buckles, rugs and high point awards she won
with the scruffy little pot-bellied ugly duckling
who grew into a graceful swan.
Lorelei and Pretty
Movin Mr, AQHA
National Champion
Hack 1997
Ian Francis at shows, and after spending a week
watching and learning from him at his training stables at Widgee she realised how much
quicker training Quarter Horses is compared
with off-the-track Thoroughbreds. This, she decided, was where her future lay and to this day,
apart from AQHA State and National Shows,
she has not placed booted feet in the stirrups in
another hack ring.
Beavers Spanish Lace Q-18882
Fate stepped in to introduce Lorelei to her first
Quarter Horse the day her truck broke down outside Brian Farmer’s property and she spotted a
scruffy bay 3YO filly in his front paddock. Having
an eye for what’s hiding under a rough coat and
pot belly, Lorelei knew she had found her first
Quarter Horse champion. And what a champion
Lacey proved to be. With 906 lifetime points,
she received 20 awards in open, amateur, youth
and halter classes, was an AQHA Champion and
AQHA Amateur Owner Champion Horse, Gold
Century Halter, AQHA High Point Halter Horse
Lacey fractured a bone in her foot about the
time Lorelei married and moved from Maleny
on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to Emerald
in Central Queensland, so she bought Pretty
Movin Mr A1-5539, the very pretty black gelding
by Strutin His Stuff* Q-25612. This was another
match made in heaven. Lorelei and Leroy
confirmed to the sceptics that there is something
behind her hacking skills and that her success
with Lacey was anything but an accident. For
five years between 1995 and 1999 the tall black
horse was the one to watch and 607.5 points
and 16 AQHA awards later, Lorelei sold the
AQHA High Point Appendix Halter Horse of the
Year who had won at the AQHA Championships,
NSW and Queensland State Championships, the
NPHA and Brisbane and Toowoomba Royals, to
a dressage home in Victoria where he competed
with great success to medium and advanced
level until his death from colic in January this
year.
Even through Lacey had been retired from the
show ring for five years, Lorelei says, ‘She kept
her body – just like Elle McPherson.’ She looked
so good that in May 2000 when Lorelei found
herself without a horse to take to the Nationals, she dragged Lacey out of her paddock and
put her back in the spotlight. The mare was
thirteen years old, had produced two foals and
still placed in big classes of 22 to 26 ridden and
halter entries.
As a reward, Lacey went to the court of My Only
Concention* Q-37639 and in 2001 produced the
stunning filly, Baharti Q-47345 (Swahili for ‘good
luck’). Lorelei introduced ‘Princess’ Baharti to
the show ring to great success in her yearling
year and by the end of her 2YO year, she had
won 28 halter and ridden futurities, every age
class she ever entered at AQHA Championship
and State Shows, as well as amateur and American classes. Such staggering beauty can come
with a price and in Baharti’s case that price has
been in the form of a fractured skull, becoming
cast at a Queensland State Show, constantly
ripping off shoes and tearing her feet apart in
Lorelei and Beavers Spanish Lace appeared on the
cover of the Quarter Horse magazine in 1994 and to
this day the same photo remains on the cover of the
ANSA brochure.
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Beavers Spanish Lace Q-18882
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the Maleny mud, and venomous spider bites
that nearly ended her life and took six months
to heal. As Lorelei says, ‘She doesn’t get shown
often but when she does, she does a good job.’
Respected horse judge
Lorelei has been a respected horse judge for
more than 30 years, beginning when she was
only 17. She is a national and international EFA
judge who naturally, judges hack classes as
well as ANSA, EFA, RNA, sport horses, breed
classes and minis (and she maintains that the
minis she has judged in New Zealand are the
highest quality you will come across anywhere),
and regularly travels overseas to judge. She had
judged many Royal Shows throughout Australia,
as well as the inaugural Mt Isa show many years
ago and the final one to be held at the old venue
last year before it moved to a new, improved
location, and she helped run the Queensland
State Show at Gatton last year. Lorelei has been
an HSAA judge for 30 years and now she is also
an AQHA judge. She says, ‘Don’t let anyone tell
you AQHA judges don’t know what they’re doing.
The AQHA judging test was the hardest I’ve ever
done. It was an intensive three days and very
thorough.’
