Judy Dierks: A Legendary Australian Dressage Rider

Few have had more influence on Australian dressage than Judy Dierks.

Her riding, her teaching, her turnout and her iconic presentation elevated her in many ways above her peers. And what’s more, it was all seemingly achieved with an infectious good humour. Judy’s achievements, including representing Australia at the 1994 WEG in The Hague and coaching the New Zealand Dressage Team at the 1998 WEG in Rome and the 2000 Sydney Olympics, were beyond the wildest imagination of the horse-obsessed Judy Turner from Oatley, 18kms south of the Sydney CBD.

“I had no parents, no relatives, nobody in close or distant family who knew anything about horses,” begins Judy. “But for some reason, I had a total obsession with them. I would constantly draw them, and if we ever went for a drive in the country, I would make my father pull over if we came across any paddocked horses. I would hang over the barbed wire fence, just to stand there, to be near them and smell them. When I was about 12, I convinced my parents to send me to a four-day children’s camp at Diana Gould’s Willow Park at Wilberforce. I did two camps there, and on the strength of that, a couple of years later, when I heard a mention that a man wanted a pony exercised, I said, I can do that!

“The pony was on the other side of Oatley, and in those days, if you wanted to get anywhere, you had to catch buses and trains. I went for the interview and told the pony’s owner I could ride. The pony was called Sovereign, and the elderly owner was into showing. I saddled and bridled the pony up in front of him, and when I put my foot in the stirrup, the saddle slipped totally under the pony. I had no idea even about tightening a girth. However, I got the ride on the pony and it was a very, very good pony. I would carry my riding clothes in my school bag and change in the afternoon and then walk miles home after riding the pony, and that’s how it started.

“I was out riding one day, and I used to ride for miles. I came across a mare and foal, and I said to the owners I wanted to buy the foal. No, they said, you can’t buy the foal, you can buy the mare. So, then I went home and told my father I’d bought a horse. My poor father had to drive over and tell them we would buy the horse, but they would have to wait until we put a stable and yard in the backyard. So, my father built a brick stable in the corner of a suburban backyard, with a yard that went under the clothesline. Oatley was steep, suburban and on a peninsula on the Georges River, and we had a steep concrete driveway. My father had to build ramps to get a horse up it and around his aviary, under the clothesline and into its yard.

“I was still working the pony, and the owner died, so I ended up with a pony and a galloway in the backyard. It was so difficult; the neighbours were difficult, the council was difficult, and there was nowhere to ride. Everywhere I went, they told me to get off the road and then get off the footpath. I’d go to a local park, and the ranger would chase me out. However, I persevered, and I would ride one and lead the other to the Bankstown Gymkhana and ride home with the ribbons around their necks. It was bizarre, really, as there were no horses in my area.

“I sold the pony and decided I needed an ex-racehorse, so I sold the Galloway and bought an ex-racehorse without riding it: a Thoroughbred mare. That was the biggest disaster ever, I don’t know how I survived. I’d let it out of the stable in the morning, and it would come rushing out, kicking dirt all over the neighbour’s windows, not to mention the washing. I had to come home at lunchtime, pick up the manure and put it in plastic bags. And rain, hail or shine, I had to get that horse out of the backyard (under the clothesline, down the steep drive), and I would be riding it in a drizabone around the streets in the dark in winter. I continued with this regime until I was about 21 when my mother saw an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald in the horses, vehicles and livestock section for someone to come and groom and work horses. That’s when my life changed completely.

“My mother, father, and I drove to a property on Castle Hill Road where I met Clemens Dierks. He had completed his Bereiter qualifications in Germany and had not long arrived in the country. I moved to Castle Hill and got involved with Clemens. My whole life changed forever when I met Clemens. He leased the property that was originally owned by June Bend. It was 25 acres and the most beautiful property with a dressage arena, a cross-country course and a showjumping area. I started working for him, and he got a wife and a very hard worker. At that stage, I hardly knew what a correct diagonal was; I knew nothing when I met Clemens really. I had learnt to stick on, but I don’t know how I survived, I just had a steely determination to succeed with the horses. I just watched other people who were successful, what they looked like, and what their horses looked like. I just learned by watching others and trying to work out what they were doing.

“Clemens had all sorts of horses in training, Standardbreds that we were trying to teach to jump for people. I was jumping them over 44 gallon drum height jumps with varying degrees of success and disaster. We had Thoroughbreds in training to be hacks. It was an interesting time. Clemens and I married in 1975, and the property in Castle Hill was sold for development. We bought a property, seven acres in Dural. We borrowed money to buy it, and we borrowed money to develop it. We started with five stables and a small flat attached to the stables that would flood when it rained. We had 60 horses at Dural at one stage. The five stables turned to 50 on a sloping seven acres. We had horses in training, horses boarded and six staff. We were there for 12 years. To augment our income in the beginning, I worked part-time in a fashion shop in Castle Hill for Rai Harris (Jenelle Sanna’s mother) and for a short time I would get up at 4 am kitted out in white plastic boots and overalls,. I worked in a chicken processing factory cutting Marylands on a bandsaw, until a woman in the smoko room told me she had lost two fingers using the saw! I didn’t last long there and left that job pretty quickly.

“We mainly had Thoroughbreds at that stage, and over time, I got better. I started showing the Thoroughbreds and hacking and started sitting up better and pulled myself together. I looked to see how the top competitors were going and styled myself on them. I started riding horses on the bit, and that made a big difference; that was the difference. We bought an ex-racehorse from the Inglis Tried Racehorse sale, and we called him Galoubet. I hacked him and then did dressage with him, and he was my first Grand Prix horse. He could passage and piaffe, and I taught him one-time changes, and he was getting around 65%. I got another Thoroughbred, Talind, to Grand Prix as well. Then, we just took what horses we could at the time.

