Te Akau Midweek Update

David writes:

The weather on the farm is always the topic of conversation.  It is either way too try or too wet and farmers are just so hard to please - I understand that!!

The first few days of this week have been just stunning - simply beautiful but now we are getting some rain and the forecast is not too good.  Never mind it is the middle of winter but the good news is, that for the middle of June, it is still very warm and the grass is growing well. Our cattle have all just been drenched and weighed and we have never had the cattle in such good condition at this time of the year.  They are about 40kgs heavier than normal which is great news.

We have had further really good news this week with Sir Patrick Hogan of Cambridge Stud choosing Te Akau Racing to train the last Zabeel filly ever!  Yes a yearling filly out of the Stravinsky mare Faze.  What an honour - this is a really big thrill for me and Steve and Jamie.

We have very little racing through the winter and it is now a great time for our team to have a good holiday.  Pam Gerard, who oversees the main stable, is having four weeks off and is now in the South Island with her children Jack, Archie and Meg.  I want to get all the holidays behind us before the 1 August as we will be rested and raring to go.

Tomorrow the yearlings from the Gold Coast arrive home. We bought a Testa Rossa colt and a Medaglia d'Oro filly.  They are both smart yearlings that we will start breaking in very soon after they get home and I am looking forward to having them at Te Akau Stud.

I have a busy weekend ahead as on Monday night I leave for London to meet up with Karyn and Lydia and Julia-Rose.  It will be such fun going to Royal Ascot together. I can't wait!

At the moment I am selling shares in a really decent sort of horse from the South Island sale.  The Coats Choice is quite a horse that we only paid $21,000 for and he has broken in beautifully, in fact everybody who rides him simply can't believe how cheap he was.  I only have two shares left in him so if you are keen to grab some of this VERY reasonable action, then please get in touch with us as soon as possible as he will sell over the weekend for sure.

Karyn updates from Sicily ...

I am very proud of my home country and love living in New Zealand - I just wish it wasn't so far to travel to the UK and Europe - anyway that is simply a 'locational hazard' as opposed to an 'occupational' one!

Julia-Rose and I set off last Saturday and after almost 24 hours of travel we landed at Heathrow airport.  We had a nice flight up as, being the small world that it is, we had a close relative of Hamish's (Julia's partner) on board as well as a neat young couple whose wedding Julia and Hamish had attended about a month ago and they were off on their honeymoon!

Lydia was at the airport waiting for us and it was great to see her.  We bundled all of our luggage into a traditional black cab and off to the hotel. Our room wasn't quite ready so that called for a small celebratory bubbles to mark the fact that the three of us were together again - it doesn't happen very much these days!

Lydia had to work on Monday so Julia-Rose and I went for a huge walk - the weather has actually been very chilly so not that pleasant at all, nonetheless out and about we went.  On Monday night we met Lydia after work at an underground bar called Cahoots (the old Kingly Court Underground train station).  The funniest thing was that some of their bar snacks and cocktails were served in empty tin cans - and would you believe it??  Old cans of Wattie's Peas from Hastings NZ and Edmonds Baking Soda from Christchurch - very funny!

Tuesday and we were off to Stansted airport to fly to Palermo in Sicily - the traffic in London even at 2.30pm was manic and we almost missed the plane due to hold ups.  We literally got there by a whisker!  Time for a nap on the 2.5 hour flight and we arrived in Palermo about 10.00pm. Now it was time to learn about how things planned there never quite go to plan!

We had organised a rental car and ordered a GPS for it - got the car eventually (after waiting for a bus to take us out of the terminal area quite a way to the rental car area) - and no GPS.  Guy simply said "no have" and didn't care so there we were - pitch black, driving on the right hand side of the road and trying to find our way to the B&B courtesy of Julia's cell phone mapping system.

Needless to say - we got lost - ended up going up a one way street the wrong way and after many detours - found our B&B an hour later!  It should have taken 10 minutes!

Anyway it is character building - and after a hearty breakfast back on the road again headed for the vineyard we are staying tonight and tomorrow night at.  No problems this time and we even got brave enough to head off on some side roads - however the locals are very interesting drivers!

An afternoon by the pool, a wine tasting session and dinner - now bed - what more could you want from a day?  Maybe only to remember that the indicators on the car are on the left (unlike mine) so I look forward to getting it 'right' and not setting the windscreen wipers off every time I go to turn!

Look forward to talking again soon - I have been doing some research on Royal Ascot next week which we will be sharing over the coming days so stay tuned!