The decision was made in early 1961.

The dominant colour on the uniform of the newly formed Fassifern Pony Club would be pink.

“Pink, you say?!” was undoubtedly said when the news was heard.

“No, that can’t be right,” they would have scoffed.

“Why, there’s boys in the Club, not just girls.

“Pink! What’s the world coming to?”

While the 1960s was a time of momentous social change in Australia, change only happened by tiny, snail-paced increments in the conservative rural community in which the Club was based.

The wider community, out past the fringes of the country towns through the farmlands and larger grazing properties to the mountains, was known as Fassifern while the largest urban centre was Boonah.

The district was peopled by families who could trace their history back to settlement and by those who had been residents long enough to claim status as a local. Beyond the regular changeover of teachers and bank staff, newcomers were a curiosity, not an ordinary occurrence.

Everyone knew everyone. It was a safe place; a place where people trusted each other; a place where traditional values were not spoken of, but lived.

So how could an organisation with an all male committee choose pink for a Club uniform?

And here we must point out that the shade of pink they chose was without nuance – it was a bright, brash, hit-you-right-in-the-eye, PINK.

To learn the reason behind the choice we turn to Les Ehrich, one of the original Fassifern Pony Clubbers, who told the ‘pink tale’ at the 60th anniversary gathering of the Clubhouse on Saturday.

But first, some background.

In October 1960, a move was made at a Boonah Show Society meeting to form a local pony club.

Committee member, noted horseman, campdrafter and horse judge, Alf Betts, had been lobbying others on the value of such a club ever since he had been called on to judge pony club events at a Show in New South Wales.

He had been invited to the Show to judge the horse events and was surprised to be asked to add the pony clubbers to his judging duties.

A few questions and queries to that Show committee and he learned that a strong, local pony club was a valuable adjunct to a Show as it almost guaranteed a good number of entries in the horse section.

Alf Betts didn’t have to do much talking to get other Boonah committee members to agree and the Fassifern Pony Club was formed and a committee chosen at a public meeting on Thursday, October 27, 1960.

The first aim was to get local families to nominate their youngsters as Club members, the second was to get local property owners to lend their ponies to those youngsters who didn’t have one of their own and the third was to gain affiliation to the Pony Club Association of Queensland.

As it turned out, the first two aims were easily met and on Saturday, December 11, 1960, the first Club day at the Boonah Showgrounds drew a headline: ‘Sixteen ponies in first muster’.

And affiliation with the Pony Club Association of Queensland seemed a certainty but first they must decide on the colours for the uniform.

The committee was led by former Outback stockman and respected horseman, Norm Robson, who had moved his family to a dairy farm outside Boonah to … “make sure his children got a good education”. He also took on the role of Chief Instructor.

Oxley Mounted Policeman, Tom Lugge, had retired to a property near Maroon and was a willing secretary.

Joining the executive duo at the regular meetings were men who had put up their hand to help as instructors. They included Alf Betts, Percy Grace, Gus Kirchner, Kevin Kirchner and a little later, Bill Evans. Local veterinarian, Fred Delroy, also brought a range of valuable skills to the Club.

“We were very fortunate,” recalls Les Ehrich, “our instructors were some of the finest horsemen in a district known for its top horsemen.”

Everything went smoothly at those meetings except when it came to choosing the uniform.

“First they decided our uniform should be fawn jodhpurs, white shirt and tan boots with a yellow tie,” Les said.

“But then it was found that those were the colours of the Beaudesert Pony Club. That Club was in the West Moreton zone, which was likely to be the same zone as us.

“So the decision on the uniform went back to the next meeting.

“It was pretty well agreed that we’d have fawn jodhpurs, white shirt and tan boots so all they had to do was choose the colour of our tie and saddle cloths.

“But everyone had a different idea.”

They couldn’t come to a decision that everyone agreed on … not at that meeting nor the next.

“Finally, Gus Kirchner got up and said in exasperation … ‘look I’m sick of this, we may as well make it bloody pink!’ and it stuck.”

And so, the Fassifern Pony Club turned up at their first West Moreton zone gymkhanas in uniforms with bright pink ties and ponies adorned with pink saddlecloths with white trim.

