Narrung Stud Dispersal ends a long chapter in South Australian breeding

Cover image courtesy of Toop+Toop

Southeast of Adelaide, perched on the shores of Lake Albert in rich, flat country, Narrung Stud has a long and storied history. This week, all of it was pulled into play with the announcement that the property and bloodstock were on the market, owners Ken and Helen Smith walking away after 15 superb years.

The couple purchased Narrung Stud in 2007. At that point, it had passed through several hands since the brothers Donald and Walter Brown had it.

The brothers were scrap-metal merchants, but they were also the breeders of Tobin Bronze in 1962. From his roots at Narrung, Tobin Bronze won too many races to recount. He’s in the Hall of Fame, and his dam died on the farm at the sweet age of 29 in 1984.

Narrung was also the brief home of the luckless stallion Adraan (GB), who covered just 45 mares before he suddenly died in 1985. From only 27 foals, seven become stakes winners of 16 stakes races, while four from that tiny, single crop made the 1986 Golden Slipper field.

When the Smiths moved in at Narrung, there was plenty of history and plenty of work to do. Over time, the couple chipped away at transforming Narrung into a modern complex with a pre-training facility, loose boxes and spelling paddocks.

The decision to leave wasn’t made lightly by the couple this year, who are still enjoying enormous success on the racetrack with their stock. Nevertheless, Narrung Stud will be sold, the property by Sam Hayes’ Toop+Toop Rural and the horses by Bloodstockauction.com next week.

Family ties

Toop+Toop Rural is a realty specialist in this part of South Australia, and if the name sounds familiar it’s because Sam Hayes is also the managing director of Cornerstone Stud.

His handling of the Narrung property has been especially bittersweet because the Smith and Hayes families go back a long way, all the way to Lindsay Park, in fact.

“Our family has been doing business with Ken and Helen for generations now,” Hayes said, speaking to TDN AusNZ. “They’ve known me since I was born basically. They did business with my grandfather Colin and my father Peter, and they were one of the first people to have horses with my dad when he moved to Oakbank in the 1980s to train on his own.”

Hayes has managed Cornerstone Stud for the last 20 years, and he said the Smiths were among the most loyal of his clients and friends.

“To be able to help them with this transaction at this stage of their lives has been really good for me,” he said. “I know Helen and Ken have appreciated it as well, and it’s made what was probably a very emotional decision a whole lot easier, them knowing my family for the last 50 years.”

In this neck of the woods, Narrung Stud has been a constant player in the racing industry, so for Hayes, it’s a little bit sad to potentially see the property slip away from its roots.

“It is sad, but I guess it’s natural over the lifetime of businesses,” he said. “Businesses start and businesses close, so it’s just important for us now to make sure our friends are moving into the next stage of their lives in a manageable and happy state.

“And hopefully we find another person that will want to utilise that amazing horse infrastructure to keep breeding and racing horses out of Narrung Stud.”

Rare and valuable offering

The Narrung Stud property is set into the flanks of Lake Albert. The land is flat, fertile and fruitful.

Down the road, Mill Park Stud has made its living off this rich country, and nearby there are countless cropping farms, making the Smiths’ property an opportunity for both equine and non-equine investors.

Hayes is selling Narrung Stud across two titles, all up measuring 351 hectares with two homes and staff accommodation. There are stables, two undercover round yards, a horse walker, hay shed and shearing shed, plus all the trimmings of a busy horse property.

“The farm went on the market this week, just on Monday actually,” Hayes said. “It’s a really pretty property, and it’s very consistent farming land. But it’s also limestone country, which the Brown family, and also Mill Park Stud a little further south, have proved is fantastic for rearing horses.”

Hayes describes the setting as a very beautiful part of South Australia. It’s coastal and quiet, and he said being prime farming land will lend plenty of interest from horse people, but also farming people.

“It’s too early at this stage to say how it will end up,” he said. “It’s about a two-thirds spread right now, with a third of the people calling me having an interest in racing and breeding, and the other two-thirds are more general farming and cropping, or sheep and cattle.”

A Lady’s family

As Narrung Stud swung open its gates to inspections this week, the Smiths’ horses were being readied for their online sale.

There are 45 of them, and the catalogue went live on bloodstock.com on Thursday evening, with the auction closing on Tuesday, May 31.

Among the horses are nine weanlings and four yearlings, a handful of unnamed 2-year-olds and then named, older racing stock. There are also eight broodmares, and overwhelmingly they represent the family of the Smiths’ foundation mare, the Delgado (USA) hen Alleged Lady.

In 1990, Alleged Lady won the G3 Auraria S. for Ken and Helen Smith. When she retired to Narrung Stud she created a dynasty, getting three stakes winners, including the G1 Adelaide Cup winner Exalted Time (Bellotto {USA}).

