Rising from a rough trot by Andrea Ferris

whopuppies are you

There are remarkable people in our midst. Remarkable because, despite hardship, handicap, or hell’s-own luck, they survive, prosper and turn misfortune into something that brings other people hope and love.

One woman’s remarkable story Words: Andrea Ferris Jodie Alderton signed off her first email to me with a smiley face and kisses—we’d never met or shared a phone conversation. After some more email exchanges and a team effort to produce an article about a rescued horse, I realised the real story wasn’t about the horse saved from certain death, it was about the saviour. A big, pink tyre on the roadside heralds my arrival at the Healing Hooves Foundation —not far out of Nerang on the Gold Coast, Queensland. It’s big-house-small-acreage country, where folk who don’t fancy hearing their neighbours’ toilet flush can spread out, keep chooks and have room for a pony. Two teenage girls with ‘horse-fever’— recognisable only to women like me who’ve never recovered from it—were standing just inside the gate trying to stroke the bobbing head of a brown mare.

Jodie Alderton

Rising from a

rough trot How one woman’s hard work and big heart led to a global expedition and a home in Nerang helping children and horses discover love.

‘Jodie’s just gone out to get some money’, one said. Pointing to a ramshackle Queenslander, she added, ‘You can park down there and wait if you like’. When I asked about the mare the other explained, ‘She doesn’t like having her head touched; I’m just letting her know it’s okay now. She’s a new rescue horse, a thoroughbred,not long off the track’. By now I was regretting not wearing more sensible shoes for this assignment. Old Macdonald would have felt quite at home in this farmyard. A goat reclined in the sun on an old trampoline; several small ponies hovered around waiting for a pat; chooks and ducks scratched in the dirt; a donkey stood in a pen against the house; a few tame sheep joined the fray and half a dozen horses in yards quietly munched on their breakfast. After five minutes a van pulled up and I was a greeted with a beaming, warm smile and an apology for being kept waiting in words punctuated with ‘honey’—that term of endearment generally reserved for

‘Silly chooks in the yard’

use by your life partner, abhorrent coming from a taxi driver, but somehow delivered like a warm hug from this t-shirt and jodhpur-clad woman. Healing Hooves HQ is chaotic. I’ve found that people with a passion for a cause have little time or enthusiasm for housework, interior decorating, clothes shopping, make-up and fancy food. Here there are pictures of horses on the walls, many dogs on the couch, sheep on the verandah, chooks on the outdoor table, and a fridge door full of magnets holding various notes. For the hour I was there the screen door revolved with backpacker volunteers preparing for a ride; neighbours dropping stuff off; horse sponsors bringing cake and a cuddle; and trades people and teenagers bearing questions and messages. The coffee is instant as is the willingness of Jodie Alderton to share her life story with a stranger. Born in Mildura, Victoria, Jodie was the youngest child of teenage parents robbed of a carefree young adulthood by poor choices. ‘My mum was sixteen when she had my brother and eighteen when she had me and dad was only two years older. Before we were ten, my parents realised they hadn’t had a life; they fought and drank and held lots of young adult parties. ‘Dad was bought up in a time where men went to the pub and women stayed home and mum was angry and resentful. When I was little she told me she didn’t want me and that I was the result of a post-fight make up. The feeling of not being wanted or needed was always there and I couldn’t do anything right. Mum had a lot of anger. There was fighting and hitting and being locked in my room; just horrible stuff. ‘My escape was to sit in the pen with the chickens and I had pet sheep and dogs and dad’s racing trotting horses, which I was told never to go near as they were dangerous. ‘Every time mum or dad would disappear and I was home on my own I’d go and sit on the railing and when a horse came close to me I’d jump on its back and walk around in the yard and then quickly sneak off.’

After fourteen years, her mother finally reached breaking point and left the children to be raised by their father. Jodie wasn’t too fazed: ‘That was okay with me. I still had the horses so it didn’t bother me. I grew up with a motorbike and a horse and turned into a bit of a tom boy.’ Her father didn’t cope. ‘Dad had a lot of anger and resentment so he drank. I had to learn to cook or have vegemite sandwiches for dinner. Dad was lazy. He wouldn’t cook or clean so I got thrown straight into the ‘mother role’ doing the washing and cleaning the house. He wouldn’t mow the lawns and if a door handle fell off we’d go through a window. It was a really eccentric way to grow up—crazy. ‘I enjoyed school, but I never read a book until I was twenty. Dad was always busy and he didn’t make me do my homework.’ It was in primary school that the lack of parental nurturing and validation began to surface with a little girl’s strong need to prove something to anyone. ‘I was a real tom boy and I’d fight with the boys. After school my brother would tell the boys: “My sister can beat you”. So I did!’ Despite beating up the boys, Jodie was popular at high school and had a ‘super’ bunch of friends who helped her reach year eleven in one academic piece, but work took more time than study and school became less important than financial independence. Since the age of thirteen she’d held down two jobs at Coles and Kmart and, somehow knowing money was the key to freedom but wanting to protect her self-esteem and avoid the label of high school drop-out, she made up a story involving a job as a motel receptionist and left school to work full time at Kmart. Shortly afterwards came a job offer at a jewellery store and work became a seven day a week commitment. Consequently there was little time for horses or a social life.

