The first sign Chloe Phillips-Harris is based off the beaten track comes when I receive a phone call from our photographer Libby Law. She’s arrived at Chloe’s Opua address, but surely this can’t be the place? There’s no sign of any buildings and a stream running across the very long metal driveway.
But yes, this 70-acre block of mostly native bush is where Chloe lives and it’s literally off the grid. There are basic stables but otherwise no facilities – Chloe has a few show jumps in a paddock, but if she wants to school her horses properly she floats 40 minutes each way to a friend’s arena in Kerikeri. Chloe has a ute and float by necessity; she couldn’t get a truck down her driveway. But this bright and bubbly and incredibly inspiring young woman is all about making the most of what you’ve got.
“It’s not ideal horse country,” she says. “But you’ve got to start somewhere and my horses love galloping through the bush. They have to think for themselves and be aware of where they put their feet – I think it’s really good for them, especially for eventing. Yes, I would love better paddocks, but my horses have such a good base level of fitness.”
Chloe moved to Opua with her mum, Suzanne Phillips, and her younger brother Riley when she was 15. The house now runs on solar power, but to start with there was electricity, no phone line, no fences and no driveway. When they moved in, the rundown cottage was missing windows, a wall and a ceiling.
“We’ve built it piece by piece,” explains Chloe. “We had candles instead of lights for two years. It was an adventure. Having no TV was fine, but when you’re 16 years old and trying to put make-up on by candlelight and get candle wax all over your favourite dress… that was my breaking point!”
From a young age, Chloe schooled and sold ponies to pay for her competition entries and travelled to horse trials alone, sleeping in her float. She felt somewhat of an outsider, and it definitely wasn’t easy, but she found things a lot better once she reached Advanced level with her top horse, Cor Jet.
“I found it hard when I was young, because I didn’t have any friends who evented and it was really closed off. I went to my first three-day knowing no-one, and I didn’t have a coach. Trying to figure everything out on my own was a minefield. For years I felt like the poorest kid on the circuit, and it was hard to hold my head up,” she recalls.
“But now I love going to events and seeing my eventing family. When you get up the grades, everyone is really supportive and the one thing you notice is that there are so many people from different backgrounds. If you look at the top riders, it’s a really diverse and inclusive group, and nobody wants to win at the expense of someone else. In eventing, even if you have all the money in the world, you still have to work hard to get there.”
Chloe’s upbringing also prepared her perfectly for her alternate career of adventurer: when she isn’t taming wild Kaimanawas, schooling eventers or running children’s pony camps, she can be found adventuring in some pretty far-flung destinations. “Growing up here and doing the horse shows on my own means I’ve always had to rely on myself and solve my own problems.”
Chloe has undertaken aid work in Egypt, ridden in the Mongol Derby, attended the first World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan and spent months living in the mountains of Kazakhstan on a beef farm. She led an expedition on camels through the Gobi desert during the coldest 10 days of the year; at one point, the temperature plunged to -43 Celsius and sheep froze to death just 20m from the yurt where she was sleeping.
These kind of adventures make even four-star cross-country look quite tame, but Chloe says it’s simply a different type of challenge. “It definitely makes eventing look very manicured – the more adventuring I’ve done, the more difficult it is to go back and focus on dressage,” she laughs. “But some of the skills are similar as well, especially the mindset, because sport is brutal; you need that resilience to keep picking yourself up and go back to the drawing board.”
An adventurous spirit
Chloe was born in Texas but moved to New Zealand when she was 10 months old, and has lived in Northland ever since. Her American mum Suzanne met her Kiwi father, Russell Harris, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, when they were sailing in two different boats. It’s easy to see where Chloe gets her adventurous spirit from; her father built his own yacht, the R Tucker Thompson, in his back yard in Mangawhai and sailed it around the world. “I used to think I was nothing like my parents, but the more I think about it, there are a few things that run in the family,” she laughs.
Suzanne, who is a GP, comes from a horse-riding family in Texas and will still get on one of Chloe’s horses occasionally and gallop around the farm – Chloe jokes she was devastated as a kid when her mother made her go to pony club in a Western saddle.
Suzanne encouraged both her children to pursue their dreams. Riley too is a top athlete: he is an ex-World Champion and currently number two in the world in taekwondo.
“My mum is super-smart and a very kind, empathic person,” explains Chloe. “She always believed we could do anything. When in the beginning absolutely nobody else was encouraging about my adventures or working with horses, she would say, ‘That’s a great idea!’ It definitely helped.”
Chloe went to Kerikeri High School and attended Bay of Islands Pony Club, taking up eventing when she was 11. After leaving school, she spent a year as a working pupil with Bill Noble. After her time there, she won a scholarship through Dressage New Zealand, and travelled to Europe, where she sat her German riding exams before returning home.
