Brett grew up in Gulgong on his family’s farm and attended pony club as a young lad before taking on the role as track rider for his Father who was training at the time. His love of horses was well and truly in his blood from an early age.
In between riding work for his Dad, Brett was carving out a career as a shearer. He knew it wasn’t going to be an easy job but looked forward to the challenge. He’s never been one to just sit back and watch, he’s always been driven to succeed and succeed he did. He started at age 15, he worked hard, put in the long hours and by the time he had turned 18 he was in charge of the shearing teams.
From there he farmed for 10 years working crops, sheep and cattle and in 2006 he decided a change was needed so he became a Publican and purchased the Courthouse Hotel in Mudgee. Brett worked in his Hotel and in 2009 he combined being a Publican with training horses.
He aquired 4 boxes off-course in Mudgee but it wasn’t long before he was being offered to take on more horses. In 2011 Brett and his family moved to Toikan Park, where his stable grew to 20 horses with all the family playing vital roles. What had started as a hobby was now a professional horse training business.
In 2011 Brett moved his family and his horses to Gulgong Racecourse, where he has more stables, larger acreage and excellent training facilities. He now has 50+ horses and has had some great successes.
Brett’s wife Kelly works in the stables while assisting with the administration side of the business, sons Ben & Kurt do majority of the breaking and Jay rides work. Their only daughter Nikki now has a young family but any spare time see’s her helping out the family business.
Brett has now been training over ten years, three years as a hobby and the rest professionally. He has trained many winners, most notably Slate on Edge who won the Grey Series in the Melbourne Spring Carnival at Flemington in both 2014 and 2015. Brett won the ‘Central Districts Trainers Premiership’ five times in a row, the ‘Western Districts Trainers Premiership’ twice and has been runner up three times. Brett has also won the ‘NSW Country Trainer Of The Year’ in 2016 and was runner up in 2017.