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who are you

‘When mum left dad didn’t have the motivation to keep training the horses so they were still on the property but no-one was racing them. Working seven days a week I didn’t get to play with the horses much. In fact it was so tiring I quit Kmart and got an evening job in a Chinese restaurant—I still had two jobs, but had the weekends off. ‘At seventeen I decided that living with dad, doing the housework and living in squalor was no good. He was a wood cutter and he’d come home and empty his shoes onto the carpet. If you wanted a newspaper from ten years ago it would still be in the toilet. If cupboards fell off he wouldn’t get a new one. There was a hole in the bathroom floor where the chickens would scratch mud onto the wet floor so I took one of the doors that fell off in the kitchen, put it over the hole, bought new carpet and fixed it up. I became very resourceful and learned the skills of survival very young. I had to grow up very quickly. ‘My grandfather said to me: “If you want to get out of home prove to me that you can raise $10,000 in six months and I’ll go guarantor on a bank loan for you to buy a house”. ‘I got a third job in a nightclub after the Chinese restaurant shift. In February 1985 I turned eighteen and got my house! ‘Then I wanted to travel overseas. It took three years because I wanted to have my twenty-first birthday at home. I kept the three jobs and took in two boarders to cover the mortgage. I wanted to save another ten thousand dollars because the first ten was easy. I didn’t miss out on a thing: Chinese meals for dinner and a social life at the nightclub that I got paid for—it wasn’t like work, it was beautiful!’

travelling. In that small country town I was forever my mother’s daughter. In those years I travelled I found my own identity because when I arrived somewhere I was no-one; no background and I was accepted for who I was—that was big.’ At twenty-nine, the urge to wander the world waned and a desire to start a business that would help people blossomed. After spending eight years with backpackers in every part of the globe, Jodie had a pretty good understanding of how they lived, thought, worked and played. Recognising her own natural ability to bring people together with mutual needs, she combined her backpacker experience with her local farming contacts, bought another house in Mildura and started that town’s first backpacker hostel. But what of love? How can an attractive, intelligent, open-hearted young woman not have met the man of her dreams by the age of thirty? In a heart-wrenching tale worthy of the big screen, the man she may have settled down with died tragically in 1993 in Serengeti National Park from a poison dart wound in the ankle inflicted by drunken, native poachers. ‘I guess after him I never really got seriously involved again. Because of all the fighting by my mum and dad I was scared of relationships. I had nothing to base a good one on. ‘I owned my house outright at thirty and had just started the hostel so I focused on

running the business for the next eight years. I was the first one to set up a hostel in Mildura and when I left there were eighteen of them!’ Motherhood, although unplanned, came as a welcome challenge. An abrupt end to a not-so-brilliant relationship; a night out encouraged by a bunch of well-meaning girlfriends; a casual one-night-stand; and nine-months later Tajska Emily was born. ‘I was really ecstatic. After mum left I was very close to my grandma. She always said that she was proud of me, which my mum never said. She passed away in 1996. In 1997 I was in Alaska when I saw a red canoe and a big mountain and the name Tajska came to me: a combination of Alaska and the Taj Mahal, where I was yet to visit. So there I was in Alaska saying one day if I have a daughter her name will be Tajska Emily after my grandma. ‘When I found out I was pregnant I knew it was Tajska Emily. I went through the pregnancy so happy; running the backpackers, walking every day, doing water aerobics and felt that an angel had sent me this being. I was in control of my life and financially independent; nothing bothered me at all. Two years later I built a brand-new house, lived in it for five months then bought a campervan, packed up the two-year-old and the dog and started to travel Australia.’

