Noeline Jeffries with her Dutch Warmblood, Heidee. Photo / Paula Stuart
Waikato equestrian leader Noeline Jeffries - best known as the driving force behind the creation of a combined equestrian centre for the region and for leading the fundraiser for a war horse statue in Hamilton’s Memorial Park - has been honoured with a Queens Service Medal (QSM).
Noeline taught herself to ride at the age of 10 by reading a book, sparking a lifelong love of horses as a rider, instructor and judge of dressage competitions. She has also long advocated for the care of horses and the health and safety of riders.
Noeline, now 83, was amongst 13 Waikato New Year’s Honours recipients, being awarded her QSM for services to equestrian sport and war commemoration.
Despite being active in the equestrian community for such a long time, Noeline says she is “still not done”.
She is currently involved in supporting the establishment of a war horse statue in Hastings, runs the War Horse Learn to Ride programmes in Hamilton and helps to re-home mustered Kaimanawa wild horses.
Noeline credits her love of horses as the key motivation for her work, which also includes setting up the War Horse Learn to Ride school holiday programme and serving in leadership positions at the Waikato Combined Equestrian Centre, Horse Club and New Zealand Riding Clubs and Bridleways.
“I have had a love of horses, ever since I can remember,” Noeline says.
“My grandmother lived in Auckland, where they used to clean the streets using horses. Whenever I visited [my grandmother] and heard the clack-clack of the hooves, I would run outside [...] to watch the street cleaners with their horses.
“I thought [the horses] were the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen.”
At the time of that encounter, Noeline was four years old. However, her father worked for New Zealand Railways, which meant the family moved a lot and couldn’t afford a horse - but that didn’t stop little Noeline.
“I taught myself how to ride by reading a book when I was 10. My Sunday school teacher Mrs Goodall had farm horses, so I asked whether I could ride them after school.”
When Noeline was 15, she became friends with fellow Hamilton Girls’ High student Patricia Clarke, whose father worked at the government-run Whatawhata agricultural research station farm.
“The station had horses and we used to ride them in the holidays. I became quite friendly with a horse called Billy Boy. The workers weren’t happy we took the horses so often... so they hid them.
“But we were naughty girls... we found them and rode them bareback,” Noeline says.
After a few years, the horses at the research centre were sold and swapped for motorbikes. Noeline, then 18 and working as a shorthand writer at the Hamilton Post Office, saw her opportunity.
“I bought Billy Boy for 30 shillings. It was cheap because he was considered an old horse. I had him until he was 30 years old and he died of old age.”
In 1978, Noeline bought her first “competitive horse”, a retired racehorse called Temigo for dressage, a sport she competed in for 30 years. She continues to judge competitions today.
“I love dressage because it’s very artistic... it looks like the horse is dancing.”
Driving the development of the war horse statue and setting up the Waikato Combined Equestrian Centre are her biggest achievements, Noeline says. The sculpture, called Gunner, was unveiled in 2017 and recognises the 10,000 horses that served in World War I.
When Noeline started efforts to establish a Waikato Equestrian Centre in 1981, there were more than 1000 horses within the Hamilton city boundaries, but no community space for equestrian events.
“We wanted to set up a facility for the different [equestrian] sports and somewhere safe and affordable [for the horses] to graze... but the council didn’t have the land.”
Then, Pukete became part of Hamilton.
“But the council said they don’t want to deal with a million different people, [...] so I was trying to form one group to apply for the land.”
She lobbied representatives of polo, show jumping, dressage, western riders and pony clubs, and together they formed the Waikato Combined Equestrian Group and successfully applied for the land in Pukete, where the centre still operates today.
When Noeline learned about being awarded a QSM, she says she was deeply honoured and humbled.
“The hardest part was to keep it a secret... I was ticking off the days until I could tell my family.”