This article is from the August 2019 Horse Deals magazine.
Home at last. A view of the barn seen from the driveway heading towards it. The upper floor of the barn can be made into an apartment, at the moment it is a wonderful entertaining space. There is no shortage of entertaining space or entertaining at Vassey Park.
Syenna is the successful showing face of the horse-loving Vasilopoulos family. Lea and Bill have a life long love of horses and have ridden since children. “But not like Syenna,” says mum, Lea. “We lived at Mt Martha and rode on the beach and that sort of thing. Syenna has done pony club, interschool and has been very successful showing and is now getting really interested in dressage.” Syenna, newly graduated with a degree in Exercise and Sports Science is well known in the show ring with her hack and former Sydney Royal Champion, High Fashion and her super impressive Show Hunter, Hollands Bend Royal Consort. Interestingly under cover of rugs and sheltering under his own verandah was Base, the 2018 Sydney Royal Pope Cup winner. “We raced him,” says Lea “and he was pretty good too. We sent him up to Adam Oliver and Phil Bobic to produce in Queensland and Reece Stanley rode him to win the Pope. He is down here permanently now and Syenna will show him. We have a number of racehorses in training and my husband has one of the retired ones to ride. That’s how we got the name Vassey Park. The grooms used to refer to our horses as the Vassey horses rather than the Vasilopoulos horses, so we thought Vassey Park was a good name for the property.”
Vassey Park started as 20 vacant acres in Kangaroo Ground and Lea and Bill built everything from the ground up. As you can see, they think big. “Wayne Hill built everything on the property” continues Lea, “and basically I designed all the horse infrastructure from what I had seen and what I wanted. We have been here for ten years now and there is still more to do. We have 17 horses on the property and 25 paddocks, all with paddock boxes with their own tank and gravity-fed water. We are not on town water here, so we have storage of over one and a half million litres of water, some of which is reserved for fire fighting. We are in the midst of adding more paddocks, so they can be rotated more often and in the summer we have a few steers that move around the paddocks to tidy them up.” Amongst the horses are Lea’s Straight Egyptian Arabian stallion, Vassey Park First Edition and Syenna’s very well performed retired Show Hunter Galloway, Langtree Class Act.
The infrastructure at Vassey Park is amazing, but there has also been a lot of effort put into the garden landscaping. “I wanted a garden that didn’t need constant attention,” says Lea a renowned cook who preserves her own olives. The massive rock work has a two-fold purpose, aesthetic and practical, as it is both beautiful and structurally supports the earthwork on the hilly site. Vassey Park is a beautiful and impressive property, but we visited in July, how much better would it look with all the trees in blossom or leaf and the sun shining in a beautiful blue sky. We have not seen Vassey Park at its best, but it was still amazing.
Two huge timber doors make a statement at the entrance to the barn.
The upper floor in the barn is a great space with a beautiful hardwood floor. A great place for a party, but I think it has already been tested.
The magnificent hard wood beams in the barn. There is a large storage space for hay etc as you enter the barn and the stables are beyond. Everything is under one roof.
High Fashion at home. The mare is actually in the fully enclosed stallion box, as she likes her privacy. In all the other stables the horses can see one another. There is a thick layer of rubber on the floor of all stables as well as a generous bed of shavings. “Even with the rubber,” says Lea, “I still think they need a deep bed to encourage them to lie down. I think it makes them more comfortable.” All the stables have automatic waterers.
There are eight four metre by four metre stables, but Hollands Bend Royal Consort has a double box.
Rugs from L-R large to small all on their individual hangers. This is a great way to store rugs in use, especially if they get wet.
The tack rook, including Bill’s western saddles.
All the show gear, bagged, labeled and ready to go.
Plenty of feed storage with a massive line of feed bins. The massive feed bin lids are on gas struts and all the bins are metal lined and vermin proof. Shelves in the feed room house supplements, grooming and health products.
Two outside tacking up areas also seen set up to accommodate the horse washing under cover. The barn is rendered double brick with reclaimed ironbark timber.
The cyclone fence around the dam was an effort to keep the kangaroos out. “It is not called Kangaroo Ground” for nothing says Lea. The dam water is used for fire fighting and watering the garden. Noah’s Ark in the middle of the dam so far only has three geese.
A view down the drive lined with Manchurian Pear trees that would look wonderful in Spring or Summer. “We have planted over 680 trees since we arrived ten years ago” says Lea.
The babies paddock. The two paddock boxes built as one structure have a dividing wall which can be opened to create one big space. All the paddock boxes can be closed to stable a horse
if necessary.
As you can see, this box can be closed up as a stable. The lucky inhabitant of this paddock has a deluxe double room. All boxes have a water tank with a gravity water trough.
This long skinny sand yard can act as a Gloria Marshall paddock or a paddock for a horse recuperating from injury.
Some of the all hardwood construction paddock boxes like this one in the background have a verandah. And the 2018 Sydney Royal Pope Cup winner, Base is enjoying the view from his. Lea wanted a low maintenance garden and you can see a small corner of it in this photograph. Massive rocks were brought in to give the garden structure and Lea makes good use of the productive and numerous olive and fruit trees.
Each single box has a water trough of its own to provide drinking water. At Vassey Park the horses are out in the paddock living like horses as much as is practicable.
The 60m x 40m indoor is open on both sides and ends. A line of Cypress trees lines the LHS and provides a good windbreak. The surface is a mixture of river sand and rubber that Lea organised and it works very well.
The truck and float park next to the barn. There is an undercover crush if needed to check any mares or for any veterinary treatment.
“You can never have too much water storage” and at Vassey Park there is storage for over one and a half million litres. A huge amount of water can be collected from the barn and the indoor arena.
Photos: Julie Wilson. Article: Anna Sharpley.
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