Our History:
By Christine Swan
In 1984 my husband Ian and I saw and fell in love with an elegant grey Arabian weanling colt Ibn Rimski. By a stroke of good luck, we were able to acquire him and thus started our pure Arabian showing career. Prior to this my parents Alan & Meg Walsh and I had been breeding and showing (both in halter and performance) Arabian derivatives & Thoroughbreds for over 2 decades using the stud prefix Full Circle. The stud prefix was derived from the fact that not only had my parents re-bought their original farm that they had started their married life on but the moves between the original purchase and repurchase was geographically circular.
Christine's parents riding borrowed horses circa 1945
We had always admired the Arabian horse and some individuals appealed to us more. Upon research, we discovered that all the Arabians we had admired were either pure Crabbet or had a very high amount of Crabbet bloodlines so we naturally concentrated on purchasing Arabians who were either pure Crabbet or high percentage Crabbet bloodlines for our Arabian breeding program.
In 1991 we moved from the Central Coast of NSW to Coutts Crossing (south of Grafton) on the north coast of NSW. My father had died in 1985 and we decided that 'Full Circle' belonged to him & mum so we named our property and stud 'Kamana' (it is derived from our children's' names).
Mum, after a break away from owning horses (a whole 6 months) decided she would like to restart breeding Arabians but this time she'd concentrate on pure Crabbet bloodlines as these horses were what we all loved.
By then we had owned the lovely bay pure Crabbet mare Shalal (Sindh* x Ringlet) for 5 years; she produced stunning foals by Ibn Rimski for us. Two of them were exported to Abu Dhabi for endurance & breeding. Still very healthy & looking younger then her actual age; Shalal in her late teens started having problems continuing her pregnancies. After many attempts & various treatments we finally conceded that Shalal would now only be an 'aunt'. It was extremely disappointing in two ways as Shalal loved being a mother also she never had a pure Crabbet foal to continue her heritage.
In 1997 we were fortunate enough to purchase the stunning bay yearling colt Boomori Finale (the last offspring of Chip Chase Kaiwanna) from Dawn Suter and the lovely grey mare MillPark Somer Sprite from Shirley Douglas-Greig. We thank them both for allowing us this opportunity to buy such lovely horses.
To our deepest sorrow, mum suddenly passed away in 2001; by then she had
seen Boomori Finale's offspring & had the satisfaction of knowing that he
had fulfilled all her expectations.
While altering the horses' ownership after mum's death, our daughter Katina
became an official partner as she had been an unofficial partner for many
years.
We had drastically reduced our breeding stock after dad's death in 1985;
after mum died we further reduced our horse numbers.
Due to my continuing ill health we've sold majority of our pure Crabbet broodmares; the only pure Crabbet broodmare we have retained is MillPark Somer Sprite. We usually breed one foal every 2nd year from her.
We have retained two daughters by Boomori Finale, out of MillPark Somer Sprite for riding & continuation of the bloodlines. Katina loves riding the eldest daughter Silver Flair & she is very reluctant for us to advertise Flair for sale but knows her free riding time is going to be more limited for the next few years. We have agreed that Flair will be sold IF a suitable buyer appears. Kamana Cool Jazz closely resembles her dam but has her sire's height. She is maturing into an outstanding mare who will be Katina's next performance horse after Flair.