“Bill actually made dressage fun. When I sat on his horses, it was everything I wanted – they were soft and a joy to ride. He taught me that you should improve every single horse you sit on; your job is to make the horse love what it is doing, and want to perform. It was really nice to have that influence early in my career.”
Chloe is largely self-taught when it comes to jumping. “I would just jump whatever was in the paddock – some barrels, or hay bales or gorse bushes. Usually I would make them bigger than I thought they would be at a competition, and I’d be fine!
“Obviously I’d love access to trainers, but there are very few up here. I think that is the biggest hurdle, because it doesn’t matter what sport you do, you need feedback to keep polishing things.”
After she finished working for Bill, Chloe dragged her old pony club mount, Desert Legend, out of the paddock and re-schooled him. The 15.2hh quarter horse-Appaloosa cross was nothing flash, but Chloe’s sheer determination saw them through to two-star level, and they won the New Zealand Young Rider series in 2009.
Chloe has studied equine and animal science as well as journalism. She writes for equestrian and adventure magazines, and her biography, Fearless, was published by Harper Collins in 2019. “I never wanted to be that horse rider who had done nothing else, with no other skills to my name,” she explains.
Off the beaten track
Chloe’s first overseas adventure was with the Kiwi Care team, travelling to do aid work with horses in Egypt; inspired for more adventure she settled on the 1000km Mongol Derby, the world’s toughest horse race.
It took Chloe seven and a half days to complete the race; riders had one horse for 40km before going through a vet check and moving on to the next. “It is just ridiculously tough. When you hear the words ‘horse race’, you think of following a nice route, but it’s nothing like that at all; Mongolia is big, open countryside and there are no fences or tracks. And the horses were wild – much wilder than anything I’d worked with at home, including the Kaimanawas.
“To me it is the absolute dream. I really love working with horses and I’ve always been very curious about different ways of doing things. I’ve learnt so much from so many horsemen in all walks of life – there’s always something I’ve been able to bring back.”
After the Mongol Derby, Chloe gained a press pass to the first World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan, which were horse sports unlike anything Chloe had seen before, including wrestling on horse back and 20km bareback races. She also spent six months on a beef farm in the mountains of Kazakhstan and it was here she fell in love with the massive but gentle dogs they used to protect the stock from wolves, Central Asian Shepherds . Last year, she imported her own puppy from Australia – at nine months old, Kahn, or ‘Big Pup’ as Chloe calls him, is already huge.
Chloe’s interest in animal behaviour has prompted pretty incredible journeys, including spending time with eagle hunters and the last reindeer tribe in the Mongolian mountains. “When we visited the reindeer tribes, it was some of the craziest riding I’ve ever done in my life – going through glaciers and ice, or else riding up a mountain with torrents of water coming down at you.”
Last year, she crossed the Simpson Desert on camels, through previously unexplored territory, taking part in an ecological survey. “Camels are incredible animals. They have a bad reputation because they don’t look majestic like the horse, but they are so intelligent and amazingly tough.”
The Kaimanawa connection
Chloe has been working with wild Kaimanawa horses for a decade, and her Northland property is perfect for hardy Kais.
“I think if you count all the musters and foster horses, I’ve probably had close to 30 Kaimanawas now,” she says. “I’d always wanted to work with wild horses and I think they are great – they make such cool ponies.”
Chloe has kept a few special ones over the years, including her favourite ‘Shy Boy’, the beautiful bay who came from the muster about four years ago.
“He was by far the wildest one I’ve ever had and he’s such a professional’s horse in that every move you make means something to him. He looks like a proper wild pony and I enjoy having him as my bush-basher,” says Chloe.
Chloe also has the lovely grey mare Fern, who has went up to Pre-Novice level eventing and also did a lot of show hunter – she has just had a foal to Chloe’s sport horse stallion, Satisfaction. And then there is the gentle Thor, who came as Chloe’s horse for the Kaimanawa Challenge but was never sound; she has used him to raise all her sport horse foals.
Chloe also takes foster horses from Kaimanawa Heritage Horses; working with them until they are ready to go into permanent homes. “It’s a cool system to make sure the horses keep progressing and don’t just get abandoned. I usually sell the horses on and reimburse Kaimanawa Heritage Horses whatever they have paid me in foster care money, so they can go on and foster another horse,” explains Chloe. “I will usually do a couple of kids’ camps with them once they have been broken in, so I know they are kid-proof. You can never predict what kids are going to do with their ponies, so it’s really important to have kids riding them.”
- This article was first published in the August 2018 issue of NZ Horse & Pony