“We coped a fair bit of ragging at first,” Les recalls.

“Then we started winning. Everyone settled down after that.”

Les credits the high calibre of the instructors to the rapid growth in membership numbers and the increasing number of ribbons they brought home from gymkhanas.

“Norm Robson was a good horseman, a good leader and was one of the driving forces behind the Club,” Les recalls.

“Tom Lugge didn’t have any kids but he was devoted to the Club. His training in the Mounted Police meant he really knew what he was talking about.

“Then there were men like Alf Betts, former Light Horse troopers – men like him and Percy Grace and the Kirchners were great riders – they taught us riding skills and they taught us a lot of life skills along the way.”

Training days were made more enjoyable by some of the events the young riders took part in.

“You couldn’t train kids that way today, it wouldn’t be considered safe,” Les says in referring to some of these ‘events’.

“There was the one where we’d have to take our boots off on one side of the ring, go to the other side barefooted where our ponies were waiting and lead them at a full run to where our boots were, put our boots on, jump on our ponies and race them back to the other side.

“Or the rescue races where a rider would race at full tilt around the ring to where their partner was standing, haul him or her up behind them on the pony and race back to the start.”

The Fassifern Pony Club was a willing and active participant in the gymkhanas.

“A lot of us would ride our ponies into Boonah from home every Saturday – there were members from Maroon, Roadvale, Templin, Mt French, from all over the district and in the first couple of years there was even a family from Warwick, the Pierpoints. Their dad would load the kids and the ponies in the truck and drive them over the range to every Club day,” Les said.

“But when it came to gymkhanas out of town, they’d pool resources and drive us and our ponies to the event.”

Within two to three years of the forming of the Fassifern Club, there were about 20 Clubs in the West Moreton zone.

“By then we had about 30 members in Boonah and another 20 in our branch Club at Maroon,” he said.

“In the Summer months we’d be competing in a gymkhana almost every weekend at one of the other Clubs in the Zone – Wynnum, Rocklea, Beaudesert, Marburg, Laidley, Esk, Allora, Clifton and Warwick are some that I remember.

“And we were a pretty strong Club thanks to our instructors – I can remember one year when they took a small team of us to a gymkhana in Rocklea where we won every blue ribbon in every age group, about 30 all up I think.”

Fundraising for the Club was a never ending story and all the parents were involved.

“They ran raffles and street stalls and they’d run a food stall at the monthly cattle sale at the Boonah Showgrounds – I can remember those because I was the ‘stoker’ on the fire under the big drums of hot water to make sure they were kept on the boil for the cups of tea,” Les recalls.

However, the biggest and most successful fundraiser came more than 40 years after the Club was formed.

That story was told at the anniversary gathering by another rider who was among the first Fassifern Pony Clubbers, Alf Betts’ daughter, Margaret Harvey.

In 2006, when Jill Crowley was President, with the backing of the Boonah Shire Council, the Club won the right to host the 2006 Tom Quilty Gold Cup Endurance Ride.

More than 300 riders took part in the 160km ride. There were riders from all over Australia and from Ireland, the USA, Namibia, the UAE and Japan.

Special guests were Erica Williams who with her then husband, RM Williams, had been the instigators behind the event which began in 1966 and Tom Quilty’s daughter Doreen. Cattleman, Tom Quilty, donated $1,000 to the first event which was used to purchase the perpetual trophy.

Actor Ernie Dingo was the starter for the ride and a huge contingent of local volunteers joined Pony Club members as the support crew for the multi faceted event.

“We raised $100,000 for the Club,” Margaret Harvey recalled.

And part of that money was used to move the former Boonah Lutheran Church Hall onto the Boonah Showgrounds and to renovate and refurbish the building as a Clubhouse.

It was this building where the anniversary gathering of the now named Fassifern Horse and Pony Club was held on Saturday. It was where past and present members sat on the rows of chairs on the wide verandah to listen to reminiscences about Club.

While members had claimed many trophies and ribbons across the 60 years since it was founded, the strongest underlying theme of the reminiscences was best summed up by one of the former presidents, Wayne Lankowski.

“The friendships we made through Pony Club, as parents and riders, are friendships that have lasted a lifetime.”