“The Oatley family imported the first Hanoverian stallion, Domherr, in 1976. We had a Thoroughbred mare, Linen, that we hacked, and we put her in foal to him. It was a disaster, and the foal died, but it was the start of the Warmbloods, and Clemens was enthusiastic about them. We had established ourselves well in dressage riding, selling horses and giving lessons and clinics. We sold Dural and bought five acres in Arcadia. We worked very hard, and we built up Arcadia over the years. There was a ten-horse barn and six outside stables, an indoor school and an outdoor arena. Our daughter Daniella was two when we moved to Arcadia.

“We had huge success with the horses in training; great clients and very good horses. I took Joan and Laurie Petruche’s Dom Perignon, by Domherr, all the way from just broken into Grand Prix and was a member of the Australian Dressage Team at the 1994 WEG in The Hague. With all the horses I had, Frontier, Finnigan, De Caprio, Donna Carerra, etc, I was lucky to have them from the beginning of their careers. Andrea Beatty’s Donna Carerra was DWTS Young Horse Champion in 2011 and 2012. We were lucky that we had clients who bought purpose-bred young horses that we had in training and took to the highest level. In the 90s leading up to Sydney 2000, there was huge enthusiasm for dressage. So many were training Grand Prix, and everyone would come to Arcadia. We were all so determined to succeed. Dom Perignon went to WEG, and I did a lot of young horse riding. Then, if you had a young horse with three good paces and you rode it well, you would win. Nowadays, you need a horse with extraordinary movement, but you still have to ride it well. You need a great horse and a great rider to win these days.”

Apart from her talent as a rider and trainer, Judy is famous for her turnout, especially her always beautiful hair, especially when accompanied by a top hat. “The hacking gave me a lot of polish, of course, but the hair came from an inspirational person in my life. German rider and trainer, the late Rosemarie Springer, came out to conduct clinics. She was tremendously disciplined, always so upright and elegant. She was a wonderful woman, and she did her hair in that fashion (horizontal roll) every day. However, for me, it wasn’t always perfect. I had a horse in training, a hack, Royal Portrait and one year at Sydney Royal; the owner said she wanted to ride in the Lady’s hack class. We got him all ready for her, and it was getting closer and closer to the class. At the eleventh hour, we got word that she was not going to make it. There were no mobile phones at the time. So, I had to very quickly get ready to ride it in the Ladies. In I went, cantering, cantering, cantering around on the circle; the first thing that happened was that the horse’s number came undone and was flapping around its legs, and then I felt my hair starting to come undone. You have to use a false roll to hold the hair in shape. I grabbed the roll with one hand and, still cantering on the circle, stuffed it down the front of my breeches. So, with the number flapping around the horse’s legs and my hair flowing out under the bowler, I thought it was a good test for a Lady’s hack. But the judge, Mrs Field, didn’t agree, and I was kicked out. Everyone watching was so amused. I perfected and secured my hair after that.

“Clemens had been travelling to New Zealand to coach for many years, and they would come over here and stay with us. Basically, he trained the New Zealand Team, but because he was the Australian Team Coach, the New Zealanders asked me if I would coach them for the 1998 WEG in Rome and the Sydney Games. We all trained together, and we all stayed together; it was a wonderful time.

“Vicky Newham’s Diamond Star was really my last really good horse, although his success was unexpected. Daniella had seen him in Germany, and he was bought as a surprise birthday present for Vicky and not a Grand Prix horse. I hadn’t seen him, let alone ridden him, until he arrived at Arcadia. I started to train him, and Vicky would come and ride him occasionally. We started him in the Young Horse classes, which he won at the CDI at Werribee. He had three good paces and a good trainability. He won Novice Horse of the Year, Medium HOTY, Advanced HOTY and Small Tour HOTY as the years went by. We were always training to the highest levels, so we knew he was going to Grand Prix. (Diamond Star was one of the dominant Grand Prix horses from 2015 to 2018, with victories in the Grand Prix Freestyle at the Sydney CDI in 2015 and 2018 and the Australian Championship Grand Prix at Boneo in 2017). For me, the training side of it is the enjoyment really, more so than the competition. He was so sound and so reliable. I was fortunate too that I didn’t own him because every horse that we ever owned, we had to sell. Galoubet was sold to New Zealand, Royal Portrait ended up in Germany; Finnigan I sold, Frontier (GP) went to Germany. They were all sold because we had no source of income other than the horses, and we had to make a living. I was so lucky that Vicky kept that horse in training all those years to get to that level. We had the most wonderful time. That horse brought so much fun and enjoyment, and it was the pinnacle and end of my riding career, really.

“I am not riding so much anymore, and we sold Arcadia and moved to a house in Galston. After two years of Covid, when we couldn’t do anything, couldn’t earn any money; people couldn’t come to us for lessons, the competitions stopped, and we only had a few horses in training; it was really difficult. At the end of 2021, we didn’t know what the next year was going to bring. We had been there for 38 years. I’ve tried training horses at other facilities, but it’s just not the same as having everything under control, knowing how much they have been fed, etc. I used to do the 8 pm feeds every night. If you are working every day in the barn, feeding them, picking up manure, rugs on and off, you know that horse, you develop a relationship with that horse. It is not the same at another facility, no matter how good, and I lost the desire to do it. I give more lessons now than I used to because I am not training horses. I am travelling the area, quite busy giving lessons and I am enjoying that. It’s not the same, and I have to accept that, but I am not sitting still, that’s for sure, and I would absolutely do it all over again.”

Article: Anna Sharpley.

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