Still King of the Ranges

BRONSON Macklinshaw has retained the title of King of the Ranges for the third consecutive year at the 14th annual King of the Ranges Stockman’s Challenge at Murrurundi on the weekend.

Mr Macklinshaw, an Arimdale horse breaker was presented with a ten thousand dollar winners cheque from major sponsor Regional Bank.

“It feels just as good as it did the last two years, I’d just like to thank all the other competitors, the committee and the sponsors, without any of that this show wouldn’t happen,” Mr Macklinshaw said during his acceptance speech.

“It’s a great show, a great committee and the bar is always friendly,” he said.

“There is a few us going to stay the night, I don’t know where we are going to go, but you’re more than welcome to come and join us, my shout,” Bronson Macklinshaw said.

Bronson attained a score of 703 points, second place went to Carl Green on 687.65 and third to Dave Mitchell with 672.75.

Emma O’Shea also retained her Lady Champion title for the third consecutive year with 608.85 points defeating Larissa Pearsall on 532.85 and Ellen Forge on 516.65.

Zeb Pearce collected the Junior Champion title with 482.25 points from Ben Shenton second on 449.55 to a close third placed Johnny Ward on 449.50 points.

The Novice Champion was taken out by Northern Territory’s Peter Jupiter on 482.25 points to second place Brett Allen on 447.65 points to Mason Talt on 405.6 points.

This is Peter Jupiter’s second year at the event with support from the Paradice family and the use of their horse Spinney’s Gold.

The experience has paid off for Mr Jupiter with a Novice Champion title under his belt making the long trip to Murrurundi worthwhile.

“It’s about two days travel in the plane from right up in the Gulf of Carpentaria,” said Mr Jupiter.

“The horse’s name is Spinney’s Gold but I call him Steve, Steve is a pretty good sort of a thing,” Peter Jupiter said.

President of the King of the Ranges committee Earl Kelaher was pleased with this year’s event.

“The weekend’s been really good, we have struck good weather, I think our move to February was really good from May, the bar’s done well and the crowd has been magnificent,” Mr Kelaher said.

“We were down a little bit on competitors but they all did very well, the locals look after us and there’s people that come from everywhere, all over the state and Queensland, I would say the crowd is a little better,” he said.

“We haven’t had an problems at all, I must thank the the Regional Bank and all our other sponsors and thanks to the community, the shire and everyone that has helped us when we had a problem,” Earl Kelaher said.