When she was 28 Lorelei was appointed as
the first woman steward at Brisbane Royal, and
was the youngest to hold this position for many
years. She is now on the Brisbane Royal Ring
Committee and is an honorary councillor, and
she is involved in many different areas connected with the Royal Show. For the past three
years she has been president of the South East
Queensland Quarter Horse Association and is
active in promoting the use of the Maleny indoor
arena, a position which she says makes it difficult for her to show.
Perfect new job
Lorelei’s first job was hairdressing but it wasn’t
long before she realised she couldn’t, absolutely
couldn’t, work for her mother so for the next 25
years she worked in hotels in and around Maleny.
Whatever she needed to do to keep and show her
horses, that’s what she did – working two jobs,
working flexitime. She then worked in a coal mine
at Emerald and, when she left Central Queensland, as a laboratory assistant at the Ipswich coal
laboratory, where, she says, she loved doing
interesting and different things like working out
coal fluidity.
Nearly nine years ago she began working at
Horseman’s Trading Post for Trish and Eric
Greenham who, she says, were good to work for
and she learned a lot from them, ‘Trish helped me
throughout the western field and taught me to be
thorough in my job.’
Lorelei loves western. In fact she absolutely
adores it because it allows her to be herself. She
says, ‘It suits my personality. I can put lots of
colour on me and my horse and shine.’ She has
always had a flair for clothes and for years she
has dressed clients throughout Australia and New
Zealand, ensuring each wears a flattering outfit
and guaranteeing that they will never see another
rider wearing the same thing.
Six months ago, Lorelei was head-hunted by
Greg Grant, whose saddlery stores have been a
Brisbane institution for more than 30 years. She
is the western wholesale and retail buyer for all
Greg Grant Saddlery stores, totally responsible for
all new products - one range of western saddles
and gear for Greg’s STC wholesale catalogue and
another completely different range for sale in the
Greg Grant Saddlery stores. She is also a professional saddle fitter and is the promotions manager
for both Aspley and Annerley stores. With her
overriding goal of making Greg Grant Saddlery
number one in Australia, her first challenge was to
totally revamp the aging Aspley store, transforming it from a dark and dreary, very ordinary shop to
a bright, inviting shopping experience, full of new
products and staffed by enthusiastic professionals.
Lorelei brings to her new job an enthusiasm that
is contagious. She has an acute awareness of
fashion trends and new methods of training in the
western industry and her new job allows her to
indulge in a personal passion – shopping - on a
huge scale. She recently returned from what she
describes as a mind-boggling trip with Greg Grant
to the Denver Western and English Sales Association Trade Fair in the USA. She compares the size
of the trade fair to ‘The Melbourne Cricket Ground,
four stories high, full of shopping.’ For someone
like Lorelei who just loves to shop, she thought
she had landed in retail heaven. She says, ‘We
spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and man-
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www.aqha.com.au
aged to score some beautiful new saddles, bridles
and heaps of bling bling show gear - including
brands that we have never seen in Australia
before.’ She took her international retail therapy
seriously, working the trade fair stalls from eight
in the morning to six in the evening every day for
six days but complains, ‘There were still people I
didn’t have time to see.’
Baharti Q-47345
Photo: Alyson McGovern
Lorelei works long hours in her exciting new job
and begins her days between four and five in the
morning when she works her horses under lights.
What doesn’t get done in the mornings is finished
at night, again under lights, when she gets home
from work. Keeping her horses in show condition
is a constant challenge when she has so little time
to work with them but she massages them every
day to keep their circulation going, she lunges ‘a
lot’ and is a great believer in natural therapies,
including Bowen Therapy and Reiki.
The new-look Lorelei
When her increasing weight made it increasingly
difficult for her to ride and eventually forced her to
ask Jessie Fyfe-Farrell to take her place showing
Baharti under saddle, and after her doctor told
her she would die if she didn’t lose weight, Lorelei
knew she had to face the massive challenge of
slimming down and increasing her level of fitness.
It is, she says, the most difficult thing she has ever
done. But two years later and 50 kilos lighter, she
maintains it is by far the best thing she has ever
done. However, it is an on-going challenge which
she battles with every day but the benefits are
obvious for anyone to see. She looks marvellous,
is full of energy and just loves wearing clothes she
hadn’t fitted into for twenty years – as well as the
new selection of stunning show clothes and jewellery from the Greg Grant Saddlery stores.
Now she is ready to get back in the
saddle – if only she can find the time.
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