Three generations back in the mare’s pedigree, the British-bred stallion Exalt (GB) appears, and it was from this association that the Smiths began naming all their horses with the ‘Exalted’ identity.

In fact, it was more through necessity, as Helen revealed to the South Australian Racehorse Owners Association last year.

“About 25 years ago, the Advertiser stopped printing the names of the owners' of horses in its form guides,” she said. “We were often in trouble with friends and acquaintances for not informing them of our runners, especially, of course, if we had a winner. So after a few names descended from ‘Lady’, we decided on the ‘Exalted’ prefix for all progeny.”

A quick breeze through the Narrung Stud catalogue shows it is awash with the Exalted family. There are granddaughters of Alleged Lady and their progeny, and many of the mares are in foal to Cornerstone’s resident sires Valentia and Sir Prancealot (Ire).

The Smiths have been building up this family since 1992, and among its most recent successes is Exalted Ambition (Good Journey {USA}), a 5-year-old gelding that has won his owners close to $240,000 in local prizemoney.

The perfect start

For close to the last five years, Narrung Stud has been managed by the tireless enthusiasm of Tyson Cowan. Just 23 years of age, Cowan was a very young man when Ken Smith found him at the races.

“I was a diesel-mechanic apprentice when I met Ken at the old track at Murray Bridge,” Cowan said. “I was having a bit of a conversation with him, and within five minutes he’d offered me a job and I’d accepted.

“Ken and Helen are very warm people, and it’s been a really good experience these last few years.”

Cowan arrived at Narrung with a bit of horse experience, but not a lot.

He taught himself almost everything, and these days he’s a one-man band on the farm, breaking and pre-training the stock, shoeing horses and managing feeds. There isn’t much he hasn’t learned.

“I’ve grown a great connection to this place over four-and-a-half years,” he said. “It’s a bit of a shame that it’s all coming to an end, but I’ve learned so much and I’m really grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had with running the farm for Ken and Helen and looking after their horses.”

At the moment, Cowan is studying to uptake a trainer’s ticket in South Australia. He’s expecting that to be complete by the start of the new racing season.

As such, the Smiths have allowed him to hang onto the smart Exalted Ambition, along with two other of their horses, Exalted Joy (Valentia) and an unnamed 2-year-old. Exalted Ambition was the first horse that Cowan broke in and pre-trained for a racing career.

“Ken and Helen will always try to do as much as they can to help anyone,” Cowan said. “Ken understood what I wanted to do with my career, and he gave me every opportunity to succeed. I know it was pretty hard for them to make this decision to sell, but it’s been a big operation for a long time.

“It’s been a big investment, too, to have something like this, and Ken’s been very unwell lately, which was creeping up on him the last few years. It’s affected his health which is why they’ve had to sell up.”

The last of the Narrung horses?

Of the bloodstock on offer across the next few days, Cowan said it’s a majority mix of tried and untried young stock. He knows the pedigrees inside and out, and the horses too.

“We’ve got some very nice horses that could come through out of this,” he said. “Many of the mares are selling in foal too, and even the older horses have a lot of life left in them. It will be very interesting to see how it pans out.”

The Smiths used to send their mares out to various stallions, but in the last two years, with Ken’s failing health, all the mares went to Cornerstone’s resident stallions.

“Ken’s been traditionally a big part of stallions in South Australia,” Cowan said. “He’s had shares in a lot of them, like Blevic and Good Journey, and also Typhon (a half-brother to Magnus and Scandiva). So he’s always had the extra service fees to those sorts of horses, and he’s used that to his advantage.”

Cowan’s time with Narrung has taught him a lot about breeding. He’s managed a thoroughbred family that is fairly well-contained, almost all of it harking back to a single foundation broodmare.

“It’s taught me that there’s no set rules to breeding, in a way,” he said. “We’ve got mares here that didn’t perform very well themselves, but yet in their offspring they’ve put out some very nice horses conformationally and in ability.

“And you can see the different generations passing through the family too, and you can see where some of their individual traits go back to. I find that really interesting when you go back and look through the family, and you can see how alike some of them are, but also how different.”

In the last week, Cowan has been busy keeping Narrung Stud going among the inspections and pressure of the dispersal. He’d like to see the property remain a working facility for horses, but he knows he can’t control that.

“I think it would be a great waste if it didn’t remain as a horse farm,” he said. “There is so much history in this place, and pretty much this whole region has had horses in it, going right back to the Browns in the 1960s.

“The Browns had about 10 stallions on this property when they were here, and this is the only part of the old Narrung Station that still has horses on it. This is a very phenomenal place, but we’ll just have to see what happens.”