My aunt, Carol Cavanagh, was born on 18/11/32 and passed away last week on 28/9/21. She lived her life for horses and gave me a life-long love for them. Carol had no children of her own but considered my brother and myself as better than having her own - all the fun and none of the responsibility. She was an inspirational woman ahead of her times who was an important role model in the lives of many young riders.
The video of photos from her life, set to the tune 'Run For the Roses' by Dan Fogelberg.
I chose four horse-themed songs for her service, beginning with 'Wildfire' by Michael Martin Murphy, 'Run for the Roses' for the photos of her life, 'I Am Pegasus' by Ross Ryan for the closing of the curtain (which brought everyone to tears), and 'Horses' by Keith Urban for the final song.
The eulogy I delivered at her funeral in case you'd like to learn more about her life.
Carol had two older brothers, my father David who
died in 1988 and Warren who died in 1949. She had no children of her own but was
a wonderful auntie to my brother Graeme and me. We spent most of our holidays
and weekends with Carol during our school years and she gave us both a deep
love of horses.
She learned to ride at age 5 by coaxing her
father's Clydesdales under the cherry tree on their farm near Wallington
outside Geelong, dropping onto a horse's back and cantering up to the house and
repeating. Eventually, to save his horses, her father bought her a horse of her
own.
Carol went to school at The Hermitage and
became friends with many other great horse women of her era, including
Garryowen riders and judges such as Erica Russell and Joan Wilson. As a
teenager, she was an A grade tennis player and an excellent horse rider.
Carol had a brief marriage to fellow tennis player Lindsay
Nelson but divorced a few years later, and remained single for the rest of her
life. She only fell in love once, with a high-country cattleman she met when
she and Dr Robbie used to take their horses up into the Victorian Alps, and I
hope he was waiting for her last week.
Carol was a triple certificate nurse, though she
always considered nursing as a way to fund her horses. In 1965 she started
Reinwood Riding School at Moolap near Geelong. Many top riders learned to ride
there and thousands of people developed a life-long love of horses because of her
influence. She also scared a lot of people – one of my school friends married a
man who remembers riding his motorbike past Reinwood when he was a teenager and
he says he still has nightmares about Carol running out and abusing him in her
aristocratic voice.
Carol and her good friend Dr. Joe Robinson helped
start the Geelong Riding Club in the late 1960s, and it still operates today.
Graeme and I have many happy memories of Carol and Joe planning the day-long
trail rides through the Otways weeks before the event. They'd load their two
horses and Graeme's and mine onto the floats and head into the bush. Dr Robbie
would tie bits of environmentally-friendly toilet paper to trees to mark the
way, and by the day of the ride they had all washed off so the trail rides
became famous for us all becoming lost numerous times.
During the late 60s and 70s, Carol won numerous
endurance rides on her horse Smoke, hunted on her buckskin mare Jess, competed
in dressage, showing, polocrosse, and jumping, and also trained two Flemington
winners for Roger Burt. She was one of the first in Australia to start doing
horse riding for the disabled, closing Reinwood one day a week so the children
of the Shannon Park Spastic Centre could come and ride the ponies.
Through her love of horses, she became friends with
many interesting people. She became close friends with Eric and Billy Lange.
Eric managed Ford Australia and returned to the U.S. to help run Ford there.
When back in Michigan, he helped design
the DeLorean - the car used in Back to the Future – and he and his wife
continued to write to Carol for decades. She was close friends with Warrick
Cozens who rode at the Spanish Riding School and helped him start his famous
Clifton Court Warmblood Stud – he would like to be here today but he’s in
Victoria.
A keen environmentalist, Carol campaigned to save
old growth trees at Bannockburn outside Geelong and made the newspapers for
chaining herself to the trees. She was involved in Landcare for many years, and
planted many thousands of trees in Victoria and Queensland.
Carol worked as a nurse in aged care for a number
of years and always made me promise I'd never 'put her in a home'. Thanks to
the wonderful home care system, for most of the last decade, Carol lived in a
cottage on our farm and Carinity Home Care came in for an hour each day to help
her have a good quality of life at home. For the past few years, she has been
increasingly frail but still very happy living on her own terms. Her dog of 18
years, Scruffy, died early this year, joining the many dogs Carol has loved
through her life - Nobby, Shiloh, Rebel, Gucci, Campbell, and others will no
doubt be wagging their tails at her side today.
Carol led a remarkable life and inspired many
people – and scared a few others. In many ways, she was a woman ahead of her
times. This isn’t a time to be sad, but to be glad for a life lived on her own
terms – marching, dancing, and riding to her own music.
