Scotch College

Chris leaves the trials of the trails

When rising insurance costs and the looming threat of possible litigation forced Chris Stoney to close his trail riding business, Stoney's Bluff and Beyond Trailrides, he had quite a good fall-back position - running thousands of sheep and cattle, mainly on leased land.

It wasn't as if he could walk away without regret from his trail rides business, described by the Weekly Times as "one of the high country's best loved and highest profile trail ride operators", and the winner of the State Adventure Tourism Award in 2001. After all, it had been a labour of love ever since he left Scotch in 1983, and a venture that he built up with the support of Scotch schoolmates Andy Macarthur, Greg Bean and Cameron Green.

"Then came a two hundred and fifty per cent rise in our public liability insurance - even though we'd had no claims - and with the increasingly litigious society that we now live in, we were forced to reconsider our position," Chris told Great Scot. "We made the heartbreaking decision to close our Bluff and Beyond Trailrides earlier this year, and we sold off all our much-loved horses and associated gear."

Chris wasn't the only person who lamented the demise of the business. Past customers from all around Australia were disappointed, some venting their feelings in letters to the editors of newspapers, such as one writer to the Weekly Times, who said: "We will all be the poorer for losing another bush icon … Thank you, Chris Stoney, for bringing the romance of your beloved country to so many."

For more than 70 years the Stoney family has driven mobs of cattle in the High Country, so Chris is steeped in the cattle tradition.

Ever since leaving school he had nursed the ambition of owning cattle - a lot of cattle. The idea of owning so many sheep only came later.

"To be able to run big mobs of sheep and cattle, I realised I had to change my way of thinking, from owning land to leasing land," Chris said. "It's a matter of having the capital tied up in stock, not land."

About six years ago, while the trail rides business was still booming, he leased his first land, and has never looked back. Now he runs twenty three thousand sheep and one thousand cattle, largely on leased pastures - he has six hundred and forty hectares of freehold land and three thousand hectares of leasehold land in north-eastern Victoria.

He is looking to build his stock numbers and leased areas, and believes so strongly in the value of leasing land that he delivered an address on the subject at a recent rural conference.

Last year he opened Stoney's High Country Centre, which organises tour bookings and accommodation, and sells country clothing, books and videos. He is developing an on-line component at www.stoneys.com.au

"At the end of the day it was great to finish the trail rides business on our own terms, and while it was still fun," Chris said. "We're very excited about the future of our grazing enterprise. It's growing enormously, pulling good returns, and we are almost at the stage of bringing in outside equity."

David Ashton