Lunch at Moonbi leaves a sour taste.

Over the past three weeks we have been in regular contact with Meg Drury with reports about the 29 ladies caught up in the lock down at Moonbi, after they had attended a Tamworth Dressage Day. The morale of these inmates has been on a bit of a roller coaster over this time and the DPI in their wisdom decided to organise a “Pamper Day” on September the 14th. A press release was issued by the DPI on the 7th of September saying the ladies would be “treated to beauty treatments, hair styling and hand massages before sitting down to a scrumptious lunch. It’s an initiative to come out of the State Government’s drought support program.” This immediately had other local residents “up in arms” with the local paper reporting, “why should the ladies at Moonbi get entitlements while other people are hurting”. As the Equine Influenza rapidly spreads though the Hunter Valley and the large equestrian communities surrounding Tamworth, emotions are running high.

We spoke to Meg about her disappointment concerning the bad press and the how they were getting on at Moonbi.

“It all started earlier this week, when people heard about the “pamper day”. There was an article in the local paper saying we are getting things like free food and special treatment, while other locals are getting nothing and drought relief money was going to pay for this.”. I rang the local paper and explained we do not need the bad press. This is not our decision, we want to go home. I also asked the DPI why the drought relief was still called this, when this fund is now for “looking after the happiness and well being of people in regional areas hit by disaster”, such as the people effected by bushfires and last week floods at Singleton, but I really did not get an answer.

Any way the “pamper day” was really nice. The DPI provided lunch and some volunteers did our nails and hair, while a mental health worker did a general talk on coping with stressful situations.

To our eyes 95% of the horses are now 100% well, but there has not been a vet around for a while. Hopefully a vet is coming next week to assess our horses and then we may have some idea when we can go home. Now that the horses are getting better and we do not have as much to do, it is getting harder to stay here.”

It is to hoped that people caught in the Equine Flu disaster will start to pull together and produce an united front. As Heath Ryan put it, “we are at war” and there is an added problem our enemy is invisible. To defeat this opponent we all need to work together. We will catch up with Meg next week and hopefully they will have a release date.