For the next eight years Jodie worked and couch-surfed across 63 countries. Her warm personality and willingness to do jobs that no-one else wanted earned her many friends and opportunities as well as money to pay off her mortgage. Bluffing her way onto a the prawn trawler as a cook meant fast cash for the next trip; back home for Christmas and the grapepicking season; back to the trawler and back overseas—a lucrative pattern she sustained for five years. ‘My brother still says that I am the only person he knows that could go around the world and come back with more money than they went with! ‘With the benefit of hindsight, I was probably trying to find out who I was with all the

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Hard work and determination! It can’t be said that anything else but hard work and determination shaped the first half of Jodie Alderton’s life, but intuition, serendipity, and lady luck were about to make a grand entrance to guide the second half. ‘I don’t know why, but I knew I had to stop in a town that started with ‘N’: it was Nerang. My brother was building the Bunnings store there and even though I was still in Mildura with no travel plans at that stage. I said to him: “That’s where I’m going to live”. He thought I was queer! ‘How Healing Hooves happened was amazing. After renting for six months I bought a house on acreage up here [Nerang] and set it up as a bed and breakfast for people to bring their pets on holiday. I volunteered at David Fleay Wildlife Park, Riding for the Disabled, Wildcare and did talks at schools for AVA petPEP [Australian Veterinary Association’s Pets and People Education Program]. I did things for the community because I’d been financial enough to buy a house at eighteen. Now I use the equity in my property to help horses and help kids. ‘I got two ponies and took on a palomino mare with one eye that the RDA couldn’t keep. I also introduced Franklin Levinson, a horse whisperer from the US who works with autistic kids, to the RDA. He came out every year for the next five years to teach me, work with the kids and fundraise. The RDA couldn’t continue their schools program and, because I didn’t want to let the kids or their teachers down, I offered the use of my three horses and property for free. I am a person of my word: if I say I’m going to do something I’ll do it.’ Harmony Hooves Healing Hearts emerged after Jodie raised a loan to buy a riding school in the hinterland, which didn’t proceed. With the bank’s money in her account she ‘somehow ended up’ parked at a gate with the phone number for the Country Paradise caretaker on it.

n ‘Jodie Alderto r te h with daug Tajska’

Country Paradise was an old theme park left idle for many years. It’s now being developed by Gold Coast City Council as a community recreation area leased to not-for-profit organisations that run interesting activities such as a Men’s Shed, community garden, photography studio, community cafe and Bushcare. ‘They were agisting horses there and I asked if I could bring down some kids and horses and do some programs. But,

‘Jodie Alderto with one of her horses’

because people don’t understand ‘at-risk’ kids or autistic kids and have a fear of them, I was refused. It’s actually the opposite; if you let these kids in they’re so grateful. Sure, you get your bad apples, but you get that everywhere. These kids are between nine and eleven years old, which is the intervention age, and some aged up to fifteen. The older boys are a bit gone, but they’re respectful. My farrier, who’s been working with me for ages, acts as a sort of a male role model, which a lot of these boys don’t have in their lives. ‘Then two years ago my friend’s property next door to Country Paradise miraculously became vacant so I moved in and we started rescuing horses together from horse sales. There are 200 horses that go through this one sale yard every three weeks. People make $300 in five minutes buying and selling good horses for meat. The horses get prodded on to a truck and it’s horrible. I’d rather give these horses a home and a second chance of life—not that I can save them all. Some horses we’ve re-homed, some we’ve rehabilitated, some are still here. ‘Now, after negotiating with the council, Healing Hooves is being set up at Country Paradise. It’s a wellbeing centre for horses and people and it means we’ll be able to sponsor and rescue more horses and help more people. We do fundraisers, birthday parties, walks, horse riding and other activities. It’s now a registered charity run by a committee and we’ve got corporate sponsors doing work at the new centre and it’s really moving forward.

‘What I do now is re-create what healed me as a child. I do this for kids that are going through similar traumas to what I did, but who don’t understand it; that feeling of not being wanted or not being validated. Some of the children we work with today are from foster homes and you can see that they have so much to give and they don’t know what love is. But, if they share it with an animal they actually feel that love. It’s incredible that I can actually do that.’ Many people born dirt-poor without loving parental guidance would be hopeless and heartless. Instead, Jodie Alderton has devoted her life to giving friendship, loyalty, safety, hope and love to others and, honey, that is remarkable. Country Paradise officially opened on 2 December 2012. It’s at 80 Billibirra Crescent, Nerang.

more information:

Healing Hooves Foundation www.healinghoovesfoundation.com.au Telephone 0418 147 399 Email info@harmonyhooves.com.au