The Team

The village that keeps a crazy horse girl riding, no matter what her medical life throws at her.

Riding may be an individual sport, but there is a full team that helps keep Noella, the boys and the farm running.

  • The woman who has been on Noella’s side from day one. Kathy is the owner and senior riding instructor at The Riding Patch. Kathy started this business as it was challenging to hold a job down while flying to USA for medical treatment.

  • Esther is a longtime family friends and is an fantastic horseman, she came onto the team when we started with Junior and he's appriciated her ability to ride like Noella to help him understand the adaptive aids.

    Esther had broken and trained horses for many years in many disciplines and is now branching on to rider development, mindset and a full holistic approach as a riding instructor.

    She has many other facets also.

  • Vicki Abraham started out as a sole practitioner in 2000 as she was extremely passionate to help others and ensure that they were able to continue to live their life to their fullest potential.

    For her and Noella, it has been a long journey, starting with the fight to access the NDIS. From there Vicki has become more than just a friend and is there to help and support Noella with so many different things.

    Noella would be truly lost without Vicki

Keelie

  • The girls that keep the competition running, keep me on time, manage the Noella meltdowns and make all the horses shine!

  • Now Noella has many friends who are a part of the team and each is an intricate part on this.

    Jasmin, though is that ride or die friend and has become a support worker and help Noella on adventures, such as whipcracking clinics, public speaking gigs or demos.

Tahnee

  • Tara’s passion is supporting individuals and their families to better navigate the service system.

    Tara works with Vicki and is a fantastic Support Coordinator. She's there to solve and support Noella.

Brooke

  • Adrian worked closely with Noella for many years to develop adaptive aids, such as an elastic stirrup leather that helped Noella have an 'ankle flection' before amputation and recently Adrian built a fully customized saddle with more adaptions than ever before.

    The Smith Saddlery is an on-site manufacturing facility. Their master saddlers specialize in building tailor made saddles for the individual requirements of the horse and rider. A life time of knowledge and experience has developed a range of dressage and jump saddles, along with stock and western saddles. Pride is taken to ensure that your saddles and equipment look and feel good for many years.  To compliment our saddles we also build the rest of the rider’s equipment, from a bridle to girth, the list is endless. In fact if it is made of leather we are happy to build it.

  • This is one of the newer members to the team, Noella prosthetic is Priscilla or Peggie for short.

    Peggie is maintained and supported by the team at Adelaide Orthotics & Prosthetics.