With a lifetime love of horses and the land, Jenny Leslie brought the Bunyip Saddlery in October 2002. The next 13 years have seen a journey of learning, refining, creating and selling. She shared the highs, the lows and everything in between with KATHRYN BERMINGHAM.
It’s about changing the way people think. A lot of farmers haven’t cottoned on yet that they can get different halters to the original cotton ones that were around 40 years ago when I was a kid. Things are changing slowly but surely, it can be hard for it to gel.
JENNY Leslie’s motto is “there’s no point doing something if you’re not going to do it properly”.
They’re wise words to live by, particularly in her line of work.
Jenny owns Bunyip Saddlery – a business supplying halters, reins, lead ropes, slips, bridles, boots, chapettes and more to horse owners throughout the region and beyond.
Most things she sells are designed by Jenny and cut and stitched from her kitchen table.
It’s a tricky business, and one she fell into over a decade ago.
After studying accounting for a year in 2000, Jenny had difficulty finding work in the field.
“I spent 18 months looking for work everywhere. I thought ‘what am I good at?’” she recalls.
“Bunyip Saddlery was in Nar Nar Goon at this stage and was up for sale. I liked that I could run it during the week and still have Saturday mornings with my son at soccer.”
In October 2002 she brought the business, and spent the next few months learning the finer points of the craft.
Eighteen months later, the saddlery had become unviable and Jenny was forced to close the store.
“I came home, rode my horses for a couple of weeks and tried to work out what I was going to do,” she recalls.
“I thought ‘I can knit, I can sew, I can crochet, I can sew, I can macram’. Surely to God I can do something.”
As it turned out, there were many things she could do.
Jenny decided to continue the business from her Ellinbank home and begin making many of the products from her kitchen table.
She spent a weekend with a master saddler in Beechworth, and a passion for creating products for horses began.
“I got a hold of the pattern for the knotted rope halters and I spent a number of years perfecting them,” she said.
“In the beginning it was tough and it was lucky I didn’t have a hide at home because I think I would have come back and shredded it at times.”
Working from home, she both receives orders directly and travels to agricultural shows around the state with her products.
“Around 90 per cent of the business is agricultural shows. I used to go from Bairnsdale all the way down to Sunbury every year.”
Speaking with Jenny it is easy to pick up on her vast knowledge of her craft and of the industry – but she wasn’t always a country girl.
She grew up in Noble Park, but enjoyed spending time on the 300 acres her uncle owned at the Gurdies.
“I loved it. I’ve always loved running around the scrub.”
She is also passionate about her work.
“I like to learn new things and see how other people live,” she said of her work.
“When you’re out and about you get to talk to a lot of different people about a lot of different things.”
She teaches things, too. After many years spent raising horses, Jenny now shares her knowledge with others.
“I’ve managed to turn a couple of people’s thoughts around, particularly with breaking and training.
“When you go out to these shows, you get to sit and talk to them and get into their heads.”
She’s revolutionizing the equipment used with horses as well.
“It’s about changing the way people think.
“A lot of farmers haven’t cottoned on yet that they can get different halters to the original cotton ones that were around 40 years ago when I was a kid.
“Things are changing slowly but surely, it can be hard for it to gel.”
True to her motto, the Saddlery has built a reputation on selling products of the highest quality, starting with sourcing premium leather from Ballarat’s Greenhalgh Tannery.
“You can buy a whole half side of an animal. Your top part of the hide is the thicker leather where you take your leather for reigns and heavy duty leads,” she said.
“And as you go down the hide it gets a bit thinner, that’s where you get your bridle leather and your halter leather from.”
Making a bridle can take about 10 hours and involves carefully cutting and trimming the leather, gluing and then hand-stitching the pieces together.
Over the years, Jenny has refined and perfected the process.
“If you’ve got your basic sizing and you understand what you’re making just keep going. You roll with the flow.”
As well as the Saddlery, Jenny has raised livestock for a number of years. At the moment there are 33 head of cattle and four horses on her 42-acre property.
“We rear the cows from two or three days old and then sell them at three years old,” she explained.
“We bred them for around 15 years but eventually stopped replacing them. Now we have steers instead of vealers. They’re two completely different cows.”
And the business is still going strong.
“People say there’s no money out there but I beg to differ, there is.
“I keep figures on everything, so I always know what’s going better than the year before.”
Jenny also sells her products through various wholesalers, including Pakenham Westernwear.
She sees her primary role as a saddler as ensuring that her customers walk away satisfied.
“They want to know that what they buy is going to do what they want it to do, that it’s going to fit properly.
“That’s got to be the focus of everything I make. Quality is priority one.”
